Air-Conditioned Nation

There is a widely held view that Singapore needs both PAP government and more opposition. To achieve this, Singaporeans need to pay attention to politics in between elections and do their part to build a democratic society.

The opposition’s stars filled rally grounds and animated everyday conversations. In the previous general election, it had made a big breakthrough, winning more seats and pulling down the PAP’s vote share. Surely, Singapore was poised to take a few more steps away from one-party dominance. But, on Polling Day, the electorate sent the opposition straight into a brick wall. Many Singaporeans were deeply disappointed.

This could be a description of Singapore this May, 2025.

Or I could be describing 2015.

Or 1997.

All these were election years when the previous poll’s quantum leap in opposition fortunes was followed by a big, resounding — nothing. The opposition’s momentum stalled. The ruling party maintained or improved its seat count and increased its vote share.

Struggling to comprehend last weekend’s GE results? We have been here before.

I don’t bring up history to deepen anyone’s sense of futility but to suggest that if we are not to repeat it, Singaporeans might need to rethink their tendency to pay attention to politics only when elections come along.

A shared unease

PAP cheerleaders would have us believe that only the one-third of Singaporeans who voted for the opposition last Saturday feel let down by the result. They claim the silent majority has spoken. But has it?

Election results in Singapore are hard to interpret, because many Singaporeans want both a larger opposition and stable PAP rule. This paradox means that the 34.43 percent who voted opposition last Saturday would include people who favour continued PAP government for now. But, by the same token, many among the 65.57 percent who voted for the PAP probably wished the opposition would win more seats — but somewhere else; because, in their own constituencies, they were not offered opposition candidates who met their standards. These PAP voters were probably rooting for a few opposition candidates running elsewhere.

We know that Singaporeans are highly sensitive to opposition candidate quality. Who’s running — not voters’ values, demographics, or opinions on policy — must be the main reason why, for instance, voters in Ang Mo Kio GRC were twice as likely to vote for the PAP than voters in Aljunied GRC. This also explains the large and growing gap in PAP support in seats contested by the WP and those contested by other opposition parties. If a major predictor of the vote share is who’s standing in each constituency, we shouldn’t read the results as clear indications of where Singaporeans stand on particular issues.

For example, it would be obviously foolish to claim that the two-thirds of Singaporeans who voted for the PAP are fine with the cost of living. (And the PAP has not suggested that.) It is as illogical to argue that that all of these Singaporeans are equally happy that no additional opposition members were elected to Parliament. Elections are not referenda on specific questions — whehter it’s the cost of living or the size of the opposition — and cannot be read as such.

We have to look elsewhere for a clearer idea of what Singaporeans want. Institute of Policy Studies public opinion surveys show that only a minority can be described as “conservative” — that is, people who disagree that there is need for change in the electoral system; for checks and balances; and for different voices in Parliament. The proportion of conservatives peaked at around 44 percent in 2015, the year Lee Kuan Yew died. In other years, it hovers at around just 20 percent.

“Swing” voters, who make up the largest group in most years, rank an efficient government more highly than parliamentary checks and balances, while “pluralist” voters consider parliamentary checks and balances to be more important. But even swing voters say parliamentary checks and balances are very important (45 percent) or important (53 percent).

This data suggest that most Singaporeans do want the opposition to grow steadily. To varying degrees, most are probably disappointed that GE2025 did not yield another 1, 5, or 10 seats to qualified opposition candidates.

These Singaporeans are the real silenced majority. They are under-represented in a public sphere that amplifies conservative voices and mutes critical ones. And, in the 15th Parliament, they will be further marginalised by the first-past-the-post system, whereby a 34 percent vote share for the opposition translates into a mere 10 percent of elected seats. This is a serious disequilibrium in our system of representative government.

A lose-lose-lose disequilibrium

Parliament’s chronic under-representation of Singaporeans’ desire for more checks and balances is not healthy. Not even for the PAP. Parliament — along with national news media and universities — coddles ministers, increasing the risk of groupthink that arises from the lack of diversity within cabinet. It makes even the brightest ones intellectually lazy over time, generating an embarrassing series of policy and political missteps over the years. A lack of voice also makes Singaporeans more irritable, perhaps too harsh sometimes on decent PAP leaders and other hardworking public servants, and too forgiving of failings on the opposition side.

This is why more thoughtful PAP leaders have welcomed opposition growth. In 2020, when the Workers’ Party won Sengkang GRC and the PAP’s vote share fell 8.7 points, Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam acknowledged that the result reflected “a desire among Singaporeans for a new balance in politics” and would encourage the PAP “to review its own game so as to win the hearts, and not just the minds, of a changing electorate”.

Similarly, when the Workers’ Party won its first GRC in 2011 and the PAP vote share hit a historic low, former Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential candidate Tony Tan called it a win-win-win outcome. He said it was a “net plus” for Singapore, “another stage of our political development as a country”. In this “new normal”, a “strong party in government” would be “matched by an effective opposition in Parliament”.

So, we should ignore the PAP’s strident, tone-deaf ideologues inebriated by this month’s result. Reasonable Singaporeans, including those who support the PAP, have good reason to feel disappointed that the opposition’s gradual progress stalled.

In the coming weeks, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong will show if he is sensitive to this fact or if he’s going to be swayed by party cheerleaders. He has passed the first, rather easy, test. Ng Chee Meng is out of the running for a Cabinet position. Rewarding with high office an obviously flawed public servant who almost lost to a newbie would strike most — including many PAP voters — as a declaration that the PAP can get away with anything, and intends to.

There is much more the Prime Minister could do to work towards a more balanced political system. In the past, when the government sensed public disquiet about the lack of diverse voices in Parliament, it introduced reforms such as the Non-Constituency MP scheme. It also shrunk the size of GRCs to make the elections more contestable. Singaporean expectations may have already outgrown these stop-gap measures, so it may be time to come up with other structural changes.

Wong could also decide that his government is going to respect Singaporeans enough to try to win arguments through debate and persuasion, instead of by using its power to shut their mouths and seal their ears. He can impose a moratorium on the use of POFMA notices and defamation lawsuits when simple clarifications would do the job of setting the record straight. He can instruct the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Education to end the outrageous practice of blacklisting young Singaporeans with a civil society background from employment in universities.

Enlightened self-interest should encourage the PAP to change from within, as Donald Low and I argued in PAP v PAP. But we should also learn from the history of Singapore’s start-stop, tortuously slow democratic development that we cannot leave it to the incumbents to reform without stronger pressure.

WP: No fluke

Fortunately, the opposition has never looked more capable. Indeed, this is the main reason why many Singaporeans found the GE results frustrating. Decades ago, Singaporeans groaned at the low quality of opposition candidates, many of whom earned mostly sympathy or protest votes. Now, you instead hear Singaporeans despairing at their fellow citizens, wondering if anything will stir them to board the slow train toward a more democratic Singapore.

The Workers’ Party no longer needs to milk sympathy or whip up anger. And it has shown that 2020 was no fluke. GE2025 is the second election running where the WP received more votes than the PAP, by a hair’s breadth, in seats where they competed head-to-head for Singaporeans’ support. The WP’s vote share this month was again just over 50 percent. The fact that it repeated this feat on an electoral terrain 30 percent larger than in 2020 shows it can grow without compromising quality. The party leadership clearly knows what it’s doing and can be counted on to keep improving. Since 2011, the WP has run more disciplined, on-message election campaigns than the PAP. In between elections, it works hard on the ground.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Lee Kuan Yew mocked opposition parties as one-man shows, contrasting them with the PAP’s induction system that systematically creamed off Singapore’s most able. You don’t hear that critique anymore. Since 2011, the WP has maintained a recruitment system that is as good as, if not superior to, the PAP’s. Its candidates are as credentialed and they articulate better what drives them to stand. Kenneth Paul Tan was on to something when he boldly declared that the PAP was showing signs of decadence. In comparison, the WP appears dynamic.

But, as promising as the WP is, it is unrealistic to delegate the work of building democracy entirely to it and other opposition parties. If we continue to do so, we are doomed to repeat the stop-start cycle endlessly. At this rate of progress, humans will set foot on Mars before Singaporeans have a balanced Parliament and a political system befitting the country’s complexity and diversity.

Time for society to step up

The last time I checked, our National Pledge doesn’t say that we the citizens of Singapore will watch as politicians build a democratic society. We pledge to do the building ourselves. A democratic society rests on broad foundations and rises on multiple pillars. There is only so much opposition parties can do through electoral politics if the rest of Singapore’s democratic infrastructure resembles a feudal or colonial town where power and privilege are protected behind high walls, while challengers eke out a precarious existence on the margins.

There are two pillars that civil society should rally to repair: the system for drawing electoral boundaries and the national media. There is already a middle ground of opposition and PAP supporters who need no persuading that these essential infrastructures are patently unfair.

Less than eight weeks before Polling Day, the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee reconfigured GRCs that major opposition parties had invested in after coming close the previous round. Working under the Prime Minister’s Office, its decisions violated the commonsense principles adopted by Singapore’s founding fathers in the 1950s, such as making it easier for candidates to canvas for votes and respecting people’s mental maps of their neighbourhoods. The government’s various statements defending the Committee insult the public’s intelligence. Justifications for the latest round of changes were deservedly mocked. But instead of post-hoc criticism that only serves to let off steam, citizens need to push for reform now. The day after Polling Day, when Pritam Singh was asked about the need to mend this system, he indicated that the WP would not lead the charge. It would be up to the public, since “nothing is more powerful than the people’s voice”.

As for the national media, the Straits Times and its sister newspapers have steadily declined in quality since the 2011 General Election. Since the 2021 restructuring essentially nationalised the country’s news industry, editors no longer try to hide the fact that their livelihoods depend on serving their political masters, not listening to their journalists who want to do a professional job nor the public that is forced to fund them through their taxes. By the end of the campaign, the papers did not bother to hide their partisan colours, denying the public an impartial source of news about the election. When the minister for information defends the performance of government-funded news media by citing vague circulation figures and selective survey data, most listeners, including many PAP voters, know they are being gaslit.

These are just two areas of necessary reform that cannot be left to opposition parties, and cannot wait till a month before the next general election for citizens to pay attention. If civil society groups start working on these issues, I hope that the broader public will lend them its support.

Achieving major structural change within the next few years will be difficult. But citizens have to start somewhere. And a serious, concerted effort on these two fronts could produce short term dividends. The government could be pressured to provide assurances that this year’s closely fought GRCs will not be unfairly tampered with in the next review. And it could ease up on its micromanagement of the press.

Singaporeans can continue to treat democracy as a once-in-five-year reality show to binge-watch — which means it is now time to turn off till the next season. But if they learn anything from the pattern of Singapore’s slow and fitful democratic progress, it should be that a critical mass of citizens is needed to help build a fairer political system in between GEs.

The antidote for despondency is to work hard. Pritam Singh, understands this. In his first speech after the GE, his words punched through the disappointment hanging heavy in the air: “We start work again tomorrow and we go again.”

Singaporeans, whichever party they voted for, must now decide if the opposition will have to continue going it alone, or if they will join in and go together.

GE2025: Nine days to shape the pictures in voters’ minds

By Cherian George

On April 23, 2025

In Uncategorized

The obvious quality of opposition candidates may not be enough to gain more seats in Parliament if the PAP succeeds in portraying Singapore as a safe haven against the Godzilla threat of Donald Trump’s tariff war.

Two contrasting images of Singapore coexist in many citizens’ minds. Which one looms larger on Polling Day will help determine the shape of the 15th Parliament. The first is a Singapore that coddles the privileged few, including its unaccountable ruling elites, while requiring ordinary people to grin and bear the vicissitudes of life. The other is Singapore, the safe haven in an unforgiving and unpredictable world, a refuge for even the humblest Singaporean to be thankful for.

Policy specifics — from GST to CECA, BTO to MRT — do matter of course, but people make sense of these nitty-gritties through meta-narratives about themselves, their leaders, and their country. Since 1981, an electorally significant share of middle-of-the-road voters have identified more strongly with the first picture: a country where policymakers bend over backwards for the super wealthy and stinge on the needs of the common person. They have voted against the People’s Action Party when offered credible alternative candidates. This has resulted in a gradual decline in the PAP’s popular vote and a slow but steady erosion of its monopoly of political power.

In the 1980s, Lee Kuan Yew found it hard to come to terms with this reality. As late as the 2011 election, true to himself, he warned that voters would regret and repent if they voted for the opposition in Aljunied GRC. It was not a new sentiment, but out of sync with a changed country. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong accepted his resignation days after the polls (as if the PAP’s poor showing was the Minister Mentor’s fault). Since then, PAP leaders have been able to acknowledge, without betraying any rancour, that Singaporeans want a check on its power and more diverse voices in Parliament.

This appetite for more opposition will probably be satiated only when Parliament arrives at an equilibrium close to the 60:40 spit in the popular vote. Reconciled to this long-term trend, the PAP is unlikely to feel devastated if a third GRC and perhaps another single-member seat fall next Saturday. Lawrence Wong and his team could still credibly claim the strong vote of confidence he is seeking.

But it is possible that the PAP will do worse than that, thanks to the quality of opposition candidates who officially entered the race today. Gone are the days when the opposition attracted mostly protest votes, requiring mass suspension of disbelief about candidates whose main virtues were unbridled courage and undeserved self-belief. Today, there are more than a dozen challengers whom neutrals can sincerely support as potentially outstanding MPs who would do Singapore proud. In an implicit acknowledgement that it would be ungentlemanly and unconvincing to knock the quality of this year’s opposition slate, Lee Hsien Loong has asked voters to consider the party brand, not just individual merits of candidates.

These high-quality challengers’ main difficulty is reaching out to enough voters within a short campaign period on electoral maps that appear designed to make life harder for smaller parties. But let’s say the opposition doubles its number of elected seats from ten to twenty, and PAP’s share of the popular vote falls to a historic low of around 55 percent. In this scenario, the PAP would still retain a super-majority in Parliament. Lawrence Wong can go to President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and claim to “command the confidence of the majority of the Members of Parliament” by a big margin. He would be duly appointed Prime Minister.

So, a doubling of the opposition’s Parliamentary presence would represent the breaching of a psychological and possibly political, not Constitutional, threshold. It would be Wong’s political capital — not his mandate — that might be called into question. Considering his late entry into the party leadership race — more academy sub than galactico — there is a theoretical possibility that another 4G leader who felt robbed his entitlement would seize the opportunity to reassert his claim.

Such a game of thrones is a highly unlikely outcome of this GE, because Lawrence Wong has not made the mistake of making this election about him. (Unlike Goh Chok Tong who once gambled his own reputation by declaring that he was standing in every constituency.) Unless Wong’s vote share in his own ward is much lower than the PAP average (which is not going to happen), it would be very difficult for Chan Chun Sing, to use a hypothetical example, to make his move even if he were so inclined. Everyone would see the poor GE result as a collective 4G failure.

The more pertinent question is how a big fall in PAP support would affect the power balance between 3G and 4G leaders. Insiders could try to argue that the result is a rebuff of 4G, requiring 3G leaders to reassert themselves. If 4G ministers are unable to parry this weak argument, perhaps they are indeed not cut out for national leadership.

Compared with the handover process from the Old Guard to the Second Generation leadership, which was formalised only after the latter had been running things for several years, the 4G leaders took charge with 3G ministers still holding key portfolios. The Lawrence Wong administration has not had the time (or the inclination) to distinguish itself from the Lee Hsien Loong government. The main difference is the whiteness of their hair, not their uniforms. A big swing against the PAP in this GE is most plausibly interpreted as a vote against 3G as much as 4G.

Opposition gains, whether moderate or major, will materialise if swing voters see their country as a bastion of privilege and wealth whose leaders need to be reminded whom they work for. However, it is quite possible that isn’t the image that dwells in voters’ mind over Cooling Off Day and into Polling Day.

Like in every country, economic concerns dominate Singapore elections. More than any other issue, Singaporeans will be thinking about their money-related frustrations and insecurities. The opposition parties will benefit if people attribute their anxieties to domestic policies. The PAP will do well to the extent that voters blame external conditions.

And it is hard to think of any past election year when it was so clear that Singaporeans were being held hostage by irrational, irresponsible, and unpredictable actors over whom none of us has any control. In ordinary times, it is hard for the government to educate Singaporeans about Singapore’s vulnerabilities in a global economy. Donald Trump is doing the PAP a favour. This year, there is no need for the PAP to explain supply chains, interest rates, and the invisible forces of global competition. The havoc being unleashed by the most powerful man in the world is as visible as Godzilla rising out of the Singapore Strait in some monster movie.

In this environment, the PAP may be exceptionally successful in projecting itself as able and trustworthy guardians of a safe haven in a dangerous world. If so, it is quite possible that it will lose no more seats than the ten currently held by the WP. It could even secure more than 60 percent of the popular vote, which would be a major triumph that defies expectations.

Lawrence Wong has already claimed that its critics are accusing it of overreacting to the trade war. (In a slip of the tongue that could have been a Freudian slip, he said that not overreacting is not how the PAP does things.) The PAP will try to portray the opposition as unreliable and petty-minded politicians at a time when Singaporeans need to see the big picture and stand together.

For opposition candidates to keep the 2020 momentum going, they cannot afford to brush aside the psychological impact of external threats to Singapore’s wellbeing. They somehow have to blend the two pictures of Singapore and show they are not contradictory.

A threatening external environment? Check.

Singapore, a safe haven requiring capable leadership? Check.

Singapore, stronger with a less protected ruling elite? Check.

Watch for this battle of images. Coming to a rally ground near you.

RACE RELATIONS

By Cherian George

On July 28, 2020

In Politics, Society

SECTION 298 IS RIPE FOR REVIEW

The government has said it’s ready to rethink how Singaporeans should be allowed to discuss the sensitive topics of race and religion. If indeed we are going there, we need to add Section 298 of the Penal Code to the reform agenda.

This is a bad hate speech law, because it fails to distinguish between:

• the objective harms caused by incitement to hate — which violate victims’ equal rights, and should therefore be criminalised; and:

• words that cause subjective offence and disharmony — an allegation too hard to counter and too easily used to silence socially valuable speech, and which should therefore be regulated through social norms, not hard law.

For the unacquainted, here is what the law says:

It is a law with roots in British colonial times, devised by rulers more concerned about taming native subjects than building a multicultural nation. It does not belong among Singapore’s multiple defences against chauvinism, communalism, and hate. It promotes offence-taking instead of live-and-let-live tolerance. It encourages citizens to demand action from above, instead of talking things through among themselves.

Until now, I felt it was futile to press this point, because most Singaporeans are wedded to the idea of solving social frictions by calling 999. I did broach the topic in a Straits Times op-ed way back in 2011. But my 2016 book, Hate Spin, was global in scope and barely referred to Singapore. When I brought up Section 298 in my 2018 Select Committee testimony, it was because I felt I had to, not because I expected it to make any difference.

This week, though, I’m starting to wonder if Singaporeans are finally ready to reconsider their law-and-order approach to managing diversity. During an Ethos Books dialogue on Sunday, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, one of Singapore’s wisest thinkers on race and religion, made an interesting observation about the PAP’s attack on Raeesah Khan and how it backfired.

He was of course referring to one of the biggest controversies in this month’s election campaign, when someone lodged a police report against the Workers’ Party candidate concerning intemperate remarks she had made in the past about the system being rigged against minorities. She immediately apologised, but the PAP went to town with this. It issued a party statement that inaccurately claimed that she had by her own admission made anti-Chinese and anti-Christian comments.

Not just die-hard opposition supporters but also many apparently middle-of-the-road Singaporeans reacted strongly against the PAP attack. The blowback was strong enough for PAP leader Lee Hsien Loong to change the party’s tune on the final night of campaigning, acknowledging that younger Singaporeans like Raeesah might have a different approach to talking about race.

On Sunday, Imran said, “There was a clear backfire over the police report on Raeesah Khan. … With the outpouring of support for Raeesah Khan, does is it mean that people are more accepting of divisive racial or religious remarks? I don’t think so. What clearly happened is this – people now have greater sensitivity about when race or religion is weaponised for political ends.”

This is a healthy development, Imran added. It suggests that people have internalised the government’s injunction against politicising race and religion. What is new, he suggested, is the people’s awareness that the taboo should also apply to those who claim to be policing harmony.

“It cuts both ways. Saying something is divisive can itself be a divisive act with an intentional political end. This is something we have not seen before, which clearly speaks to greater civic political awareness.”

If Imran is right, Singaporeans are now savvy enough to understand that legal interventions designed for ostensibly good ends can be hijacked for bad ones. If so, we may be ready to talk about Section 298 as well as other similar laws.

The law is again bound to make news soon anyway, since the PAP’s offer of a truce to Raeesah’s fan base did not resolve the matter of the police complaint. The authorities will have to announce the outcome of their Section 298A investigation. My guess is that, rather than charging her, she will be let off with a “stern warning” — the route they usually take when the offender has shown remorse. This will defuse the debate about the law itself, until the next time it is wielded.

Even if Raeesah is spared, though, Section 298 should remain in the dock, to be grilled about its actual contribution to Singapore’s system of managing diversity.

Such discussions are easily side-tracked and waylaid, so some clarifications are in order.

First, this is not a partisan issue. This time, the law was weaponised by PAP supporters against an opposition politician, but strategic offence-taking has also been used against the PAP by its critics, as I pointed out in a 2016 journal article on incitement and offence laws in Singapore and Indonesia.

Second, it would be naive to think that the Sengkang GRC result shows that playing the race or religion card no longer works. Although there was an outpouring of support for Raeesah on online forums, there is no hard evidence that the PAP’s tactic – casting her as anti-Chinese and anti-Christian – did not have an impact at the ballot box.

Online sentiment analysis, though hardly an exact science, showed more “negative” perceptions about her than even Chee Soon Juan, who has been subject to far more intense and sustained attacks.

So it is quite possible that Raeesah owes her Sengkang GRC seat not to #IStandWithRaeesah, but to her wildy popular teammate Jamus Lim. All we can say with certainty is that the anti-Raeesah smear campaign was not effective enough — not that it didn’t work at all. In a single seat or in a different GRC contest, the PAP campaign could well have tilted the balance against her. I point this out not to rain on her parade, but lest we misinterpret her party’s electoral breakthrough as a sign that Singaporeans are immune to Islamophobia.

Third, most Singaporeans who are rightly protective of racial and religious peace need to be convinced that reforms won’t generate unacceptable risks. As Janil Puthucheary asked me during the Select Committee hearings when I proposed repealing Section 298: “But what would you say to the members of the religious community, the religious leadership, who take the very opposite view from what you have just described and who feel that such a tool is necessary to maintain and protect what we already have in Singapore?” The answer I gave is below:

*Minutes of the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods*

The conventional wisdom is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And indeed if by “broken” we mean prone to communal violence, Singapore is in good shape. I suspect, however, that many Singaporeans share my view that we can aim higher than not killing one another; that we can be so bold as to aspire to our “one united people” pledge. It will take a long process of gentle, evidence-based persuasion to wean our fellow Singaporeans off their dependence on the police.

Finally, if the political leadership does not warm to the idea of reviewing the law, we should expect that the status quo will be vigorously defended by PAP Ultras — the internet brigades that in recent years have stolen the mic from the establishment’s voices of reason, spewing divisive rhetoric from the national populist playbook of rightwing extremists around the world. They will be back, preying on ordinary Singaporeans’ fears of instability, spreading disinformation about anti-racism activists, and thus trying to paralyse any effort for progressive change.

I hope Imran is right, that Singaporeans are wisening up to political dirty tricks. If so, it may indeed be possible to have a meaningful debate about how to amend Singapore’s racial harmony laws.

Correction: An earlier version said that allegations of offence were “too hard to prove”; I meant too hard to disprove/counter, and have amended the text accordingly.

SUCCESSION

By Cherian George

On June 30, 2020

In Elections, Politics

4G AND THE 2 SHANS

Singapore’s fourth prime minister faces challenges not unlike Goh Chok Tong’s.

More earnest than magnetic, better at balancing budgets than rousing a crowd, Heng Swee Keat is unlikely to be saddled with unrealistic expectations when he becomes Singapore’s fourth prime minister. Being underestimated can be a political asset. It was a step in Goh Chok Tong’s ladder from a wooden technocrat to a popular leader. When Goh became prime minister in 1990, people regarded him as a seat-warmer for Lee Hsien Loong, and Lee Kuan Yew’s second- or third-choice one at that. But rather than provoke scorn, this image evoked empathy, which Goh cultivated into affection and even respect.

In late 2018, Heng Swee Keat was anointed as Lee Hsien Loong’s eventual successor in similarly unpropitious circumstances. Once again, this wasn’t the incoming leader’s fault: it had more to do with the public’s doubts about the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) unconventional selection process, and rumours that his seniors may have preferred others to be in charge. Once again, a sceptical public may give the new leader the benefit of the doubt and warm to him, mindful that alternative scenarios could have been worse.

[Cont’d]

This is a chapter from Air-Conditioned Nation Revisited: Essays on Singapore Politics (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2020).

Download the whole chapter

ONLINE POLITICS

By Cherian George

On May 17, 2020

In Uncategorized

NOTES FROM THE FIELD

Once in a long while, I enter the world of Facebook Comments to get a feel of the place. It can be maddening, but as a writer I find it helps periodically to exercise muscles that I rarely use in normal social settings. So, for the past 24 hours, I’ve been spending more time in Zuckerberg’s playpen than on Netflix, which for me is saying a lot.

The timing had to do with pieces that I wrote last week, in midweek and yesterday morning criticising some worrying developments in online politics. These generated pushback from individuals who, for some reason, took it very personally.

Engaging them was as instructive as I’d expected.

One striking pattern in their comments was the dogged effort to change the subject away from the matter I’d raised: the extraordinarily embarrassing sight of a group of PAP fans publicly accusing PAP stalwart Inderjit Singh of being a Chinese Communist Party stooge. No, this isn’t what ownself-check-ownself is supposed to look like. To call it an own goal doesn’t do it justice either. It’s more like executing a standing double backflip while kicking oneself in the head.

Rather than quickly deny, disown and limit the damage from what’s apparently a rogue skunkworks unit, the PAP seems content to perpetuate the impression that its radical fringes will be given free rein to police insiders who inch out of line. Sort of like how Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution were — and CCP trolls still are — let loose on internal critics.

Pointing this out has infuriated some hardcore PAP loyalists, who swarmed Facebook to attack the messenger and other non-PAP critics. They naturally avoided talking about Inderjit Singh, crossing their fingers that the internet will just forget. And, as one astute writer pointed out:

The second lesson I’ve gathered from the exchange is not new, but a powerful reminder of just how toxically partisan our political discourse has become.

Ours is a multiparty democratic system (in principle; in practice it’s a dominant party system). So a certain amount of partisanship is inevitable. But if citizens are only capable of viewing debates through a party-political lens, that’s a serious problem. Democracies progress when governments and citizens deal with ideas and arguments as they stand, and not through the lens of fixed allegiances or the short-term need for partisan point scoring.

I won’t address their ad hominem attacks and sheer inanity, because I always feel it’s more educational to engage with opponents’ arguments at their strongest — no matter how hard that is locate — and not their stupidest. So let me focus on the nub of the hardcore PAP loyalist counter-arguments: it is basically that I should be more cognisant of the fact that pro-opposition trolls are at least as bad as pro-PAP ones, and that my failure to be even-handed betrays a bias.

One prominent pro-PAP blogger even emailed me just before midnight last night to share a sample of the vulgar and xenophobic messages he’s received from anti-PAP sources. He promises to “save the long form for elsewhere” so I won’t steal his thunder by sharing his email and attachments here.

There are at least three ways I can respond to this argument: the personal, the structural, and the ethical.

The first requires me to point out my own record as a writer on Singapore politics. I find this is a somewhat tasteless exercise, because I think readers should be able to judge an argument on its merits, without reaching for the intellectual crutch of making up their minds based the speaker’s perceived background (for fellow nerds: this is in line with the theory of deliberative democracy). But I recognise that in the real world, if we don’t play the game and guard our credibility by referring to facts, we lose out to bad-faith opponents who will attack our credibility based on lies.

So I have to point out reluctantly that I have a long history of calling out idiocy and abuse on the opposition side of cyberspace. As a result, I have been trolled by pro-opposition types for far longer than by the Johnny-come-Latelies of the PAP.

I was, for instance, targeted by opposition trolls around the 2011 election, when I criticised the misogynistic attacks on the PAP’s young new candidate, Tin Pei Ling. I was also targeted by The Online Citizen when I pointed out that they had unfairly triggered a witch-hunt against another PAP backbencher by misquoting him. Netizens also attacked me when I suggested that bloggers (all whom were non-PAP back then) create and abide by a voluntary code of ethics.

In my 2017 book, Singapore, Incomplete, I have only one chapter (republished in my latest compilation, Air-Conditioned Nation Revisted) that focuses on irrational, intolerant online public opinion — and it’s not about PAP trolls. It is about the anti-government netizens who launched a xenophobic onslaught on a proposed Philippine independence day celebration, exploiting anti-immigrant feelings to attack the PAP government’s immigration policy. I still think this 2014 episode represents the most shameful low point in Singapore’s history of online discourse.

Many opposition supporters also did not like it when I threw a wet blanket on the opposition’s famous triumphs in the 2011 General Election: within hours of the result, I predicted that a much-improved PAP could make the opposition’s job much harder, which is exactly what happened in 2015.

For at least the past five years, I have made a conscious effort to focus my writing on how to improve the PAP because, as I have openly stated and still believe, it would be foolish for reform-minded Singaporeans to put all eggs in the opposition basket.

If we want a better Singapore, working for a better PAP must be part of our total strategy. Yes, we need stronger opposition as an alternative, but that does not mean the health of the party in power is of no consequence. After all, even if you have taken out a life insurance policy on your head of household, that doesn’t mean you should stay silent when he picks up bad habits like smoking. My 2017 book was entirely premised on this conviction: we need to improve the PAP in case the opposition doesn’t develop into to a viable alternative. Hardcore opposition fans, naturally, do not like this way of thinking.

Now that this is out of the way, let me deal, second, with the structural issue. In any democracy, the words and actions of a ruling party matter more than the words and actions of the opposition. This is even more true in Singapore’s dominant party system, where it is unlikely that the opposition will take over any time soon.

It is correct that we demand higher standards from any ruling party, because that’s where real power resides. Not just influence, and not just words, but cradle-to-grave powers to tax and spend, to licence and lockdown businesses, to issue orders enforceable by police, and to decide how children are educated, where to bury the dead and when to exhume them, and even when to send our men and women to war.

Our Constitution is based on this principle, that rulng parties have special obligations. Which why Lee Hsien Loong is answerable to Parliament in ways that Kenneth Jeyaretnam is not. PAP fanatics who say government critics are biased because we don’t spend equal time scrutinising the opposition may as well accuse the Constitution of double standards. This seems like such an obvious point that to belabour it risks insulting the intelligence of most readers. So I will stop here.

Third, there’s the question of values and ethics. In every sector, the best organisations set their own standards and brand themselves by their values. They don’t benchmark against the average, let alone the lowest common denominator.

Nor do they engage in whataboutism: when it’s pointed out to them that they are being associated with bad behaviour, they don’t say, “But what about our competitors? They are even worse.” No. If they are not responsible for that bad behaviour they disavow and clarify. If they are responsible, even indirectly, they accept responsibility and take swift remedial action. For example, when loutish football fans get abusive and this is picked up by TV cameras, top clubs don’t make excuses like, “We didn’t instruct those fans to do that, so don’t blame us.” No. They say, “Such behaviour is not who we are. They are not true fans, do not represent our values. We reject it completely and unequivocally.” Many socially responsible media organisations have the same attitude to readers who post comments. The best news publishers understand that abusive and irrelevant comments taint their brand and reduce its appeal, even though they were not written by the organisation’s own staff. This is why many such sites close comments on topics that they know will bring out the worst in readers.

Compared with football clubs and media organisations, it is much more important that political parties pay attention to the reputational damage caused by their hardcore but misguided fans and followers. Political parties set the tone for our democratic life. The serious ones should be eager to clean up their act.

Not surprisingly, some are quick to claim that such calls for ethical behaviour are the same as demanding censorship. The loudest objections tend to come from the worst abusers who have most to lose from higher standards. Therefore, when I called for voluntary self-regulation about a decade ago, I was derided by anti-government forces. Now it’s the turn of the vocal, nutty minority of pro-PAP netizens.

But let’s see how the more reasonable and quieter majority responds. And no, I won’t be looking for them in Facebook Comments. As workouts go, it is like jogging in circles. You break a sweat, but don’t go anywhere.

Air-Conditioned Nation

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NOTES FROM THE FIELD