HOW GOVERNMENT CAN BRIDGE THE GAP

Since last year’s General Election, the government has been intent on improving its communication with the public. Officials believe they must make their presence felt on Facebook and other social media platforms. And they show no sign of loosening their grip on mainstream media as a vehicle for reaching out to the public.* Through traditional and new media, the government will intensify its efforts to explain its policies.

On its own, though, such engagement will probably fail to improve the PAP’s prospects. After all, it is not as if the government used to be reticent. Consider the most controversial issues of the GE: immigration, social safety nets, public transport, housing prices and ministerial salaries. On every one of these issues, the government’s position was articulated, loud and clear, before and during the GE.

It strains credibility to say that if only government leaders had used Facebook and other social media earlier and more enthusiastically, voters would have been more receptive to these policies. Similarly, it defies logic to suggest that if establishment media had repeated government positions with even greater fidelity than they did, the gap between government and people would have been narrowed.

Increased communicativeness will be more persuasive only if the context – the communication environment – changes. The element in the communication environment that is critically lacking is trust.

There are at least three barriers to building the required trust. First, the primary platform through which government communicates with the public, the mainstream media, suffers from a credibility problem.

In most areas of coverage, the media are professional enough to provide a valued and reliable service. However, on the most controversial issues of the day, the government’s media policy dictates that the professional judgment of editors must be subordinate to elected officials’ judgments. The press is expected to educate the public and rally the nation behind the government, rather than push the government to respond to the people.

On all the election hot-button issues, mainstream media did reflect public disenchantment, but always in soft focus. Thus, people never got the impression that the media were on their side.

Second, the communication environment lacks independent voices in public debates – state and non-state institutions that stand apart from the executive, with the competence and credibility to comment authoritatively on problems and policies. These could include ombudsmen, independent commissions, think-tanks and other non-partisan expert institutions.

PAP philosophy has not been enamoured of such intra-elite checks and balances because of the fear that these would slow down governance and confuse the public. But these risks are small relative to the benefits, in the form of the increased trust that could accrue to the government when more of its decisions are subject to independent scrutiny by competent institutions.

Finally, trust is eroded by conflicts of interest, between national interest and party interest. While there is significant overlap between the two, the interests of the ruling party and those of Singapore are not exactly the same.

The most salient example is the way electoral boundaries are drawn. The process is, beyond reasonable doubt, managed to benefit the PAP. Similarly, unequal treatment towards opposition constituencies when rolling out government programmes and services simply does not pass the smell test.

The number of such cases may be few, but the odour of partisanship hangs in the air and sticks to other unpopular policies, even those that an objective analysis might conclude are justified as being in the national interest. Cynicism will continue to corrode trust as long as there are specific areas in which the government has, in the eyes of any reasonable Singaporean, put party before nation.

Building trust in the communication environment is critically important because citizens can only take so much information about policies before their eyes glaze over. Some will demand detailed facts and figures. If the government is on firm ground, it should have no compunctions about providing the data. For most citizens, however, it will be about taking a leap of faith, and that is where trust gives you wings.

The PAP used to pride itself in the trust that it was able to command. But the way Singaporeans trust has changed, and not just in politics.

In an earlier era, we had faith in doctors because of the aura they projected. Today, if we trust our doctors, it is not because we think they are gods, nor because we have studied medicine ourselves and can personally check on their every move. Our trust is based on the assurance that our doctors function within a regulatory system that compels them to act in our interest, that the penalties for those who fail to do so are very high, and that we can get a second opinion whenever we are doubtful.

Such commonsense principles apply to the political sphere as well. It is neither policymakers’ high status nor repetition of their diagnoses and prescriptions that will persuade the public to swallow bitter medicine, but the assurance that they will open their decisions to independent scrutiny and verification.

In his remarks at Monday’s Institute of Policy Studies conference, Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam credited the Singapore public with enough collective intelligence to make astute decisions in the country’s interest. As part of that sea change, accountability is prized far higher than traditional notions of authority.

Since Singaporeans no longer expect their leaders to be demigods, evidence of fallibility is not a liability. On the contrary, timely and unvarnished revelations of government’s mistakes are the proof people need that they are operating in a trustworthy communication environment. Conversely, if institutions are only capable of reporting that the government is right, it should not be surprising when official communication is not believed.

* This sentence was deleted by ST editors and does not appear in the published version. It is not a major loss and I agreed to the change (my submission was too long, so something had to give). I highlight the redaction here because it illustrates how the Singapore press does not like to say too much about the controls it faces. This distinguishes the media here from the media in most authoritarian states, where journalists try their best to reveal the conditions under which they work. What accounts for the Singapore media’s stoic silence? This is a question I try to answer in the chapter, “Freedom of the Press: A Cause without Rebels”, of my book on the press.

TOLERATE POLITICAL DIVERSITY, TOO

A running theme in the story of Singapore has been the progressive embrace of diversity. Singapore in the 19th century was a city of tribes. Today, multi-racialism is treated as a national value. Even if racial prejudices linger, we know where our society should be heading: towards greater tolerance and understanding.

Similarly, Singapore’s religious diversity is increasingly celebrated at major national events. Singaporean secularism is not about banishing various religions from public view to preserve a myth of homogeneity, but about keeping the state insulated and equidistant from each faith.

Attitudes towards differences in individual ability have also shifted. The polarising obsession with exam-defined success is giving way gradually to a more rounded understanding of talent, recognising that a meritocratic society should appreciate different kinds of merit. One welcome result of this shift is that people with disabilities are today held up as part of the Singapore family in a way that you would not have witnessed 10 years ago.

Differences in wealth have become more pronounced. But, our society is resisting the feudal mindset that is all too prevalent through much of Asia. In Singapore, being rich does not confer a licence to abuse the poor. And, being poor does not mean limitless indignity: our social norms dictate that nobody here should be homeless or have to beg.

Behind these various social attitudes towards people who are different, there appears to be a widely shared belief in the principle of fairness, as well as the pragmatic attitude that every citizen ought to matter – if for no other reason than that are so few of us.

There is one area of life, however, that has yet to follow this national narrati

ve. Politics. Attitudes towards different political beliefs and practices remain immature and intolerant. Singaporeans seem not to have learnt from the way our society has handled diversity in other realms and become richer for it.

No group is spared this culture of intolerance. In some circles, joining an opposition party brands you as a dangerous element, and about as welcome in Singapore as dengue-bearing mosquitoes and H5N1-infected chickens. But, in other Singaporeans’ eyes, if you enter the ruling party’s ranks you must be a self-serving sell-out, consumed by ambition and craving patronage.

Work as a civil servant, and some will assume you must be rigid and reactionary, resistant to changing anything in Singapore. On the other hand, if you get involved with a civil society group, some will conclude that you must be mindlessly apeing the West and pushing agendas that are, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, destabilising.

It seems that the only escape from this careless stereotyping is to retreat entirely from public affairs. Abject apathy is the only ideological stand that is immune to Singaporeans’ political bigotry ¬– even though it is the most anti-social and the most deserving of criticism.

Of, course, the thing about stereotypes is that they are always grown from a grain of truth. It would not be hard to find an example or two who fit the mould of the opposition wild-man or the cravenly careerist People’s Action Party member. However, in dealing with ethnic diversity, Singaporeans are learning that it is wrong to apply racial stereotypes to entire communities. Perhaps, then, it is not too much to ask that we should stop imprisoning individuals of whatever political persuasion inside the cages in our mind.

Sometimes, these cages are recreated outside of our heads and built into the frameworks of actual politics: the PAP has fashioned rules of engagement that are premised on the assumption that dissenters are dangerous.

But, it does not stop there, because intolerance tends to be reciprocated. The resulting political culture may have hurt the PAP itself. There are many reasons for the chronic difficulty it faces in getting the ablest Singaporeans to serve in politics, but surely one of them is their reluctance to enter an arena that they perceive as lacking in civility.

In this regard, politicians could learn from religious leaders. Respectful inter-faith dialogue among leaders of the world’s major religions is not aimed at erasing doctrinal differences, but is instead largely motivated by self-preservation. Surrounded by secularism, astute religious leaders know that they cannot protect the communal interests of their respective faiths unless they protect the status of Religion as such.

If they do not build a culture of tolerance towards people of other faiths and collectively highlight the good that religion can do for society, the ground will slip away beneath them. Similarly, partisanship in politics needs to be tempered by a collective investment in shared civic values. If people who are engaged in public affairs from whatever angle sow intolerance instead, they will reap cynicism and apathy from the wider public. Nobody should be surprised when either bully talk by those with power or histrionics by those without leave the broad middle ground turned off.

In Singapore, the culture of political intolerance does not encourage youth engagement with public affairs. There is that well known fear of taking positions that can be construed as anti-government. But, there are also talented young people who feel embarrassed about joining the government, because their peers scorn such a path as lacking in idealism.

There is a practical reason why it is worth working for a culture of mutual respect between political outsiders and insiders. Chances are that both will prove equally vital to any major national enterprise. History shows us that societies do not make great strides by everyone marching along a single, predictable path, to the beat of a single drum. National independence movements, environmental successes or equal rights for women, for example, all depended on a mix people working for change within the system, and others pressing from the outside. Only in hindsight is it ever apparent which routes and methods are most productive, but invariably all have a part to play.
Singapore, facing its own challenges, would be foolish to put all its eggs in one basket. We need to judge people by their ability, passion and sincerity, not by the different paths they take.

The country needs many able men and women of conviction and conscience to continue joining government, because there is simply no better avenue to achieving large changes quickly. Partly as a result of the late 20th century turn away from big government, the public sector is not seen as an avenue for changing the world – despite having the greatest wherewithal to do so.

No other organisation has the resources and power of the state, and individuals who step forward to help the state use that power for society’s benefit deserve our support, not our contempt.

However, Singapore also needs some good people to join the opposition, as a long term insurance policy for the day it needs an alternative government. Theirs is a lonely enough path; they do not need stones thrown at them.

Not all worthy causes are vote-winners, though, so Singapore also needs talented civil society activists prepared to push on without any pretensions of winning power.

Then, there are those who prefer to pour their passion into the intangibles. Singaporeans – who are practically minded to a fault – should be glad of this, because history again tells us not to underestimate the importance of the poets, philosophers and public intellectuals. They can do a better job than any official scenario planner or strategist in highlighting inconvenient truths essential for the future.

Singaporeans have been accustomed to asking ourselves whether we can afford to tolerate political differences. Our experience in dealing with other types of difference – ethnic and class – should give us hope that we can try. Our complex and unclear future tells us we cannot afford not to.

This article was published in the Sunday Times on 10 August 2008. The People’s Action Party responded a week later in the letters pages of the Straits Times.

PAP’s RESPONSE



On political diversity

IN HIS article last Sunday, ‘Time to tolerate political diversity’, Mr Cherian George lamented the lack of political diversity in Singapore and alleged that this is because the ‘PAP has fashioned rules of engagement… premised on the assumption that dissenters are dangerous’.

This is exactly the ‘careless stereotyping’ of political practices Mr George deplores.

Singapore’s political system is evolving towards greater diversity and openness. The Government claims no monopoly of wisdom. We encourage people to express their views on national issues, whether for or against the Government. There are some limits, especially to safeguard basics like racial and religious harmony which are vital to Singapore’s existence. Free speech also cannot be a licence to defame or spread irresponsible untruths. This is how we have kept our public discourse civil, responsible and honest.

Within the party, the People’s Action Party (PAP) encourages a diversity of political views. It welcomes all who want to work with it to change Singapore for the better, including those who disagree with some PAP policies. It treats with respect opposition leaders like Mr Low Thia Khiang and Mr Chiam See Tong who uphold the Singapore system.

Citizens wishing to participate in the public discourse are free to enter politics and fight for their convictions, or to stay outside the ring as ‘poets, philosophers and public intellectuals’. Either way, they cannot be exempt from critical scrutiny, nor can they insist on their views prevailing.

Mr George suggests that political leaders learn from religious leaders in promoting greater diversity and tolerance. But this religious diversity and tolerance did not come about naturally. It is the result of the PAP Government’s deliberate nurturing and vigilant enforcement, through practices and laws tailored to our circumstances. Fortunately, the majority Chinese accept the coexistence of other religions, and this has made Singapore different from its neighbours.

One key difference between religion and politics is that religion is a personal choice of each individual, whereas politics concerns collective decisions impacting the lives and futures of all Singaporeans. On important political issues we cannot just agree to disagree, and treat all views as being equally valid. We have to debate the issues thoroughly, to reach a consensus and make the right choice for the country.

In a democracy, what the country should do is ultimately decided through the ballot, which settles which party has persuaded voters to support it and its policies. Having received the people’s mandate, the Government’s responsibility is to hear and consider all views, before deciding and acting in the best interests of the nation. This is what the PAP Government has done, and how it has delivered a better life for all citizens.

– 

Ho Peng Kee, 
2nd Organising Secretary
, People’s Action Party

Managing civil disobedience

My academic paper on the concept of calibrated coercion was first published as a Working Paper by Asia Research Institute, NUS. You may download the PDF file by clicking here. Below is an article applying these ideas in analysing Chee Soon Juan’s strategy of civil disobedience, published by the Straits Times, 10 October 2005, p. 19. The ensuing exchange with the government is also reproduced below.

THE ‘white elephants’ affair has resulted in a ‘stern warning’ to its unnamed perpetrator. After this case, people will be more careful to check that they do not accidentally flout the law, as the unfortunate Mahout of Buangkok appears to have done.

However, this is unlikely to be the last such case. The stern warning will not deter opposition activists who believe in deliberately breaking the law to make a political point. Their attempt to inject civil disobedience into Singapore’s body politic represents an intriguing challenge to the People’s Action Party’s ideological hold. It calls for deft handling. While thwarting a protest is easy for the authorities, the question is how much political capital they will have to spend in the process.

This is the real power of such campaigns. By deliberately but non-violently flouting laws that they deem unjust, opponents put the authorities in a fix.

The state could choose to close one eye, but this would diminish its authority and probably invite follow-up breaches until these are too large or too flagrant to be ignored. If the state responds with force against a peaceful protest, the activists can still try to claim the moral victory. They may succeed in convincing the wider public that the law in question – and the state’s power in general – is neither just nor moral, but instead backed by sheer force.

Thus, campaigns of civil disobedience test a state’s moral legitimacy, revealing whether its rule is based mainly on consent or on coercion.

Dr Chee Soon Juan has been dabbling with this strategy for some years, at least since 1998, when he spoke in public without a permit and landed up in prison. His new book, The Power Of Courage, promotes non-violent civil disobedience as an opposition strategy in Singapore.

The Government has responded that the rule of law must be respected. Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said that wilful law-breaking ‘regardless of whether you think it is a silly law or not … does violence to the rule of law’, even if the actions are peaceful.

While the principle of zero tolerance for law-breaking is straightforward, applying it will be a challenge. Civil disobedience will test a key element of PAP governance: its acumen in calibrating its use of force against political challengers, such that opponents are neutralised with minimum collateral damage.

This is not to deny the other – and much better-understood – sources of the PAP’s strength, namely its outstanding record in delivering the goods, its internal discipline and its ability to win genuine freely-given loyalty from the majority of Singaporeans.

But every state, by definition, also comprises instruments of force. And the intelligent use of force is no less a dimension of good governance than, say, an efficient bureaucracy or long-term urban planning.

Its calibrated approach to coercion may be one of the least appreciated of the PAP’s many skills. Indeed, stating it this way will probably provoke some incredulity. After all, even some of the PAP’s most ardent supporters think it is guilty of occasional overkill. PAP leaders themselves are not coy about their macho side. Mr Lee Kuan Yew talks of knuckledusters and nation-building with equal aplomb. If the PAP were to develop and market a computer game, it would be a cross between SimCity and Street Fighter.

Self-restraint

IMAGE aside, however, the facts show a government increasingly aware of the need to exercise self-restraint in its use of force. Yes, it has an array of repressive tools within easy reach. But, compared with other states that possess similar tools and are controlled by similarly strong-willed leaders, Singapore’s Government has been relatively judicious and sophisticated in their use.

The spectrum of coercive tools available to an authoritarian regime today ranges from political murders and disappearances, and torture and imprisonment without trial, to criminal prosecution, civil action, the banning of organisations, sabotaging opponents’ means of earning a living and character attacks through state-controlled media.

The most extreme of these tools have never been used in Singapore. And it is noteworthy that detention without trial, under the Internal Security Act, was used frequently in the 1960s and 1970s but has not been applied to non-violent political opponents in almost two decades.

As for criminal prosecutions, most of these have not involved jail terms. Dr Chee went to prison because he would not pay a fine. The state’s weapon of choice – defamation civil suits – similarly does not involve incarceration, though it can be devastating financially.

Some may argue that these distinctions are academic, as the PAP’s calibrated coercion is still coercive enough to neutralise the opposition. On the one hand, that is precisely the point being argued here: The PAP has developed into an art form the ability to suppress challenges with a fraction of the brutality employed by the most ruthless dictatorships, but with an effectiveness that more than matches them.

Still, the difference between physical torture and a lawsuit is hardly insignificant. To claim otherwise – to say that Singapore is like the Soviet Union of the past, or like Zimbabwe today – is to trivialise the suffering of dissidents in some of the most inhumane regimes of the modern era.

Furthermore, different tools have different secondary effects. That is why calibrated coercion is not only more ethical than unbridled repression, but also the smarter option for any regime interested in long-term consolidation rather than short-term plunder.

States that overplay their hand often find the excessive violence backfiring on them. It unleashes a moral outrage that opponents can harness to mobilise a hitherto-inert public behind their cause.

Tipping points

IN THE Philippines, the sight of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr, gunned down in cold blood on the tarmac of Manila International Airport in 1983, was the beginning of the end of the Ferdinand Marcos regime.

Indonesia, May 1998: The shooting of four student protesters was the tipping point that turned the Reformasi campaign against then-president Suharto into a full-blown revolution.

Malaysia’s Reformasi got a fillip from sensational images of Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim being snatched away under the Internal Security Act and then emerging from custody with a black eye, courtesy of the country’s police chief.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew would later comment that the Mahathir government erred tactically in using the ISA instead of a straightforward criminal charge – a rare hint that the calibration of coercion is a conscious policy, even if never enunciated.

One of the few political theorists to have analysed the cost of a state’s violence to the state itself was political philosopher Hannah Arendt.

In her pithy treatise On Violence, she rejected Mao Zedong’s oft-quoted dictum by arguing that while violence can flow from the barrel of a gun, power cannot.

Power corresponds to the human ability to act in concert; it belongs to a group and exists only as long as the group coheres.

‘Single men without others to support them never have enough power to use violence successfully,’ she wrote.

‘Even the totalitarian ruler, whose chief instrument of rule is torture, needs a power basis – the secret police and its net of informers … Where commands are no longer obeyed, the means of violence are of no use … Everything depends on the power behind the violence.’

Power is sustained by legitimacy, and legitimacy is what’s lost when violence is misapplied. ‘To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power,’ she said.

Therefore, even though violence, power and authority often appear together, they are not the same. Indeed, she added: ‘Power and violence are opposites; where one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears when power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power’s disappearance.’

Arendt thus zoomed in on the counter-intuitive truth that run-of-the-mill dictators have failed to understand. As in so many other areas, the PAP belongs in a different league. It may have wielded mallets to smash assorted flies in the 1960s and 1970s, but since the mid-1980s it has been relatively self-restrained in the use of force.

This is why the Catherine Lim Affair was able to create such a stir in the mid-1990s, and is still talked about 10 years later, despite the fact that she was not arrested, exiled or ‘fixed’. Her books were still published and used as literature texts in government schools, so she was not even punished professionally.

Three decades ago, these less-calibrated means of coercion were more routine. A Singaporean from that period, transported through time to the present day, would be dumbfounded by the notion that the Catherine Lim Affair – which never got nastier than a verbal lashing – could be iconic of PAP intolerance towards dissent. He would have concluded, correctly, that the PAP had changed.

Our time-traveller would be wrong, however, if he assumed that the PAP had undergone a fundamental philosophical conversion towards liberal ideals. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong emphasised at his talk at the Foreign Correspondents Association last Thursday, it has not – and will not.

The change is instead at the level of methodology. By systematically shifting political controls behind the scenes – through legislation covering trade unions, universities, the press, religious groups and the legal profession – the PAP has pre-empted ugly confrontations with institutions that could challenge its authority.

Mixed blessing

THE contemporary scene of calibrated coercion is a mixed blessing for Singaporeans who want more freedom. There is certainly less cause for fear today than in the old days when coercion was more blunt. On the other hand, the PAP’s self-restraint gives its opponents less moral ammunition.

Controls are so seamlessly integrated into the system and coercion is so well calibrated that the average Singaporean can go through much of life without bumping into the hard edges of PAP authoritarianism. This is bad news for pro-democracy activists, who consequently have a tough time reminding Singaporeans that they should care about political liberalisation.

That is where Dr Chee’s strategy of civil disobedience comes in. It is a predictable response to the PAP’s success at calibrated coercion. It involves seeking out laws that may not enjoy great public support, and deliberately flouting them to provoke a forceful response. The use of force will ensure victory to the PAP, but the price of victory, to borrow Arendt’s words, will be ‘paid by the victor in terms of his own power’. The strategy turns the state’s monopoly of force against itself.

Other states have fallen into the trap when those at the top miscalculate, or when their functionaries – especially the police or army – get trigger-happy when putting down peaceful protests. There is little risk of the latter in Singapore, where uniformed services are highly disciplined and under firm civilian direction. The former scenario – political miscalculation – also seems unlikely.

However, it should be noted that a new and less experienced generation of ministers and permanent secretaries is taking charge. For them, there may be an urge to deal with challengers of any sort in the most expeditious manner, and the temptation to get their way through actual or threatened force may be irresistible. The alternative – the use of reason and debate – may seem too slow, too weak, especially when more decisive tools are at one’s fingertips.

The situation, in short, is dynamic. The Government can narrow the opportunities for effective civil disobedience by pro-actively amending regulations that are over-broad and difficult to defend intellectually to the ordinary Singaporean. Until then, the Chees of Singapore will continue to pressure those points in the law. The authorities will not give in; they will say no. But they will have to calibrate carefully how they say no.

The writer is an assistant professor at the School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, where he researches media and politics. This article is based on an academic paper on calibrated coercion, published in the Asia Research Institute’s working paper series, at www.ari.nus.edu.sg.

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