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.
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.
Q: To what extent do you think a civic impulse is workable only insofar that we have don’t have religious groups that are seeking to expand?
A: We can tell how open this IPS dialogue is, when we can actually talk about religion, which is a third rail in many societies.
I still think that, despite the worrying rise in aggressively exclusive religious groups around the world that have also inspired groups in Singapore, politically it is not as serious a problem here as it is elsewhere. I study intolerance and hate around the world, so relative to the stuff that is going on in other parts of the world, we are in pretty good shape.
And I’m convinced that one reason why is that no matter how worrying some of these trends are within any one faith group — or more accurately within sub-groups within major religions — there’s a limit to how much damage will be caused as long as those force are not aligned with party political forces. That’s when it becomes very potent elsewhere, when it becomes in the interest of a political party to court and partner with some of these exclusive and intolerant religious movements. And that makes sense in countries with a dominant religion, whether it’s India or Indonesia or Myanmar or the US or most of Europe.
It simply does not make sense in Singapore. A political party could try it, but it would not succeed, because even if you court the 40% Buddhist population out there, you’re going to alienate the 60% that make up everyone else. The same applies to other religions. And that does give us some assurance that there is a limit to how much religious divides can translate into electoral advantage.
Of course politics is more than elections. So religious forces can influence how debates are handled. And yes, in that sense we are in a worrying phase globally as well as in Singapore. For whatever mix of reasons, which sociologists of religion will be better equipped to explain, the centre of gravity in many of the world’s religions is at the more intolerant and exclusive ends of the spectrum.
It’s important to realise that this wasn’t always the case. I’m convinced this moment will pass. It is up to us collectively to make sure this moment passes. It is especially up to those who are the most devout in your respective communities to make sure this moment passes.
It was not too long ago that religious groups were at the forefront of progressive change around the world. Think of the major successes in human rights and democracy over the last 200 years. Most of them were fronted by religious organisations. The Quakers in Britain helped to get rid of slavery. Think of the church’s role in the Philippines’ People Power movement or the American civil rights movement. Think of religion’s role in Indian nationalism, which we benefited from as well. So there is a strong history of religion being on the side of tolerance and expanding human rights.
It is depressing to see how this strong tradition of religions standing up for the rights of others, including the rights of other faiths, has somehow been relegated, and instead the wind is at the backs of those who are more exclusive. I would urge every person of faith in this room to take personal responsibility to move religion back to where it should be, on the side of right, and on the side of the rights of people.
There are many inspiring stories around the world. In Philadelphia, where I’m now on sabbatical, I visited the leading human rights group that stands in defence of Muslims in in the US, the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR in Philadelphia is headed by a white Jewish American, its legal officer is an African-American Christian, and a Muslim is its education officer (main photo). So its three fulltime employees are a white Jew, a black Christian, and a Muslim immigrant. And they are fighting for Muslims’ human rights. This is what religion is capable of. It is capable of coming together in interfaith struggles to pursue social justice.
One of the proudest achievements of Singapore is to host the world’s oldest interfaith organisation, the Inter Religious Organisation. This is one of the resources we have. Sadly, though, that’s not where the action is, so to speak, in public life. Sadly, the agenda has been seized by a minority of leaders and members within the world’s great faith groups, that are pushing intolerance and exclusivity. That needs to change.
At today’s IPS conference, I argued that the state should continue to lead the management of diversity – but less through coercion and more by modelling the kind of values we need. I pointed out that government rhetoric frames diversity mainly as a risk to social order. This is only partly true. Diversity is also a source of vitality. (Full text here.)
During the Q&A, I said that growing up in a multicultural society has modulated my “Indianness” with traits from Malay and Chinese culture – and I feel I am the better for it. I think there are Malays who feel similarly positive about the hybridisation of their own culture.
But what about our majority race? Are our ethnic Chinese government leaders able to say how living amidst minorities in multicultural Singapore has helped them?
No, I’m not just referring to how minorities add to Singapore’s colour and cuisine; or how our presence enhances Singapore’s appeal as a tourist destination.
What I’ve been waiting for is a prime minister who can share how interacting with Malays, Indians and others has made him a better person. I don’t recall hearing this from the first three. Maybe the fourth will finally have an answer?
I meant this question for our political leaders, but it was Ambassador Tommy Koh who rose to answer it.
He offered his own personal list. He has learnt from his Malay friends the values of gotong royong and mesyuarat, he said. And his Indian friends have taught him the value of principled argumentation.
I don’t know if all Malays and Indians would agree that these are the cultural traits they are most proud of (personally I felt affirmed to hear my “argumentative” heritage valorised).
But it’s not the precise list that matters. It’s simply fact that this establishment member of Singapore’s majority community could, in a heartbeat, express his heartfelt appreciation for multicultural living.
No, there’s no need for a national Minority Appreciation Day (that would be, er, MAD). And no, school kids shouldn’t be forced to write reflection essays on the topic. That’s the kind of overkill that would invite a backlash. No need to inflict Chinese guilt on our fellow citizens.
But, not for the first time, our leaders should be learning from Tommy Koh. If they don’t feel the value of multiculturalism deep within themselves, and instead continue to discuss diversity as mainly a “fault line”, Singaporeans will never develop the people-to-people trust that is the best protection against forces that seek to divide us.
This is the text of a presentation at the Institute of Policy Studies’ 30th Anniversary Conference on 26 October 2018.
In recent years we have seen countries with far longer histories of nation-building succumb to the politics of division.
Hate is suddenly a more potent motivator than hope in democratic politics.
This global pattern can’t be just coincidental. The best thinkers on this subject suggest we are at a world-historic inflection points, as significant as, say, the end of the Cold War. They say we are witnessing the end of the free market ideology of neoliberalism.
Pankaj Mishra in his book Age of Anger probably does the best job of analysing these times. He suggests that the 1990s neoliberal wave sparked aspirations among peoples everywhere that could not be satisfied, because they were based on a materialist ethic and mindless emulation, not genuine needs or sustainability.
The resulting resentment — a mix of envy, humiliation and powerlessness — is poisoning civil society, undermining political liberty, and causing a global turn to authoritarianism and chauvinism.
Mainstream elites and political parties haven’t found a replacement for the neoliberal order. The populists and demagogues who are filling the void don’t have a cure either; but what they do have is the snake oil of scapegoatism, and the salesmanship to hawk it effectively.
There is an economic debate to be had about this, but this is not the space nor am I the person for it. Instead I would like to reflect on the kind of political values that would best equip us for this age.
I want to suggest that Singapore’s horizontal, people-to-people relations, as well as our vertical government-people relations need strengthening.
National strengths
Before probing some of the weaknesses, though, I should emphasise that I don’t think the worst that we’ve seen elsewhere will visit our shores.
We do have some natural immunity to global trends.
One advantage we enjoy is that no single religion enfolds a majority of Singaporeans, which means politicians can gain no electoral advantage from religious nationalism. Second, we have compulsory voting; more than 90 per cent of the electorate habitually participates – and this means that election results are not prone to hijack by highly mobilised but unrepresentative groups while more reasonable people stay at home. Third, we are a city-state, so like most large cities everywhere we’re more inclined to cosmopolitan values, but unlike most cities these values are not in contention with a more homogeneous hinterland or economically backward regions where intolerant forms of nationalism tend to take root.
So my concern is not motivated by a fear of impending doom, but by the sense that our nation could be so much better.
Rampant individualism
We are certainly not spared the fundamental contradictions that always have plagued modern societies.
Our earliest nation builders recognised the tension between, on the one hand, enabling the pursuit of individual happiness and prosperity, which is essential for state legitimacy, and on the other, striving for the collective identity and cooperative instinct we need for national survival.
This is the concern at the heart of our 52-year-old national Pledge. The fact that we continue to grapple with this tension is in part a problem of success, in creating an island of opportunity for individuals and their families.
As individuals, we have come to equate progress with ever widening choice in material comforts and lifestyles. Social mobility for most of us means escaping the masses, out of the void deck into the country club; into ever more exclusive circles; where we can be increasingly fashion-conscious about what we eat and wear; finicky about the neighbourhoods where we live; and fastidious about our forms of worship.
When will religion regain its role as a champion of progressive values? – Click here for an extract from the Q&A
The rise of what Mishra calls “revolutionary individualism” and a “revolution of aspiration” was encouraged by Singapore’s embrace of neoliberalism in the 1990s, when the market became an ethic, not just a tool.
In the resulting privatised, gated version of the Singapore Dream, there’s not much room for other Singaporeans. Gotong royong is out, jealously guarded entitlement is in.
Live and let live is replaced by intolerance, by snobberies of class, culture and creed.
Approaches to diversity management
What should we be aiming for? What sort of unity or consensus should we aspire to as a diverse society?
There are at least three distinct ways of approaching the goal of national unity. The first is to think of it as a question of social order. This approach sees cohesion mainly as a security imperative. Ethnic diversity is regarded as a disadvantage, but acknowledged as a given we can’t erase, so we should at least make sure it doesn’t blow up in our faces. As for political diversity, there are fewer compunctions about flattening differences and forcing a consensus. When we view diversity through the lens of social order, we end up outsourcing its management to the state, along with other security problems.
A second approach emphasises the principle of reciprocity. We expect our rights to be respected but by the same token recognise the rights of others, even if this means we don’t always get our own way. We create fair and transparent rules for handling disputes, and will honour the outcomes of these procedures. The legitimacy of the system hinges on everyone’s equal ability to participate in it. In this worldview, it’s OK if we don’t always get our way, if at least we always get our say.
A third approach to managing diversity is based on a civic ethos, where people’s notion of the good life and a good society factors in the well-being others, including people very different from themselves. This worldview is in evidence when, for example, leaders and members of a majority faith instinctively rise in defence of minority religions that are under attack. Another indicator of a strong civic ethos would be when people are willing to support higher personal income taxes if it means that their children can grow up in a more civilised environment with more social justice and less poverty.
This is part of the social compact in some societies, and if it seems wildly unrealistic and idealistic in Singapore, well, that just goes to show that it’s not been part of our public discourse for a long time.
Back to basics
We shouldn’t think that a civic ethos is a totally foreign idea, though. It almost made its way into our national Pledge.
Go take another look at S. Rajaratnam’s first draft. It didn’t say what it now says, that the goal is “to achieve happiness, prosperity and progress for our nation”. No, it said, “we will seek happiness and progress by helping one another”. I actually find this a more meaningful statement than Lee Kuan Yew’s edited version, making much clearer what nationhood actually demands of us.
A strong civic ethos combined the principle of reciprocity form the best defence against attempts to divide us. They thicken our horizontal bonds. They are the antidotes to the law-of-the-jungle, might-is-right thinking being pushed by hatemongers around the world.
However, it is the realpolitik social order argument that tends to dominate the government’s rhetoric about managing difference. We have been taught for half a century to view differences of culture and opinion as a disadvantage, as potentially dangerous faultlines.
Vulnerability has become a national ideology, treating difference of any kind — race, religion but also political — as something to fear rather than celebrate. The management of difference is framed in negative terms: riot prevention.
This sort of thinking doesn’t permit horizontal, people-to-people trust to thicken. It feeds into the very kind of fear and zero-sum thinking — your difference is potentially at the cost of my well-being — that is being encouraged and exploited by populists elsewhere.
We should instead be cultivating the mentality that the Singapore whole is more than the sum of our different parts, that our diversity isn’t just a tourist attraction, but also enriches our own lives. And it is this net gain from diversity that makes a civic ethos not an act of charity or altruism, but of enlightened self-interest.
These ideas — of reciprocal rights, inclusive and fair processes, and of a civic responsibility to the strangers beyond our families and tribes — are essentially democratic values. It may seem odd to hitch our hopes to democratic values right now, considering the crisis some established democracies are in. Political scientists talk of a “democratic recession”, and it is indeed difficult to maintain faith in a one-person-one-vote system that has delivered Donald Trump, Brexit and a number of dangerous far right parties in Europe.
But the correct response to these events is to find ways to make democracy work better, rather than to abandon it and defect to Chinese- or Russian-style autocracy. That would be as rational as saying that your heart medication has got unpleasant side effects so you’re going to back to smoking.
Democratic values
Democratic values are still the best answer to, not the cause of, the self-serving individualism we’ve been talking about.
And this is not some contraband notion that I smuggled in on SQ21 from America yesterday. It too is an idea at the core of our national Pledge. When the founding fathers of our republic wanted a way to focus children’s minds on nation-building, on accomplishing unity in diversity, what did they do? They wrote a pledge “to build a democratic society”. Democracy, as they saw it, wasn’t the problem; democracy was the solution.
Of course the PAP continues to embrace democratic institutions insofar as reasonably free and fair elections give it the legitimacy to rule. There is also a non-trivial sense in which the formal Constitutional separation of powers is maintained.
But the Pledge doesn’t merely say we the citizens of Singapore will protect and preserve the democratic structures that have been given to us. No, it requires citizens to build a democratic society. It’s supposed to be an on-going, active process in which all of us participate.
Contained in our Pledge is the understanding that when we all collectively build a democratic society, when we think horizontally and not just vertically, we learn to recognise one another as equal citizens despite our differences; indeed, we discover we have mutual stakes in one another’s rights. My group protects your group’s dignity today, because otherwise we know we may be the victims of intolerance tomorrow.
This is what we pledge, but this is the meaning that has been hollowed out in the decades since those words were written. The PAP’s preferred model of democracy is one where citizens stay out of the kitchen and entrust the job to professional cooks.
This minimal conception of democratic government as elections fails to harness fully the nation-building potential of democracy that PAP ideologue and wordsmith S. Rajaratnam wrote into the Pledge, that and his editor Lee Kuan Yew did not remove.
Political capital
Singapore’s illiberal approach to democracy creates another problem relevant to today’s theme. It is behind certain policy failures that have depleted the political capital the PAP needs to fulfill its nation-building mission.
Recall that the PAP has always maintained that it’s more than just another political party; it is a national movement. And I don’t think this is just hype.
One of the positive side effects of one-party dominance is that the PAP straddles the class, ethnic and sectoral spectrum. We don’t think of the PAP as the party of any one group, unlike multi-party democracies where competition produces market segmentation, such that parties tend to have narrower bases – business or worker, rural or urban, religious or secular, for example. The PAP has tried to occupy the full spectrum.
The PAP’s character as a national movement has been an important resource in Singapore’s management of difference. Because in intra-societal disputes, people generally felt they could trust the referee, even if not everyone liked him. To the extent that the PAP was dictatorial, at least it was an equal-opportunity dictator.
Thus, one of the traditional strengths of the PAP has been its reputation as a generally neutral arbiter among competing communities.
I say this has been a “traditional” strength because I don’t think it’s as true today as it was before. The PAP’s mismanagement of immigration tarnished its reputation as the protector of ordinary Singaporeans’ interests. It has allowed nativists to claim some of that space.
When disaffection finally bubbled over in the 2011 general election, the government finally moderated its policies. But lasting damage had already been done to its moral legitimacy.
Two signal events, each unprecedented in its own way, revealed the extent of that damage.
First, in 2013, the government’s Population White Paper and its 6.9 million population planning figure was rebuffed even in Parliament. The government could not carry the ground, because people simply did not trust that it was acting in their interests.
Then, in 2014, Philippine nationals in Singapore had to abort their Independence Day celebration at Orchard Road on the advice of police after online protests. This is a country that is trusted to hosted some of the world’s most sensitive meetings, like the Shangrila Dialogues and the Trump-Kim Summit, so it is inconceivable that the police could not guarantee the safety of this party at Ngee Ann City.
The cancelling of the event was an admission of the government’s depleted political capital with regard to the immigration issue. It knew what the right thing to do was, but it could not carry the ground.
The government may have learned to treat immigration policy more sensitively, but it does not seem to want to get to the bottom of how it made this mistake in the first place. If it did, it would see that the stifling of immigration debates over the preceding one or two decades was a key reason why unhappiness had been allowed to build up.
Anticompetitive tendencies
Of course, the government says that it consults internally and externally, and that important decisions are open to debate. But just as many countries claim to believe in free trade but in practice operate a whole regime of regulations and tariffs to protect their markets, the Singapore government ensures that the trade in information and ideas never challenges its monopoly.
And it’s unclear how this anticompetitive approach helps Singapore or the PAP itself in the 21st century.
We know, in every other enterprise, how stress-testing through vigorous competition brings out the best in people and organisations, and how external scrutiny and transparency are the safest checks against abuse. It’s hard to see why these commonsense rules don’t apply to government and politics, where instead a dominant monopoly that is its own regulator is somehow supposed to be better for stakeholders.
This model has already compromised the quality of decision making and led to an unnecessary, avoidable depletion of the political capital the government needs to serve its nation-building role. It is also at odds with the clarion call contained in our Pledge, that we the citizens of Singapore are fellow nation-builders.
The 4G agenda
This event, like other recent IPS conferences, is a showcase of Singapore’s 4th Generation leadership. I hope 4G is not just the old operating system in a shiny new body, but a major upgrade that fixes bugs we’ve lived with for too long.
In the next leadership turnover, it would be nice if our leaders were so confident in themselves and their product that they would be prepared to lower the protectionist barriers around the marketplace of ideas; and to subject themselves and their ideas to constant stress-testing.
Equally overdue is a leadership able to model an enthusiasm for multiculturalism deeper than the superficiality of colourful costumes and spicy cuisine, not just to appeal to tourists but more importantly to get Singaporeans to see diversity mainly as a source of vitality and not always a vulnerability.
Until we see our glass as more than half full, as mainly a strength with some accompanying risks, rather than as a massive liability with some incidental benefits like batik and cendol, we are not going to live up to our Pledge.
Q&A – VIDEO
How has living in a multiethnic society helped us? Read Tommy Koh’s take – click on the photo.
My talk at “Conversations: If Walls Could Talk”, a forum organised in conjunction with the exhibition, “Art from the Streets“, at the ArtScience Museum, Singapore.
It is good to know that the street art scene in Singapore is growing. I think of the gritty graffiti of Sao Paulo, the whimsical pieces around Manhattan’s Lower East Side and the selfie-friendly art adorning Georgetown, Penang. Street art humanises our urban habitats and adds to a city’s capacity to surprise.
We’ve heard today how practitioners here like Zul “Zero” Othman have been fighting for more space for their art. But it occurred to me that someone visiting Singapore from another planet or another era may wonder what all the fuss is about. Isn’t there enough of this artform already?
If you arrive at Changi Airport’s T4 like I did yesterday, you’d be immediately confronted with bold graphic creations….
As you approach Immigration, instead of a big Welcome to Singapore sign, there’s another massive piece….
Pass through Immigration and there’s more of this artist’s work. He signs off with the tag “Watsons”. I understand he is a Hongkong-based artist, so famous that you’ll find many stores across Asia carrying his name.
I trust you’d have realised by now that I’m not seriously equating commercial advertising with art. I’m highlighting this example to challenge some the entrenched assumptions and blindspots that come into play when we discuss whether we should make more room for street art.
Street art is sometimes talked about as if it is a kind of pollution, adding to clutter, spoiling the visual purity of the city. This is based on the notion that the urban landscape must conform to some kind of civic and aesthetic orderliness; that people going about their lives shouldn’t have to be assaulted by messages and symbols against their will.
The thing is, if Singapore ever was such a city, it certainly isn’t now.
Our urban media landscape has long been punctuated with words and images placed by private parties to serve their own interests. The Terminal 4 experience is hardly unique. Our public transport operators in particular exploit the fact that they have a captive audience.
Indeed, the outdoor advertising industry likes to promote itself as the medium that people can’t turn off.
So the real policy question we need to ask ourselves is not whether to preserve a dignified and austere aesthetic style versus a livelier visual field – that bus left the station long ago. Rather, it is how do we as a society decide who gets to place words and images on urban surfaces and infrastructure for all to see.
What are the rules of the game — the aesthetic or ethical principles, and the legal and regulatory arrangements — that determine the allocation of spaces for either artistic or commercial expression? When we ponder this question, we’ll quickly realise that the market has been given enormous power to make those decisions on our behalf.
If this doesn’t occur to us most of the time – if it seems normal, natural or even inevitable that money talks – it’s only because we’re so used to it, and because the same market logic dictates so much of the rest of our lives. Once we open our eyes and minds, we’d have to admit that our society’s generally negative reaction to street art is inconsistent and hypocritical. Most of the accusations levelled at street art could apply as much to commercial art, but aren’t.
For example, in terms of aesthetics, even if you don’t like particular styles of street art, it’s not as if you get to veto ugly advertisements placed around you by commercial firms or your town councils. And even if more space was opened up for artists, they would still account for a very small proportion of all the images and words being placed in public view, compared with other institutions that currently monopolise our urban media landscape.
Then there are people, including the authorities, who worry about the content of street art, fearing that it may be too “political” or “controversial”. Again, it’s not clear why such paternalism is confined to non-commercial art, and not applied to the many for-profit messages around us. If we are sincerely concerned about the potentially harmful effects of words and images placed in public, then surely the following commercial messages are far more problematic than whatever our street artists are willing and able to plaster on walls:
Sexist ads and displays that objectify women and girls…
Ads for alcohol, which are permitted on buses…
Ads that promote sugary drinks and fried food – like this misleading video commercial for coconut oil inside a taxi that implies that fried food will give you a longer life…
The cause-and-effect link between these persuasive messages and actual harms is far more strongly established than any wild claims about the dangers of today’s street art.
Yes, we do need to regulate what appears in the public eye, but regulations should be based on consistently applied principles, not cultural or ideological biases that result in too much latitude being given to commercial messages and not enough to not-for-profit art and self-expression.
Pro-Palestine messages have been removed from the approved graffiti walls at the youth spaces in Somerset. But if the principle being applied here is that the Singapore streetscape should not get entangled with the fraught Middle Eastern conflict, what about the fact that Marina Bay Sands is one of the top sources of profit for Sheldon Adelson, who was the biggest single donor to Donald Trump’s hate-filled election campaign and a major supporter of Israel’s illegal settlement building in the Occupied Territories? If we are fine with Marina Bay Sands’ prominence on the Singapore skyline despite its fairly direct and demonstrable connection to the subjugation of Palestinians, it seems only fair that we should allow artists to make pro-Palestinian art on a little wall that has been set aside specifically for graffiti.
Behind such inconsistency in treatment is perhaps the assumption that support for a cause expressed in words and images is more problematic than support expressed in cash, even though common sense tells us that money usually speaks louder than symbols.
Of course, market logic is a very powerful force that is difficult to resist. The commercialisation of our public spaces is partly driven by a very large and growing outdoor advertising industry. To give it its due, advertising does help to subsidise the provision of public services and infrastructure. To put it very simply, we’d probably have to pay more for our MRT and bus rides if we denied public transport operators the right to monetise their surfaces by selling advertising spaces instead of giving it away for not-for-profit purposes such as art.
Furthermore, the idea of property rights is probably too entrenched to dislodge, so let’s banish any dreams of allowing anyone to paint anything without permission. If street artists want to gain more than fringe acceptance, they would have to respect people’s expectation that what they own or manage shouldn’t be messed with in any way without their consent.
For some artists, law-breaking may be integral to the spirit of their performance (a bit like how civil disobedience deliberately seeks to break the law). I’m going to sidestep this issue, because I believe the vast majority of street artists are not in this category.
Certainly, they want to break convention, to challenge norms, to push boundaries. As Zul said earlier, he does not want to confine himself to “sanctioned” or “commissioned” art. But whether it’s legal or illegal is something others decide. The art does not set out to break law, it’s the law that breaks the art.
Take Samantha Lo’s efforts to humanise our streets.
As many others have already pointed out, it’s quite a stretch to claim that her humorous stickers were a danger to society. On the contrary, it was a wonderful way to add a layer of quirky Singaporean meaning to otherwise anonymous streets. It hardly deserved to be treated as a criminal act.
Last year, there was Priyageetha Dia’s golden staircase. Like Lo, Priya didn’t have permission to do this. But this was a hardly-used staircase. And after hearing from her today, you’d have to say that few Singaporeans could have as much moral justification as she had to turn this staircase into a canvas for self-expression. She has lived in the block all her life. It means something to her. Since the block has been upgraded with lift landings on every floor, residents don’t use those stairs anymore. Fortunately her town council was wise enough not to punish her. But, shockingly, she did receive violent online threats from members of the public, including threats of rape, showing how deeply ingrained is some Singaporeans’ view that anything in the public realm belongs to big government and big business, and that non-sanctioned citizen initiative is absolutely not welcome.
My gut feel tells me that there must be ways we can change the law, and with it social attitudes, to be more hospitable to street art. Not to remove regulation but to improve regulation.
The kind of interventions that Samantha and Priyageetha made in our public space should be positively welcomed. This is Nation Building 3.0, where citizens, without waiting for top-down guidance, find and express their personal connections to their country. Technically, they may be rebelling against bureaucratic rules, but at a deeper level they thicken the ties between citizen and nation. Our authorities need to understand this and adapt regulation accordingly.
If, for example, an artist agrees to restore a surface to its original condition if asked to; if there is no permanent damage to property; if there is no material loss to property owners while the art is on display – do we really need to criminalise such art as acts of vandalism? Policy and regulatory creativity needs to catch up with artistic creativity or, for that matter, or citizens’ desire to reclaim their city, a city that we too often feel alienated from, taken from us by faceless corporations and bureaucrats. Thus, I hope we can find ways to minimise the cost to the artist of engaging in street art.
In addition, I hope we can create more opportunities for such activity. The lowest-hanging fruit, the goal that is the easiest to accomplish, is of course to encourage more private and public sector property owners to commission street artists to adorn their walls.
I started with an airport example; let me return to airports, this time Jakarta’s new terminal, also opened last year. Someone had the bright idea to get an artist to doodle around the fire extinguishers.
The result is to make the long, tiresome walk from the gate to immigration a little more pleasurable. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find other such win-win opportunities.
In addition to commissioned street art, we should find ways to open up more spaces for freer expression. Most of our current sites are in “alternative” neighbourhoods.
To bring street art to the heartlands, I’d like to see town councils, six months before blocks are due for repainting, open up selected walls for street art. Let the artists run wild. Then allow residents vote on whether the art should be preserved or painted over at the appointed time. I think this would be an educational experience for all. And since the wall was due for repainting anyway, this exercise would be at no cost to residents or taxpayers.
Public transport operators are currently the most welcoming of commercial advertising, and I’d like to see them allocate some of that space for street art. Why can’t bus companies, as part of their licensing requirements or voluntarily as part of their corporate social responsibility, allocate 5 per cent of their buses for free to artists instead of commercial advertisers.
This would of course require artists to change medium, exchange their spray cans for digital printing on adhesive vinyl, but as this exhibition makes clear, many street artists around the world have welcomed the opportunity to work on new surfaces and with new materials.
The current system has decided that we we as residents of this city should be exposed to ads on wheels. If so, why not also art on wheels.
I hope this exhibition and the discussion we’ve had this afternoon will help shake up the rarely questioned logics behind the way we currently do things. We shouldn’t blindly surrender our urban media landscape to commercial interests. We can afford to allow artistic expression occasionally to take priority over the impulse to sell goods and services.
Notes on images
Main image: “State of Decline” by Singaporean artist Speak Cryptic, created on site at the ArtScience Museum.
The bus and MRT ad graphics are from Moove Media’s brochure.
Many Singaporeans want Joseph Schooling exempted from National Service. Can the government bend the rules?
In the wake of Joseph Schooling’s spectacular, surging success in Rio de Janeiro, two-thirds of people I polled said that the young hero should now be excused from his National Service obligation. The inconvenient question of his NS status had been raised by a couple of friends, so I was curious to find out what others thought.
My informal poll results, as at 7pm on August 13. Click through to view the latest numbers.
Admittedly, this was an unscientific survey, probably skewed by post-Rio euphoria, tilted toward the viewpoints of those with time to dawdle over social media, and under-representing men and women in uniform who are too busy keeping the country safe to take part in an online poll.
Nevertheless, I’d wager that most Singaporeans do indeed feel that Schooling should be allowed to continue serving the nation in his swimming trunks instead of a No. 4 camouflage uniform.
Those who don’t know Singapore may think that this reflects people’s indifference toward NS. I doubt that that’s the case. Singaporeans may complain about specific aspects of NS, but there is broad and deep commitment to the institution of compulsory enlistment for all males. NS is regarded as a key rite of passage, and one of the great equalisers in a divided society.
So, when Singaporeans say they are prepared to make an exception for Schooling, you can bet it’s not because they dismiss NS as no big deal, but because they regard his accomplishment as, well, Olympian.
This sentiment may put the Singapore government in a bind. With good reason, the government does not exempt able-bodied males from NS. Every now and then, Singaporeans suggest alternative avenues for service, including through sport. But the government has, correctly in my view, resisted calls to dilute the core mission of NS. It maintains that NS is meant to serve one purpose: defending the security of the nation. You can’t substitute it with other forms of contribution, no matter how valuable they may seem.
To do so would lead to endless bickering over legitimate justifications for being excused from military service. Take, for example, a young technopreneur who has just launched a world-beating startup that could be the next Samsung or Apple. Without the two-year interruption of NS, he could create a homegrown private-sector MNC—something as rare an Olympic medal, and much more tangible in value.
On what basis would this geek get his NS call-up while Schooling is allowed to continue chasing sporting glory?
The main reason I’m opposed to liberalising enlistment rules is that educated, upper middle class families are bound to benefit disproportionately—they are the ones who will be able to find the loopholes and write up convincing justifications. We could end up with a situation where less privileged Singaporeans are the ones compelled to put their lives on the line for the country.
I would not fault the government for thinking through such complications. After all, Singapore did not get to where it is through impulsive, arbitrary decision-making (except, perhaps, when dealing with critics and opponents). Bureaucratic rationality can be a massive turn-off, but with something like NS, the government really has no choice but to take into account boring things like rules and precedents.
And yet.
When we saw that gold medal around a Bedok boy’s neck; when we gaped at our Singapore flag flying higher than the American stars and stripes; when Majulah Singapura played, and we realised that hundreds of millions of people around the world might be listening with us—can anyone fault us for wanting even more?
What makes Schooling’s triumph in the 100m butterfly so addictively sweet is the sense that this is just the beginning. The 21-year-old can keep delivering, and if he is allowed time to sustain and better his world-beating performance, other Singaporeans will follow. This dream is not some mythical unicorn that vanishes into the night, but an achievable goal with the proven nation-building potential of competitive sport.
Schooling’s NS status is a policy dilemma that is emblematic of the times. On many fronts, Singapore’s leaders are called on to balance the hard truths that dictated past decisions with the less tangible needs of a First World society. If they are up to the challenge, they will be able to find a creative way to let Schooling keep swimming, without compromising the principle of universal conscription that underlies national defence.
Some will see it as a victory for a vocal minority of liberals. Others will declare it a conservative triumph. Perhaps, though, it was never about where the government landed on the left-right spectrum. What was really at stake were the principles by which a multi-cultural nation makes decisions that will inevitably offend one community or another.
This specific controversy was over three children’s books meant to teach kids about non-conventional families. The National Library Board’s professional librarians had earlier decided they were suitable for acquisition, but some parents complained that the books were too soft on homosexuality. As a result, the books were to be discarded. Following a public outcry, the government intervened, in time to save two books from pulping. They will not be returned to the children’s shelves, but will be made available in the adult section.
Compared with the earlier decision, this is a passable compromise. It concedes to the conservatives that the books should not be freely available to all children regardless of the moral objections of some of their parents. At the same time, it does not permit these parents to dictate standards for all library users: adults interested in teaching their own children to be more broad-minded about what constitutes a loving family can still borrow the books.
What was striking about the earlier decision was not so much that it did not conform to liberal standards (nothing new there), but that it deviated from the government’s own principles. For more than 20 years, it has been official policy to avoid censorship when classification would do. A totally laissez faire approach to public morals would fall short of the fundamental societal obligation to protect the young; it would risk treating children like adults. At the other extreme, a crude censorship approach treats adults like children, denying them choices that they are entitled to.
In contrast, classification maximises choice for consenting adults while protecting the vulnerable. NLB’s original response to the conservatives’ complaints was inconsistent with this rational, well-established approach. The latest decision simply brings the practice more in line with the principle. Instituting a proper, transparent review process would have to be the next step. Expert judgments by professional librarians need to be shielded from shadowy complainants who are not prepared to come out to justify their positions publicly.
Even more disquieting was the fact that the decision to pulp was part of a wider pattern, of deciding cultural policy based on how offended people are. It is dangerous for the government of a multi-ethnic country to resolve disputes this way, even if they side with the majority. Once the referee signals that he will side with those who cry the loudest, some players will start outperforming the most talented World Cup actors.
In football, at least, an eagle-eyed referee and slow-motion HD replays can discover the truth: was it a real foul or did he dive? When it comes to religion and morality, however, it is all subjective. No amount of rational theological forensics can establish whether a believer’s outrage is justified. Governments that agree to play this game end up having to take community leaders’ word for it, that they are suffering intolerable indignity.
Around the world, religious leaders use this inherent uncertainty to their own political advantage. Claiming to be offended and then declaring battle against the real or imagined source of that offence is one of the easiest ways to galvanise your followers; gain a higher profile than your competitors; put opponents on the defensive; and play the state like a puppet. It happens in Malaysia; it can happen here.
Indeed, as the most religiously diverse country in the world, Singapore is particularly prone to this risk. There is no limit to the offence that the intolerant can choose to take from what other communities do. Proselytisation by Christians and polygamy among Muslims are just two examples of practices that some consider consistent with their faiths – but that others find upsetting. Thus, restrictions based on the capacity to offend won’t just hurt secular liberals; it will also backfire on the most devout.
In most countries, like Malaysia, the state simply sides with the majority community (it’s wrong, but at least it’s unambiguous). Here, where there is no religious majority, the state will find itself pushed this way and that. And the ultimate result will be the conclusive unwinding of Singaporean experiment in multi-racial, multi-religious harmony.
The only responsible approach for a society like Singapore is for the state to adopt a strong bias for tolerance, and suppress nothing other than the most extreme of speech. Adult Singaporeans need to be educated to look after their own feelings.
After decades of enjoying the dubious privilege of turning to a nanny state whenever one feels offended, many Singaporeans will find this a difficult adjustment. Indeed, by changing tack, the government may lose more votes than it wins. But it is the only viable strategy for a crowded city-state whose greatest asset, as well as its greatest challenge, will always be its cultural diversity.
Our urban media landscape has long been punctuated with words and images placed by private parties to serve their own interests. The Terminal 4 experience is hardly unique. Our public transport operators in particular exploit the fact that they have a captive audience.
Last year, there was 
