by Ian Buruma
A Singaporean writer named Gopal Baratham told me that “the most ferociously anticolonial, anti-Western Singaporeans are those in the Westernized, English-speaking elite.” They are sensitive to any suggestion that they might not be as good as their former masters. Of all the criticism leveled at Singapore, and Lee Kuan Yew in particular, two have caused more pain, more censorship, and more lawsuits than any other: the suggestion that political leadership is subject to nepotism, and that the judiciary is less than impartial.
In 1994 a Hong Kong journalist named Philip Bowring expressed the opinion on the op-ed page of the International Herald Tribune that “Dynastic politics is evident in Communist China already, as in Singapore, despite official commitments to bureaucratic meritocracy.” He was hinting at the position of Lee’s son, Brigadier General (BG) Lee Hsien Loong, who is serving as deputy prime minister and is groomed to be the next PM. The IHT, whose Asian edition is printed in Singapore, immediately published an apology, “undertaking not to make further allegations to the same or similar effect.” Nonetheless, Lee brought a libel suit for £427,000 in damages. The Singapore Supreme Court duly awarded the damages to Lee, father and son, as well as the prime minister, Goh Chok Tong.
Two months after the IHT’s apology, another article appeared on its opinion page, this time by an American academic called Christopher Lingle, who analyzed various types of political oppression in Asia without naming any country. Some governments, he wrote, use tanks to crush dissent, but others “are more subtle: relying upon a compliant judiciary to bankrupt opposition politicians …” Again the IHT apologized profusely. Again the Singapore government insisted on a trial for “criminal defamation and contempt of court.” The Singapore High Court fined the paper, its printer and the Asian editor. Still Lee Kuan Yew was not happy. He filed another lawsuit, demanding an admission that the article was part of a concerted effort to undermine him.
This all sounds like an advanced stage of paranoia. But how to explain its particular nature? Why should Lee be so hurt by the allegation of dynastic politics? After all, if anything is in the Confucian tradition, dynastic politics is. And why should he use his country’s law courts to stop accusations that these courts are sometimes used to stifle political dissent? After all, that is precisely how courts in China, and other parts of East Asia, have traditionally been used. The logical explanation is that Asian values are not really the point but, on the contrary, that Lee is terrified of what the British used to call “going native.” There are hints of this fear of vanishing into the Oriental swamp, of being swallowed up by the Southeast Asian jungle, in some of the former PM’s speeches: “My deepest concern is how to make the young more conscious of security. By security I mean defense against threats to our survival, whether the threats are external or internal.… Civilization is fragile. It is especially so for an island city-state.” (Lee Kuan Yew, National Day, 1982.)
The BG once warned that without faith in Singapore, “we would vanish without trace, submerged into the mud of history.” The only serious confrontations the state of Singapore has had in its short history were with Malaysia and Indonesia. Security, then, can only be seen in this regional context: security from the Malay world. But the Lees’ paranoia is more complicated even than that. In fact, it is shared by the prime minister of Malaysia. Prime Minister Mahathir’s anti-Western diatribes, like Lee Kuan Yew’s, are not so distant echoes of their British colonial education. The White Man’s Burden was justified by claims of European discipline (as opposed to native idleness), of European vigor (as opposed to native decadence), of tight ships and stiff upper lips. Lee Kuan Yew’s preoccupation with genes and his horror of decadence are the burning embers of nineteenth-century social Darwinism. Singapore is the last bastion of the hang ’em and flog ’em brigade. Lee and Mahathir still claim to uphold the old standards, even as the West goes to the dogs. They will stick to the forms of British rule, even as they destroy the content.
Once again it is instructive to see who Lee Kuan Yew’s opponents are. For in fact the political contest in Asia is not between Asian and Western values. Dissidents in Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand or China are not Westernizers. The most trenchant critique of Lee’s Asian Way came from the South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae Jung. Kim is a populist politician from South Korea’s most rebellious province, the rural southwest. He is hardly a proponent of Western values (whatever they may be). Kim argued, in Foreign Affairs, that there was nothing in East Asian culture incompatible with democracy. On the contrary, he said, “Asia has democratic philosophies as profound as those of the West.” He quoted Mencius to make this point. This might be a case of over-egging the pudding. But Kim made another observation, which is surely true:
Asian authoritarians misunderstand the relationship between the rules of effective governance and the concept of legitimacy. Policies that try to protect people from the bad elements of economic and social change will never be effective if imposed without consent; the same policies, arrived at through public debate, will have the strength of Asia’s proud and self-reliant people.
This is also the gist of a small book on Singapore politics written by Dr. Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party. His book Dare To Change: An Alternative Vision For Singapore, is “undesirable.” Dr. Chee has to sell his book on street corners. The content, in any democratic society, would be banal. In the U.S., Dr. Chee would fit into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. What is interesting about his book is that, unlike Western democrats, he has to argue just why democracy is not just a “value,” Western or Eastern, but a system that works better than other systems. He writes, “With man’s corruptible nature, democracy ensures that no individual is able to abuse the powers entrusted upon him. It is exactly the same system that enables the citizens to remove a bad leader from office.” This, in Singapore, constitutes rebellion.
He has other, more pointed things to say about Singapore, which apply to other countries in East Asia. By controlling much of the economy through so-called government-linked companies, the PAP has stifled private enterprise. He thinks an overregulated, overprotected economy will gradually stop being competitive. He argues that “authoritarianism is the one biggest obstacle to Singapore’s growth as an international city of high-technology, business and commerce.”
I met Dr. Chee in the lobby of an American hotel. We sat in soft leather chairs and drank cappuccinos, Muzak tinkling through the palm fronds. Large men with leather bags under their arms hovered around between the white grand piano and the front desk. They were watching our every move. Dr. Chee pointed to one of the bags. It had a little hole punched in it. “A camera,” he said.
Chee is used to being followed. He has been hounded ever since he decided to run for a parliamentary seat in 1992. The usual things happened: libel suits, harassment by the tax department and trouble finding a job—he is one of the few neuropsychologists in Singapore. Businessmen who back him or his party financially are questioned by the ISD. “Enough,” according to Chee, “to frighten them off.” These and other pressures make it hard to find suitable opposition candidates. A person with ambition will get on better with the PAP. Nonetheless, in 1994 the SDP won 47 percent of the votes in constituencies it decided to contest.
The typical SDP voter is not a Westernized member of the elite. The prosperous English-speaking middle-class tends to be conservative, afraid of disorder, happy to be well-off. The typical opposition voter is more likely to be a Chinese-speaking market hawker, a taxi driver or a small Indian businessman, the sort of person who might have been a leftist in the 1950s. Culturally, the opposition voter is likely to be more traditionally “Asian” than most PAP supporters. Such a person will vote for the opposition not because of a superior understanding of John Locke or Western values, but because he or she does not feel represented by the oligarchy that runs the country.
Dr. Chee is a young man, Chinese, highly educated. He could lead a good life in Singapore if only he kept quiet, minded hi
s business, accommodated himself to PAP rule. I wondered what possessed him to go against his own interests, against the wishes of his family, against all the advantages of conformity. So I asked him. He gave a vague answer about wanting to change the heavy-handed way things are done. He said that professionals don’t want to join the opposition, yet always grumble that the opposition parties are not effective. “That is why I wanted to join.”
To be an opposition leader in a system that does not recognize loyal opposition takes a steeliness, a fearlessness, a ruthlessness that very few people possess. Lee Kuan Yew had it. David Marshall, by his own account, did not. It is hard to tell whether Dr. Chee has it. His ideas are good, but then so were Lee’s when he began his struggle against British rule.
I spent my last night in Singapore in the reconstructed Bugis Street. On the second floor of a café, on the corner of the street, is a place called the Boom Boom Club. I was taken there by a Singaporean woman who said she felt better about her city whenever she went there. That night was ASEAN night, the night of Southeast Asian nations. The star of the show was a Singaporean Indian drag artist called Kumar.
The place was packed and smoky. The decor was stripped down, deliberately shabby. “Young Singaporeans like to go down,” explained the owner. “They’re bored with marble floors and chandeliers.” There were flamboyant Chinese and Malay homosexuals in the club, but most of the audience looked like well-scrubbed Singaporean yuppies, men in striped shirts, women in expensive dresses. The curtain lifted, the show began.
Dancers in outrageous costumes from the different Southeast Asian nations shimmied across the stage to Hong Kong disco music. They sang a song about being part of one big Asian family, singing one Asian song, in one Asian voice. The audience loved it. Then came Kumar, an apparition dressed in a cross between an Indian sari and a Western evening gown. He spoke in the Singlish patois: English with Chinese and Malay slang. “We’re supposed to be one Asian family,” he screeched, “but we don’t care about that, la! I’m going to talk about something else … I’m going to talk about cock, very much la!”
The audience hooted and hollered. I had never seen Singaporeans in such a state. There is hope for Singapore yet. Then Kumar dropped his voice and said, “The trouble with Singapore is there are too many Indian chiefs telling us what to do. Too many politicians, la.” A hush swept the room. Not even a titter was heard. The audience was too frightened to laugh.
1995
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