‘Singapore clearly in mid-life crisis'
By P N Balji | SingaporeScene
Is Singapore facing her mid-life crisis? (Yahoo!
photo)
COMMENT
Nearly two years after the May 2011 watershed elections -- when the
ruling party's popularity dipped to a historic low of 60.1 per
cent and three office holders were voted
out -- Singapore's leaders have yet to come to grips with
the angst sweeping the nation.
Two recent events show how the government is being blindsided.
First, a blemish on the country's proud 26-year record of having no
strikes. Bus drivers from China refused to go to
work; what made it worse was that their employer and the
government never saw it coming.
The drivers had already been complaining about the living
conditions in their dormitories and their lower wages when compared
to those of drivers from Malaysia. Yet, nothing much was done to
defuse the issue and no real efforts were made by the National
Trades Union Congress to unionise these foreign workers.
The Singapore establishment, including the companies, was lulled
into believing that strikes happen only in foreign countries and
lost the art of reading the pulse of its workers.
Second, a seemingly innocuous statement by the Workers' Party on why it did not perform
well in an audit of town councils snowballed into issues
of transparency, conflict of interest and the involvement of a
company owned by the ruling People's Action Party in business. With
the online media keeping the contract between PAP town councils
and Action Information Management on
the boil, the controversy became so heated that finally the Prime
Minister was forced to call for a review.
Then came the resignation of the Speaker of
Parliament because of an extra-marital scandal. And the
government's crown-jewel achievement, stellar economic growth, is
now under strain with the economy just escaping a technical
recession.
Slow growth, even volatility in GDP, is becoming a norm. The
investment lifeline is taking a hit with MNCs giving Singapore only a seventh
ranking in the Asia Business Outlook Survey by the
Economist Corporate Network with many of the multinationals
complaining loudly that the government's tightening of the screws
on immigration is depriving them of the cheap labour they have been
enjoying for a long time.
The government is tackling skyrocketing prices of properties,
overcrowded trains and buses, stresses in the high-achieving school
system. But something always crops up to curtail the momentum.
Put the screws on immigration and the small and medium enterprises
and big foreign companies are shouting at the top of their voices.
Cool the property market by trying to make it more affordable for
younger Singaporeans and others are complaining that their
investments are in danger of losing their shine.
Against this difficult backdrop, the ruling party is going into a
contest with the Workers' Party and two others in a Jan 26
by-election at Punggol East, a single seat vacated by the PAP's
affable Michael Palmer, who succumbed to an affair with a
grassroots worker.
This is the second by-election in eight months, the earlier one
being called after the Workers' Party'sYaw Shin Leong was sacked for not coming
clean on his adultery. The Opposition party won that contest quite
easily.
Deputy prime minister Teo Chee Hean said on Nomination Day
that it will be a tough fight. And the prime
minister, during a walkabout at the constituency over the weekend,
said his candidate, colorectal surgeon Dr Koh Poh Koon, has the
potential to become an office holder if he wins, implying that a
rejection is tantamount to saying no to a heavyweight.
The government is not having an easy time finding political talent
to form the backbone of the next generation of leaders. Ideally,
the PAP should have picked somebody who had understudied Mr Palmer
in Punggol East. But they had to go for Dr Koh, who has been doing
grassroots work in a constituency called Telok Blangah since 2002 -
a decision that has not gone down well with the community workers
in Punggol East.
Winning elections, even in a Group Representation Constituency
where a newbie used to ride on the coat-tails of a Minister, is no
longer an absolute certainty for the ruling party as shown by its
defeat in Aljunied in the 2011 poll.
With the hunt for political talent getting even more elusive, a
cocooned establishment that has not learned to communicate
effectively with a population that is tasting a new-found freedom
unleashed by the internet, an economy that is moving in fits and
starts and an opposition finding it easy to recruit strong
candidates, Singapore is clearly in a mid-life crisis.
It has faced worse crises, like the race riots and the fight
against the leftists in the 50s and 60s and economic downturns in
the 80s and 90s.
They were solved by using the feared Internal Security Act and
introducing bold economic reforms. Citizens went with these
policies because they delivered the good life quickly. That good
life is now not so visible for many.
What Singapore needs now is a system of responsible checks and
balances, not from within the establishment but from without like
the media, academia and think tanks.. That would have revealed the
effects of a free-wheeling immigration policy on infrastructure, a
more enlightened way of dealing with the internet media and
long-standing policies that are still hobbled by a hard-nosed
political ideology that says nothing is for free.
The 2011 elections saw the phrase "new normal" enter the pundit's
vocabulary. That is passe now. The country is confronting a new
abnormal.
P. N. Balji, a Singapore journalist for more than 35 years, is
now a media consultant
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/singapore-mid-life-crisis-071307232.html
