The resignation of Singapore Speaker of Parliament Michael Palmer
yesterday over an extramarital affair came two days after readers
of the island’s largest Chinese newspaper called 2012 a year of
lust.
Palmer, 44, said he had a relationship with a member of a
government agency who worked in a district he used to represent.
He’s the second person this year to leave Parliament for private
indiscretions.
Singapore's Parliament House stands in Singapore. Photographer:
Bryan van der Beek/Bloomberg
“Human failings and affairs are common,” said Bridget
Welsh, a political science professor at the Singapore
Management University. “What is new is the open discussion of
these issues, expansion of public sphere and the difficult
political navigation of these issues.”
The former heads of the anti-drug agency and the Civil Defence
Force were prosecuted earlier this year for obtaining sexual favors
in exchange for contracts. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, whose
government has cultivated an image of being clean, ethical and
efficient, said yesterday that lawmakers in the
ruling People’s
Action Partymust maintain the “highest standards of personal
conduct.”
Palmer, who is married with one child, was the eighth speaker of
Parliament. He was elected in October 2011 and presided over the
sittings by lawmakers, according to the Parliament’swebsite.
“I have resigned to take full responsibility for a grave mistake
that I have committed,” Palmer said in a statement. “My conduct was
improper and it was a serious error of judgment. I have resigned in
order to avoid further embarrassment to the PAP and to
Parliament.”
Earlier this
year, more than 50 men, including a former bank executive and a
school principal, were charged for having sex with an underage
prostitute. The former Central Narcotics Bureau chief faces four
counts of obtaining oral sex last year from a 36-year-old executive
in exchange for assisting her companies Hitachi Data Systems Pte
and later Oracle Corp. to win contracts with the
agency.
Lee has promised that no wrongdoing will be covered up even if it
embarrasses the city, which is rated the least corrupt Asian
country by Transparency
International.
The Lianhe Zaobao newspaper said this week that its readers chose
the Chinese character for lust to describe 2012 over nine other
words that included change and integrate.
Singapore, where Playboy magazine is banned and the distribution of
pornography is an offence, was ranked last month as the least
emotional country in the world, according to U.S. pollster
Gallup.
The readers’ choice “highlights the many newsmakers who have fallen
prey to lust, and that too many events have been tainted by it,”
said Goh Sin Teck, Lianhe Zaobao’s editor. “Is this purely a string
of coincidences or is this a revelation of how our society has
evolved?”
The island’s population has jumped by more than
1.1 million to 5.3 million since mid-2004, driving
up property prices and stoking social tensions as the government
used immigration to counter a fertility rate that has been below
replacement levels for decades.
Other sex scandals in Singapore this year included a university
professor who was charged with corruption for allegedly trading
better grades for sex with his student. A female teacher was
sentenced to a year in jail in October for sleeping with a male
student who was a minor, according to the Straits
Times.
In January
2008, Malaysia’s
then-Health Minister Chua Soi Lek stepped down after he was
secretly filmed having sex with a woman in a hotel room. An
Indonesian lawmaker who helped pass an anti-pornography law
resigned in April 2011 after he was caught watching sex videos
during a parliamentary debate, according to the Associated
Press.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director David H. Petraeus
resigned last month following the revelation of an extramarital
affair with his biographer. U.S. governors who have stepped down
after indiscretions include New
York’s Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford of South
Carolina. Former International Monetary Fund Managing
Director Dominique
Strauss-Kahn left the lender after his arrest on
sexual-assault charges.
“Singapore is no different from any modern society,” said Terence
Lee, who teaches politics atNational
University of Singapore. “You see it in
Malaysia, Indonesia,
the Philippines,
the U.S., the U.K. These things happen, it’s part and parcel of
life and people just have to deal with it.”
Yaw Shin Leong, a
member of Parliament from the opposition, was expelled from his
party in February for “indiscretions in his private
life.” The Workers’
Party retained the seat in Hougang district in a
by-election to replace Yaw.
The Workers’ Party, the only elected opposition in parliament, said
yesterday it’s ready to “offer a choice” to voters as it urged Lee
to call for a by-election as soon as possible. Its candidate
forPunggol
East won 41 percent of votes in the 2011 polls, while
Palmer won 54.5 percent of valid ballots cast.
A by-election won’t change the balance of power in government, even
after Lee’s party won last year’s polls with the smallest margin of
victory since independence in 1965. The PAP has 81 of 87 seats.
In the past year, Lee has cut ministerial pay, accelerated
construction of public housing and made permanent a program to
provide cash, utility rebates and medical funds for the elderly and
low-income households. Still, the country has the highest inflation
rate among the developed world’s biggest economies
while gross
domestic product is forecast to expand at the slowest pace
in three years in 2012.
“What is
interesting is the continued tests the PAP is facing with another
by-election,” said Welsh. “The cases this year highlight the need
to remove politicians and civil servants from pedestals and tighten
standards for those in positions of power.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Shamim Adam in Singapore at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang
at [email protected]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/singapore-caps-year-of-lust-with-parliamentary-affair.html