Why are they so afraid of an open debate?
Part 1
THURSDAY, 31 MARCH 2011
I represented the Singapore Democrats on Channel
NewsAsia's (CNA) political panel discussion which will be
aired on Saturday, 2 Apr, at 10 pm.
The state-run media have demonstrated a pattern of blacking out the
SDP from their reporting and programming. And no wonder. Over the
years, the Singapore Democrats have emerged as a credible political
force, translating an effective party machinery and sound political
philosophy into policy documents.
In November, we published our alternative economic programme at our
second Pre-Election
Rally, itself an unparalleled event in Singapore’s political
history. Entitled It’s
About You: Prosperity and Progress for Every Singaporean,
this alternative sets out our party’s socio-economic philosophy
based on a deep-structure critique of the problems Singapore is
facing at this time.
The publication is a result of intense analytical exercise around
our nation’s challenges, and takes an in-depth look at why these
problems have arisen, and the role of the PAP’s ideology and
priorities in generating this crisis.
It puts forward both an alternative framework of political-economic
assumptions and a set of polity alternatives to benefit all the
people of Singapore.
In March, the party again decisively occupied the political
landscape with the publication of its Shadow Budget, again the
first time in the history of our nation that such a document had
been produced.
Entitled Empowering
the Nation: Shadow Budget 2011, the document made clear
proposals for the financial year 2011, carefully based on our
party’s philosophy of Competence, Constructiveness and
Compassion.
The overall thrust of the Shadow Budget is
contained in three policy elements emphasising productivity and
sustainability, trimming the bloated costs of government, and
creating a home fit for all Singaporeans to live in.
With our productivity consistently failing to improve over the
years (despite various policies designed to enhance it), government
expenditure that is spiraling mainly due to the world’s highest
wages and bonuses that minister pay themselves, and the rapid
increase in poverty, inaccessibility of public services due to the
profit motive being implicated in our housing, healthcare and
education, the Shadow Budget puts forward a sensible and coherent
programme that, in fact, manages to be costed at less than the
previous year’s PAP budget.
My purpose in going through these publications is to make the
argument that in a democratic society and one where the government
party of the moment is not insecure of its own positions and
popularity, it would not shy away from a free and open policy
debate.
The PAP, on the other hand, is highly apprehensive of the
electorate. After years of mismanagement of the economy, the
hundreds of billions of our money wasted in ill-judged investments,
the crippling of access to public services through the introduction
of the profit motive, I would be too.
And yet it continues to reward itself quite out of measure with its
failures.
If I were guilty of such a track record, I too would hide behind
the now obvious ban that the PAP-controlled media have imposed on
discussing SDP’s programmes. I hear that in the past, DJs at
Caldecott Hill were not allowed to mention Dr Chee Soon Juan's
book Dare To Change on air.
My point is that even though the SDP had brought out unprecedented
policy documents, both SPH and MediaCorp have refused, despite
calls from this website to do so, to carry detailed analyses of our
proposals.
All this seemed to change when we were invited to CNA's programme.
However, all was not as it seemed with the forum.
First, as has been reported on this website, the host insisted that
all participants should fulfill three criteria: they should be a
member of their party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) and an
office-bearer, and eligible to stand for election.
Its justification was that it wanted participants who had a stake
in the coming elections, an unstable line of reasoning since all
members of political parties have a stake in elections: the winning
of seats in Parliament is one of the key tasks of a political
party.
No doubt, the criteria set by CNA were designed to keep from
participating in the programme the SDP’s Secretary-General, Dr Chee
Soon Juan, by far its most eloquent and compelling advocate.
However, the SDP complied with CNA’s criteria and appointed me to
represent the party, and I considered it an honour to address my
fellow citizens on what the SDP is able to offer the nation.
Prior to recording on Caldecott Hill, I asked the CNA executives if
both the PAP participants (yes, the PAP was allocated two places,
the opposition parties only one each) met the criteria set by CNA
and I was assured that they did.
The PAP’s representatives were Josephine Teo, MP, and Finance
Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam. It is curious that while other
forums have included rank and file PAP MPs, this forum, the first
to feature the SDP, caused it to send a cabinet minister.
No matter. Having led on the SDP’s Shadow Budget, I was eager to
debate Minister Tharman, a call that many netizens have made since
our Shadow Budget was published.
I had asked CNA for the names of the other
participants; this information was not given to me. So, I only
found out who the PAP reps were on the day. The following day, I
checked up the PAP website and found that Josephine Teo meets only
33% of CNA’s criteria, ie she is eligible to stand for elections.
She is neither a CEC member nor an office-bearer within it.
I telephoned the same CNA executive who had
refused to give me the names of the other participants and was
first told that Ms Teo was an MP. I reminded my interlocutor that
this met only one of the criteria.
I was then told that the criteria only applied to the opposition
participants. I reminded her that this was not made known in
advance and reminded her also of her reluctance to reveal the names
of the other participants. Clearly, they did not wish me to query
Ms Teo’s inclusion in the programme, since she did not meet the
criteria.
The executive had no further defenses to offer and therefore I was
unable to come to any other conclusion than that the criteria were
only to apply to the non-PAP participants, and more so that the
SDP’s Secretary-General, whom the PAP is so fearful of, should be
kept out of the programme.
To me, quite apart from the unpleasantness of dealing with CNA’s
perfidy, this reluctance to engage with the SDP except under highly
controlled conditions designed to give the upper hand to the
governing party, is a sign not of our limitations but precisely a
sign of our credibility and the strength of our
arguments.
The PAP’s desire to keep the SDP out of the public domain, through
its control of the mainstream media, is evidence precisely of its
failures and its insecurity. This is a party running scared.
In Part 2, Dr Wijeysingha talks about the arguments he raised
at the CNA programme.
http://yoursdp.org/index.php/news/singapore/4698-why-are-they-so-afraid-of-an-open-debate-part-1
