By Dr Wong Wee Nam
sgpolitics.net
When the President opened the new session of the 11th Parliament
last week, he said, “Our political system is not set in stone.
Singapore politics must evolve over time, as the world and our
society change. It must respond to new circumstances and goals and
continue to deliver good government to Singapore.”
For the optimists, this statement gave a glimmer of hope that
our political system is evolving for the better.
A few days later, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong gave a glimpse
of what is to come when he outlined three principles that will
guide the changes to be made to the political system. One, they
must be fair to all political parties. Secondly, they should result
in a strong and effective Government after an election; and
thirdly, they must ensure that diverse views are represented in
Parliament. Without the details, all these sounded reasonable.
However when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong fleshed out the
details in Parliament, anyone who had wished for a more democratic
system and a system that could produce better political leaders
ended up with nothing to celebrate about.
True, the number of seats for the opposition would be increased
to nine with the extension of the NCMP scheme, 3 more single seats
will be up for grabs, and the size of some 6 member GRCs would be
reduced. But these are not drastic changes. They are mere tweakings
of the existing system. However, the media and the PAP would like
Singaporeans to see these as huge concessions.
On the surface of it, the PAP government appears very
magnanimous. Losers now get to have 9 seats when previously they
could only have three. Smaller parties and independents now get to
contest 3 more single seats. And the sizes of the GRCs are going to
be reduced when all of us thought that they would be increased.
Nevertheless, all these are nothing but to tell the skeptics to
stop complaining about the unevenness of the playing field since
the PAP has become so generous.
The PAP has never been known to give concessions to the
opposition. With draconian laws still in place and demonstrations
by even one person now illegal, and filming of such acts could lend
one into trouble, it is obvious they are not becoming more
democratic than what they were before.
However, recently there has been a lot of public discontent on
various issues and the grumbling citizens feel that their problems
are inadequately aired. People now feel that there is the need for
more opposition voices in Parliament. The PAP is probably thinking
that by giving all these token concessions, the voters,
particularly the younger generation, who are now more outspoken and
more ready to make changes, would be appeased.
Whether the voters will buy into this or not is left to be
seen.
Recently, there too has been talk of opposition unity and a lot
of discussions on the ground to get the opposition parties to come
together and contest the election as a united front. In fact the
focus of many opposition members has been on winning a GRC in order
to make a psychological breakthrough. The opposition parties
realise they are too small in terms of resources, manpower and
candidates to take on the PAP effectively without coming
together.
Now with these changes, it is probably the PAP’s hope
that all the small parties would stop talking about opposition
unity and go it alone. Perhaps the stronger
candidates from the various opposition parties will now go for the
single seat wards, leaving the GRCs to be contested by weak
teams. It is better for the PAP to have nine
fragmented NCMPs in Parliament than to have five strong,
duly-elected, unified opposition Members of
Parliament.
Will these changes halt all the talk about opposition unity and
send the opposition parties back to their fragmented stage? It is
difficult to say.
However one thing is clear. The opposition parties must realize
that they are like small market stalls struggling to make a living
by scrambling against each other for morsels and yet have to
compete against a giant hypermarket at the same time. With such an
uneven contest, it is inevitable that Parliament will end up
overwhelmingly dominated by the PAP with a motley bunch of 9
opposition MPs/NCMPs each with his/her own disparate views acting
as discordant accompaniments — just like bells and cymbals in an
orchestra.
In such a parliamentary composition, the PAP will always look
like the only party capable of governing and the opposition will
always look fragmented and not capable of providing an
alternative.
No matter what, NCMPs and NMPs will always be seen as objects of
PAP’s creations. They will never have the status and dignity as
elected members of Parliament.
The last Malaysian General Election should serve as a good
lesson for our opposition parties. In the past, they were
fragmented and bickered against each other and did not make much
headway against the ruling party. Then in the last GE, they decided
to fight the Barisan Nasional as a united front. Now they are truly
an alternative, capable of ruling the country should the time
come.
Thus, these changes that the PAP intends to introduce
will not change the status quo. In fact, it will entrench the PAP
even more. Unless the opposition parties realize this and get their
act together, they would be consigned perpetually to the role of
political bridesmaids.
Sadly for Singapore and Singaporeans, the changes proposed will
do nothing to improve their democratic aspirations. The lives of
Singaporeans will not be less controlled, the climate of fear will
not go away, and our citizens will remain politically immature and
apathetic.
Rather than tweaking the electoral process to appease voters as
opposed to giving them a choice, what Singapore needs is a system
that can help us produce plenty of good political leaders and not
worry about the dearth of it all the time.
Instead of constantly stressing of the need for “our leadership
team” (read PAP) to continually self-renew by inducting new leaders
and mollycoddle their entry into Parliament, we should create an
environment where young people with leadership qualities can bloom
and come forth naturally.
For Singapore to succeed in future, we need to have strong
political leaders, and strong political leaders can only be forged
and emerge by fighting the electoral battles by themselves. Strong
leaders will provide strong governments. For this reason, GRCs
should be done away completely. Any political worth his salt should
not be afraid to face the electorate and try to carry the ground by
himself.
The right change to be made then is to provide an environment
where the young are taught to have a sense of service to the
country, to have a sense of justice, to have an independence of
mind and to be imbued with a spirit to right wrongs and to allow
ideas to contend so that leaders will naturally surface. The right
change to be made is to remove the climate of fear that discourages
political participation so that all these idealism can be expressed
freely.
To ensure political participation, we need to make sure that
people with leadership qualities will be able to fight an election
fairly and also not ostracized for his political conviction. For
this you need a free and fair press, a civil service that is seen
to be neutral and an electoral process that does not catch a
candidate by surprise by not giving him ample time to prepare.
How about fairness to the young candidates who wish to contest
the general election? Would the hefty election deposit required be
reduced to allow more young people, who are yet to be settled in
their career to join in the fray? Would the government set up a
Political Arbitration Court, so that employees who are victimised
by their employers for their political affiliations can get their
problems redressed? How about the Political Donation Act? Not only
is a young candidate hampered by hefty deposits, victimized by
employers, he would also will have difficulty getting donations. It
does not need a clever man to know which party’s candidate will get
donations easily now that donors can no longer remain
anonymous.
We should be fair to all candidates who are willing to come
forward to serve in what I consider to be the highest form of
national service. If we can encourage the growth of political
talents by treating everyone of whatever political affiliations
fairly, there would not be any need to feel anxious about strong
political leaders not emerging in future.
Then there would not be any need to keep thinking about how to
keep the PAP entrenched in perpetuity in order to save
Singapore.
