The legitimacy of the Singaporean government is
predicated on the idea of a meritocratic technocracy. A tiny number
of career civil servants play a leading role in setting policy
within their ministries and other government-linked bureaucracies,
leading both an elite corps of senior bureaucrats, and a much
larger group of ordinary civil servants. Virtually all of the elite
members of this hierarchy are "scholars," which in Singapore
parlance means they won competitive, bonded government
scholarships–the established route into the country's elite.
Scholars not only lead the
Administrative Service, but also the military's officer corps, as
well as the executive ranks of statutory boards and
government-linked companies (GLCs). Movement between these four
groups is fluid, with even the military officers routinely doing
stints in the civilian civil service. Together with their political
masters, most of whom are also scholars, they make up the software
for the entity commonly known as "Singapore Inc."–a labyrinth of
GLCs, statutory boards and ministries that own or manage around 60%
of Singapore's economy.
The basis of the scholars'
mandate to govern is not merely their performance on the job, but
also the integrity of the process that selected them. The
educational system is designed to cultivate competition, requiring
top students to prove themselves every step of the way. Singapore's
schools first stream students into elite classes after Primary 3
and 4. They then compete for entry into special secondary schools
and junior colleges, before vying for government and
government-linked scholarships to attend the most prestigious
universities around the world.
These scholarships typically
require several years of government service after graduation, and
the scholars are drafted into the Administrative Service, the
officer corps of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), or the career
track of a statutory board or GLC. The government insists that all
Singaporeans have equal opportunities to excel in the system, and
that everyone who has made it to the top did so purely by academic
talent and hard work. Other factors such as gender, socioeconomic
background and race supposedly play no more than a marginal role,
if they are acknowledged as factors at all.
On the point of race, the
Singapore government has long prided itself on having instituted a
system of multiracialism that fosters cultural diversity under an
umbrella of national unity. This is explicitly supposed to protect
the 23% of the population who belong to minority races (mainly
ethnic Malays and Indians) from discrimination by the Chinese
majority.
But this system conceals
several unacknowledged agendas. In our forthcoming book,
Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the
Nation-Building Project, Zlatko Skrbi and I present evidence
that the playing field is hardly level. In fact, Singapore's system
of promotion disguises and even facilitates tremendous biases
against women, the poor and non-Chinese. Singapore's administrative
and its political elites–especially the younger ones who have come
through school in the last 20 or so years–are not the cream of
Singapore's talent as they claim, but are merely a dominant social
class, resting on systemic biases to perpetuate regime regeneration
based on gender, class and race.
At the peak of the system is
the network of prestigious government scholarships. Since
independence in 1965, the technique of using government
scholarships to recruit cohorts of scholars into the administrative
and ruling elite has moved from the periphery of Singaporean
society to center stage. Even before independence, a makeshift
system of government and Colombo Plan scholarships sent a few
outstanding scholars overseas before putting them into government
service, including most notably former Prime Minister Goh Chok
Tong. Yet as late as 1975 this system had contributed only two out
of 14 members of Singapore's cabinet. Even by 1985, only four out
of 12 cabinet ministers were former government scholars.
By 1994, however, the
situation had changed beyond recognition, with eight out of 14
cabinet ministers being ex-scholars, including Prime Minister Goh.
By 2005 there were 12 ex-scholars in a Cabinet of 19. Of these,
five had been SAF scholars, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien
Loong. A perusal of the upper echelons of the ruling elite taken
more broadly tells a similar story. In 1994, 12 of the 17 permanent
secretaries were scholars, as were 137 of the 210 in the
administrative-officer class of the Administrative Service.
The government scholarship
system claims to act as a meritocratic sieve–the just reward for
young adults with talent and academic dedication. If there is a
racial or other bias in the outcomes, then this can only be the
result of the uneven distribution of talent and academic
application in the community. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong put
it when he spoke on national television in May 2005, "We are a
multiracial society. We must have tolerance, harmony. And you must
have meritocracy so everybody feels it is fair." His father, former
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was making the same point when, in
1989, he told Singapore's Malay community that they "must learn to
compete with everyone else" in the education system.
Yet if Singapore's
meritocracy is truly a level playing field, as the Lees assert,
then the Chinese must be much smarter and harder working than the
minority Indians and Malays. Consider the distribution of the top
jobs in various arms of the Singapore government service in the
1990s (based on research conducted by Ross Worthington in the early
2000s):
• Of the top 30 GLCs only two (6.7%) were
chaired by non-Chinese in 1991 (and neither of the non-Chinese was
a Malay).
Of the 38 people who were represented on the
most GLC boards in 1998, only two (5.3%) were non-Chinese (and
neither of the non-Chinese was a Malay).
Of the 78 "core people" on statutory boards
and GLCs in 1998, seven (9%) were non-Chinese (and one of the
non-Chinese was a Malay).
A similar outcome is revealed
in the pattern of government scholarships awarded after
matriculation from school. Of the 200 winners of Singapore's most
prestigious scholarship, the President's Scholarship, from
1966-2005 only 14 (6.4%) were not Chinese. But this was not a
consistent proportion throughout the period. If we take 1980 as the
divider, we find that there were 10 non-Chinese President's
Scholars out of 114 from 1966-80, or 8%, but in the period from
1981-2005 this figure had dropped to four out of 106, or 3.8%.
Since independence, the President's Scholarship has been awarded to
only one Malay, in 1968. There has been only one non-Chinese
President's Scholar in the 18 years from 1987 to 2005 (a boy called
Mikail Kalimuddin) and he is actually half Chinese, studied in
Chinese schools (Chinese High School and Hwa Chong Junior College),
and took the Higher Chinese course as his mother tongue. If we
broaden our focus to encompass broader constructions of ethnicity,
we find that since independence, the President's Scholarship has
been won by only two Muslims (1968 and 2005).
If we consider Singapore's
second-ranked scholarship–the Ministry of Defence's Singapore Armed
Forces Overseas Scholarship (SAFOS)–we find a comparable pattern.
The Ministry of Defence did not respond to my request for a list of
recipients of SAF scholarships, but using newspaper accounts and
information provided by the Ministry of Defence Scholarship Centre
and Public Service Commission Scholarship Centre Web sites, I was
able to identify 140 (56%) of the 250 SAFOS winners up to 2005.
Although only indicative,
this table clearly suggests the Chinese dominance in SAFOS stakes:
98% of SAFOS winners in this sample were Chinese, and about 2% were
non-Chinese (counting Mikail Kalimuddin in 2005 as non-Chinese).
Furthermore I found not a single Malay recipient and only one
Muslim winner (Mikail Kalimuddin). A similar picture emerges in the
lower status Singapore Armed Forces Merit Scholarship winners: 71
(25.6%) of 277 (as of late 2005) scholars identified, with 69 (97%)
Chinese winners to only two non-Chinese–though there was a Malay
recipient in 2004, and one reliable scholar maintains that there
have been others.
The position of the
non-Chinese in the educational stakes has clearly deteriorated
since the beginning of the 1980s. According to the logic of
meritocracy, that means the Chinese have been getting smarter, at
least compared to the non-Chinese.
Yet the selection of scholars
does not depend purely on objective results like exam scores. In
the internal processes of awarding scholarships after matriculation
results are released, there are plenty of opportunities to exercise
subtle forms of discrimination. Extracurricular activities (as
recorded in one's school record), "character" and performance in an
interview are also considered. This makes the selection process
much more subjective than one would expect in a system that claims
to be a meritocracy, and it creates ample opportunity for racial
and other prejudices to operate with relative freedom.
Is there evidence that such
biases operate at this level? Unsurprisingly, the answer to this
question is "yes." Take for instance a 2004 promotional supplement
in the country's main newspaper used to recruit applicants for
scholarships. The advertorial articles accompanying the paid
advertisements featured only one non-Chinese scholar (a Malay on a
lowly "local" scholarship) amongst 28 Chinese on prestigious
overseas scholarships. Even more disturbing for what they reveal
about the prejudices of those offering the scholarships were the
paid advertisements placed by government ministries, statutory
boards and GLCs. Of the 30 scholars who were both prominent and can
be racially identified by their photographs or their names without
any doubt as to accuracy, every one of them was Chinese. This
leaves not a shadow of a doubt that those people granting
government and government-linked scholarships presume that the vast
majority of high-level winners will be Chinese.
The absence of Malays from
the SAFOS scholarships and their near-absence from the SAF Merit
Scholarships deserves special mention because this is an extension
of discrimination against the admission of Malays into senior and
sensitive positions in the SAF that is officially sanctioned. The
discrimination against Malays has been discussed in parliament and
the media, and is justified by the assertion that the loyalty of
Malays cannot be assumed, both because they are Muslim and because
they have a racial and ethnic affinity with the Malays in Malaysia
and Indonesia. Current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has
historically been a vocal defender of this policy.
This discrimination hits
Malay men hard, first because it deprives many of promising careers
in the army, and second–and more pertinent for our study of the
elite–it all but completely excludes potentially high-flying Malays
of a chance of entering the scholar class through the SAF. A
Chinese woman has a much better chance of winning an SAF
scholarship than a Malay man.
Yet even before the
scholarship stage, the education system has stacked the deck in
favor of Chinese, starting in preschool. Here is the heart of
Singapore's systemic discrimination against non-Chinese. Since the
end of the 1970s, the principles of "meritocracy" and
"multiracialism" have been subverted by a form of government-driven
Chinese chauvinism that has marginalized the minorities. It was not
known to the public at the time, but as early as 1978, then Prime
Minister Lee Kuan Yew had begun referring to Singapore as a
"Confucian society" in his dealings with foreign dignitaries. This
proved to be the beginning of a shift from his record as a defender
of a communally neutral form of multiracialism toward a policy of
actively promoting a Chinese-dominated Singapore.
The early outward signs of
the Sinicization program were the privileging of Chinese education,
Chinese language and selectively chosen "Chinese values" in an
overt and successful effort to create a Mandarin- and
English-speaking elite who would dominate public life. Two of the
most important planks of this campaign were decided in 1979: the
annual "Speak Mandarin Campaign" and the decision to preserve and
foster a collection of elite Chinese-medium schools, known as
Special Assistance Plan (SAP) schools.
The SAP schools are
explicitly designed to have a Chinese ambience, right down to
Chinese gardens, windows shaped like plum blossoms, Chinese
orchestra and drama, and exchange programs with mainland China and
Taiwan. Over the years the children in SAP schools have been given
multiple advantages over those in ordinary schools, including
exclusive preschool programs and special consideration for
preuniversity scholarships.
For instance, in the early
1980s, when there was a serious shortage of graduate English
teachers in schools, the Ministry of Education ensured there were
enough allocated to SAP schools "to help improve standards of
English among the Chinese-medium students, in the hope that they
will be able to make it to university"–a target brought closer by
the granting of two O-level bonus points exclusively to SAP school
students when they applied to enter junior college. By contrast,
neither Indians nor Malays received any special help, let alone
schools of their own to address their special needs. They were not
only left to fend for themselves, but were sometimes subjected to
wanton neglect: inadequately trained teachers, substandard
facilities and resources and the "knowledge" that they are not as
good as the Chinese.
This account of
discrimination against non-Chinese might lead the reader to assume
that the quarter of Singaporeans who are not Chinese must form a
festering and perhaps even revolutionary mass of resentment. Such
an assumption would, however, be a long way from the mark.
Non-Chinese might be largely excluded from the highest levels of
the administrative elite, but just below these rarefied heights
there plenty of positions open to intelligent and hardworking
non-Chinese–certainly enough to ensure that non-Chinese communities
have much to gain by enthusiastically buying into the system, even
after the glass ceilings and racial barriers are taken into
account. There are many grievances and resentments in these levels
of society but the grievances are muted and balanced by an
appreciation of the relative comforts and prosperity they enjoy.
For most, any tendency to complain is subdued also by knowledge
that it could be worse, and the widespread assumption among members
of minority communities that it will be if they seriously pursue
their grievances. As long as the Singapore system continues to deal
such people a satisfactory hand, if not a fair one, it should be
able to cope with some quiet rumblings in the ranks.
While this discrimination is
not sparking a reaction that threatens the regime in the short
term, the resulting injustices are certainly undermining the myth
that the regime operates on meritocratic principles. This is
worrying in the longer term because this myth, along with the
capacity to deliver peace and prosperity, is one of the primary
rationales by which Singaporeans reluctantly accept the many
unpopular aspects of the regime, such as the lack of freedom and
democracy, the intrusion of government into most aspects of private
life, the pressure-cooker lifestyle and the high cost of
living.
The rhetoric of meritocracy
has given Singaporeans the consolation of believing that their
ruling elite are the best of the best and can therefore be trusted
almost blindly on important matters, even if they are highhanded
and lack the common touch. As this illusion gradually falls
away–and today it is already heavily undermined–the trust that
Singaporeans have for their government is becoming increasingly
qualified. It remains to be seen how long the regime can avert the
logical consequences of the contradictions between the myth and the
reality.
Mr. Barr is a lecturer at
the University of Queensland and author of Lee Kuan Yew: The
Beliefs Behind the Man (Routledge, 2000) and Cultural
Politics and Asian Values: The Tepid War (Routledge,
2002).
http://www.feer.com/essays/2006/october/the-charade-of-meritocracy