Striding into the Chinese restaurant of
Singapore's historic Fullerton Hotel, Chee Soon Juan hardly looks
like a dangerous revolutionary. Casually dressed in a blue shirt
with a gold pen clipped to the pocket, he could pass as just
another mild-mannered, apolitical Singaporean. Smiling, he
courteously apologizes for being late–even though it is only two
minutes after the appointed time.
Nevertheless, according to prosecutors, this same man is not
only a criminal, but a repeat offender. The opposition party leader
has just come from a pre-trial conference at the courthouse, where
he faces eight counts of speaking in public without a permit. He
has already served numerous prison terms for this and other
political offenses, including eight days in March for denying the
independence of the judiciary. He expects to go to jail again later
this year.
Mr. Chee does not seem too perturbed about this, but it drives
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong up the wall. Asked about
his government's persecution of the opposition during a trip to New
Zealand last month, Mr. Lee launched into a tirade of abuse against
Mr. Chee. "He's a liar, he's a cheat, he's deceitful, he's
confrontational, it's a destructive form of politics designed not
to win elections in Singapore but to impress foreign supporters and
make himself out to be a martyr," Mr. Lee ranted. "He's
deliberately going against the rules because he says, 'I'm like
Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. I want to be a martyr.'"
Coming at the end of a trip in which the prime minister
essentially got a free ride on human rights from his hosts–New
Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark didn't even raise the issue–this
outburst showed a lack of self-control and acumen. Former Prime
Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the man who many believe still runs
Singapore and who is the current prime minister's father, has said
much the same things about Mr. Chee–"a political gangster, a liar
and a cheat"–but that was at home, and in the heat of an election
campaign.
Mr. Chee smiles when it's suggested that he must be doing
something right. "Every time he says something stupid like that, I
think to myself, the worst thing to happen would be to be ignored.
That would mean we're not making any headway," he agrees.
But one charge made by the government does stick: Mr. Chee is
not terribly concerned about election results. Which is just as
well, because his Singapore Democratic Party did not do very well
in the May 6 polls. It would be foolish, he suggests, for an
opposition party in Singapore to pin its hopes on gaining one, or
perhaps two, seats in parliament. He is aiming for a much bigger
goal: bringing down the city-state's one-party system of
government. His weapon is a campaign of civil disobedience against
laws designed to curtail democratic freedoms.
"You don't vote out a dictatorship," he says. "And basically
that's what Singapore is, albeit a very sophisticated one. It's not
possible for us to effect change just through the ballot box.
They've got control of everything else around us." Instead what's
needed is a coalition of civil society and political society coming
together and demanding change–a color revolution for Singapore.
So far Mr. Chee doesn't seem to be getting much, if any
traction. While many Singaporeans don't particularly like the PAP's
arrogant style of government, the ruling party has succeeded in
depoliticizing the population to the extent that anybody who
presses them to take action to make a change is regarded with
resentment. And in a climate of fear–Mr. Chee lost his job as a
psychology lecturer at the national university soon after entering
opposition politics–a reluctance to get involved is hardly
surprising.
Why is all this oppression necessary in a peaceful and
prosperous country like Singapore where citizens otherwise enjoy so
many freedoms? Mr. Chee has his own theory that the answer lies
with strongman Lee Kuan Yew himself: "Why is he still so afraid? I
honestly think that through the years he has accumulated enough
skeletons in his closet that he knows that when he is gone, his son
and the generations after him will have a price to pay. If we had
parliamentary debates where the opposition could pry and ask
questions, I think he is actually afraid of something like
that."
That raises the question of whether Singapore deserves its
reputation for squeaky-clean government. A scandal involving the
country's biggest charity, the National Kidney Foundation, erupted
in 2004 when it turned out that its Chief Executive T.T. Durai was
not only drawing a $357,000 annual salary, but the charity was
paying for his first-class flights, maintenance on his Mercedes,
and gold-plated fixtures in his private office bathroom.
The scandal was a gift for the opposition, which naturally
raised questions about why the government didn't do a better job of
supervising the highly secretive NKF, whose patron was the wife of
former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (she called Mr. Durai's salary
"peanuts"). But it had wider implications too. The government
controls huge pools of public money in the Central Provident Fund
and the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., both of which are
highly nontransparent. It also controls spending on the public
housing most Singaporeans live in, and openly uses the funds for
refurbishing apartment blocks as a bribe for districts that vote
for the ruling party. Singaporeans have no way of knowing whether
officials are abusing their trust as Mr. Durai did.
It gets worse. Mr. Durai's abuses only came to light because he
sued the Straits Times newspaper for libel over an article
detailing some of his perks. Why was Mr. Durai so confident he
could win a libel suit when the allegations against him were true?
Because he had done it before. The NKF won a libel case in 1998
against defendants who alleged it had paid for first-class flights
for Mr. Durai. This time, however, he was up against a major
bulwark of the regime, Singapore Press Holdings; its lawyers
uncovered the truth.
Singaporean officials have a remarkable record of success in
winning libel suits against their critics. The question then is,
how many other libel suits have Singapore's great and good wrongly
won, resulting in the cover-up of real misdeeds? And are libel
suits deliberately used as a tool to suppress questioning
voices?
The bottling up of dissent conceals pressures and prevents
conflicts from being resolved. For instance, extreme sensitivity
over the issue of race relations means that the persistence of
discrimination is a taboo topic. Yet according to Mr. Chee it is a
problem that should be debated so that it can be better resolved.
"The harder they press now, the stronger will be the reaction when
he's no longer around," he says of Lee Kuan Yew.
The paternalism of the PAP also rankles, especially since
foreigners get more consideration than locals. The World Bank and
International Monetary Fund will hold their annual meeting in
Singapore this fall, and have been trying to convince the
authorities to allow the usual demonstrations to take place. The
likely result is that international NGO groups will be given a
designated area to scream and shout. "So we have a situation here
where locals don't have the right to protest in their own country,
while foreigners are able to do that," Mr. Chee marvels. Likewise,
Singaporeans can't organize freely into unions to negotiate wages;
instead a National Wages Council sets salaries with input from the
corporate sector, including foreign chambers of commerce.
All these tensions will erupt when strongman Lee Kuan Yew dies.
Mr. Chee notes that the ruling party is so insecure that
Singapore's founder has been unable to step back from front-line
politics. The PAP still needs the fear he inspires in order to keep
the population in line. Power may have officially passed to his
son, Lee Hsien Loong, but even supporters privately admit that the
new prime minister doesn't inspire confidence.
During the election, Prime Minister Lee made what should have
been a routine attack on multiparty democracy: "Suppose you had 10,
15, 20 opposition members in parliament. Instead of spending my
time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I'm going to
spend all my time thinking what's the right way to fix them, to buy
my supporters' votes, how can I solve this week's problem and
forget about next year's challenges?" But of course the ominous
phrases "buy votes" and "fix them" stuck out. That is the kind of
mistake, Mr. Chee suggests, Lee Sr. would not make.
"He's got a kind of intelligence that would serve you very well
when you put a problem in front of him," he says of the prime
minister. "But when it comes to administration or political
leadership, when you really need to be media savvy and motivate
people, I think he is very lacking in that area. And his father
senses it as well."
However, the elder Mr. Lee's death–he is now 82–is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for change. Another big factor is how
civil society is able to use new technologies to bypass PAP control
over information and free speech. The government has tried to
stifle political filmmaking, blogging and podcasting. Singapore
Rebel, a 2004 film about Mr. Chee by independent artist Martyn See,
was banned but is widely available on the Internet.
Meanwhile, pressure for Singapore to remain competitive in the
region has sparked debate about the government's dominant role in
the economy. Can a top-down approach promote creativity and
independent thinking? The need for transparency and accountability
also means that Singapore will have to change. That is the source
of Mr. Chee's optimism in the face of all his setbacks: "I realize
that Singapore is not at that level yet. But we've got to start
somewhere. And I'm prepared to see this out, in the sense that in
the next five, 10, 15 years, time is on our side. We need to
continue to organize and educate and encourage. And it will
come."
He doesn't dwell on his personal tribulations, but mentions in
passing selling his self-published books on the street. That is his
primary source of income to feed his family, along with the
occasional grant. As to the charge of wanting to be a martyr, once
he started dissenting, he found it impossible to stop in good
conscience. "The more you got involved, the more you found out what
they're capable of, it steels you, so you say, 'No, I will not back
down.' It makes you more determined."
Perhaps it's in his genes. One of Mr. Chee's daughters is old
enough that she had to be told that her father was going to prison.
She stood up before her class and announced, "My papa is in jail,
but he didn't do anything wrong. People have just been unfair to
him."
Mr. Restall is editor of the REVIEW.
http://www.feer.com/essays/2006/july/singapores-martyr-chee-soon-juan