Asian values
behind Singapore son's rise
By Gary LaMoshi
HONG KONG - Despite well-publicized signs that Singapore is
loosening up by allowing dancing on bars, funding performances that
include the f-word, and even legalizing chewing gum (for medicinal
purposes, available from pharmacists) under pressure from United
States trade negotiators, writer Alfian Sa'at contends little has
changed.
"Remaking Singapore" - the government's campaign to encourage
creativity among the island's 3.8 million citizens - "is nothing
more than Re-branding Singapore," he claims. According to Sa'at,
the list of restrictions on freedom of expression recently grew.
"Dynasty and nepotism - definitely taboo," warns the enfant
terrible of Singapore's literary scene on the eve of the good
son rising to the office of prime minister.
Singapore celebrates National Day on August 9. In future years,
perhaps in connection with its campaign to increase the birth rate,
August 12 may come to be known as Family Day. On that date this
week, Lee Hsien Loong, the oldest son of Singapore's founding
father Lee Kuan Yew, takes over from Goh Chok Tong to become the
island nation's third prime minister.
The younger Lee was elected to Parliament following a military
career that saw him reach Brigadier-General by the age of 32. After
his father stepped aside in 1990, Lee warmed up for the prime
minister's job by serving as finance minister and central bank
governor. He's expected to cede at least one of those posts in the
new Cabinet.
Current Prime Minister Goh has been tapped to succeed Lee Kuan Yew
as senior minister, which Lee calls the "number two" post. The
elder Lee promises that, whatever title he's given, he will
continue to exercise significant influence and speak out on key
issues, privileges still denied average citizens in this state
created in Lee's own image.
The party line is that Lee Kuan Yew discouraged his son from
joining the political fray. That's another dubious tale from the
Singapore myth machine. That mechanism's greatest achievement is
perpetrating the lie that Singapore ranks among the freest
economies on earth (See Singapore's capitalist
myth November 7, 2002).
It probably feels like a free enough economy for the Lee family. In
addition to his key economic posts, the incoming prime minister's
wife, Ho Ching, chairs Temasek, the state investment corporation
that scratches acquisitive itches at home and abroad using the
Finance Ministry's checkbook, while his younger brother, Lee Hsien
Yang, heads SingTel, the state-owned telecom company that is
spreading its wires around the globe. That's not just a nanny
state, it's a socialist family business.
Lee Kuan Yew deserves praise for raising Singapore from a down at
the heels harbor town cut loose by Malaysia into a modern economic
showplace. Based on that success, Lee and his People's Action Party
could have dominated the political scene fair and square.
Instead, Singapore's leadership developed the bad habit of using
the apparatus of government to stifle opposition. But trusting in
the judgment of others isn't in Lee's nature. Neither is humility
for this man whose success in tiny Singapore has led him to offer
prescriptions of the world at large, the equivalent of getting 100%
on a spelling test and thinking that is sufficient to practice
medicine.
Before the economic crisis, Lee lectured the world about what he
called Asian values. At the center of these Asia values was the
appealing notion that Asians - except some very special ones named
Lee, for example - sacrificed individual aspirations for the
greater good of society. After drinking some of this Kool-Aid
before I moved to Hong Kong a decade ago, my discovery of real
Asian values was a great disappointment.
Rather than a heightened sense of responsibility to society at
large, I've noticed precisely the opposite. East Asians generally
show little consideration for people around them, whether it's
rampant spitting in Hong Kong, complete disregard for other
vehicles by motorists, bicyclists and even pedestrians in Bali, or
simply the unwillingness to help a bewildered visitor without a
product or service to sell him. Asians raise indifference - as
opposed to outright rudeness, as practiced in my native New York -
to an art form.
This bewildered visitor couldn't understand the contradiction
between Lee's Asian values and Asian behavior until an Indonesian
friend came to the rescue. Of course we sacrifice for the greater
good, she explained, but that greater good extends no farther than
our own clan. The closer the connection, the more we'll sacrifice,
so we'll do the most for our families, then perhaps our friends.
But without some personal connection, we couldn't care less.
That understanding of Asian values makes Asian behavior much
clearer. For example, it puts the Asian economic crisis of the late
1990s and the ineffectiveness of subsequent reforms into a sensible
perspective. Crony capitalism wasn't the result of some structural
or legal deficiency that can be fixed through restructuring or
stricter regulation, it was, and is, a natural consequence of the
government and its business supporters becoming a clan unto
themselves. Until governments stop playing a leading role in
national economies, the problems underlying the crisis will
persist.
Asian values explain the widespread acceptance of Indonesia's
disgraced former president Suharto turning his children into
business tycoons, and why families loll down a crowded sidewalk as
if they own it. Most of all, Asian values explain why, even with a
population that he declared was prepared to sacrifice for the
greater good, Lee Kuan Yew fashioned Singapore into a restrictive
society that proscribes choices narrowly.
When he takes office on Thursday, Lee Hsien Loong will become the
fourth ruler in East Asia currently occupying their father's old
post. He'll join Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,
Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, and North Korea's Dear
Leader Kim Jong-il, whose dead father remains head of state. The
younger Lee is the first to reach the top while his
predecessor-father remains on the scene.
So instead of worrying about taboos and restrictions on freedom,
let's celebrate Lee Hsien Loong's ascension as a grand triumph of
Lee Kuan Yew's celebrated Asian values. They've always been a
family affair.
Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/FH10Ae02.html
