English Translation of the Chinese article:
The spirit of the Democratic System
It is interesting to read about the discussion of Democracyin
your paper's forum around 10 October, the celebration of the first
success of Asian Democratic Revolution in China led by Dr. Sun Yat
Sen. Since its during this period of celebration, I will start with
Dr. Sun's theory of Democracy, i.e. The three principles of the
people and the separation of Five Powers.
First of all, why would we want to talk about Asian Democracy?
The ruling party PAP has always argued that we cannot just apply
Western Democratic system on Asian societies because it is not
compatible to Asian values. However, during the late 19th century
and early 20th century, Dr. Sun Yat Sen has already provided an
intellectual discourse on how to apply Democratic system that is
suitable to one of largest Asian country, China. Although I do not
agree with some of Dr. Sun's views, but I think Asian countries,
including Singapore, could take Dr. Sun's discourse into serious
consideration when implementing Democracy.
Although the process of democratic development is important, but we
must ensure that the spirit of Democracy must be thoroughly enforce
or implemented accordingly in the Constitutions as well as the
execution process. Dr. Sun has been right on the spot in saying
that Democracy is the balance between extremes, the total freedom
Anarchist vs totalitarian rule. In any advanced society, total
freedom values, Anarchist, cannot work. However, while we recognize
the need of having a governing body in a society, modern Democratic
society also recognize the potential ills that could be derived
from a concentration of powers. This actually means that Democracy
is built upon the distrust of human beings. This is because power
could corrupt (human minds), absolute power corrupt absolutely but
at the other extreme, total freedom would result in the
demonstration of worse side of human beings.
This is also basically why Dr. Sun's revolution is unlike Western
revolutions, never about freedom but about toppling the corrupt
feudal system and build a system that is based no Democratic values
and the separation of 5 powers. The importance of the separation
(or rather, independence) of the 5 powers lies in the mechanism of
REAL checks and balances. It prevents any individuals or ruling
organization to monopolies power but at the same time, prevent any
others to make use of the system's impeachment or legislative
powers to prevent the normal functionality of the government.
Throughout the whole revolution, it is all about the checks and
balances of the powers. I will not comment on the success or
failures of Dr. Sun's revolution but concentrate on on his Asian
perspective of Democratic reforms.
The concept of Dr. Sun's 5 powers includes: Executive Power,
Legislative Power, Judiciary Power, Power of Impeachment, Power of
Examination. In fact, in Chinese ancient history, the concept of 5
powers has already existed. However, these 5 powers were
concentrated under the courts of the Emperors. In comparison to the
Western concept of 3 powers, the Chinese political administration
is actually more advanced. This is because, other than the 3
powers, the Chinese have included another two important aspects of
governance, the Imperial system of impeachment which acted as an
internal checking mechanism, as well as the Examination system that
aimed at selecting best talents to become court officials. These
systems were set up to help the Emperor to implement a ruling
system that would provide checks and balances within as well as
selecting the best talents to help him rule the empire.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of concentration of power, it
normally led to problems of corruptions.
The fundamental problem lies with the rule of law/system vs human.
If it is an totalitarian system, it will inevitably end up with the
corruption under human rule. But it is not possible for the whole
political system to base on books or rules only basically because
it will inevitably involves human elements. Thus, the whole
political views is focused on how to build a balanced system that
would minimize corruption and at the same time, a selection process
that would get the best people to join the government.
However, I cannot agree with Dr. Sun's concept of Examination
Power. In his theory, all candidates for legislative
representatives must go through a system of examination. This would
mean that technically, the people do not have direct universal
suffrage right on their political representatives. (Most likely it
will end up with a total elitist system.) Dr. Sun might have
advocated this rule basically because political awakening or
awareness among the Chinese population may be lacking and this
would prevent unscrupulous politicians from cheating votes. I do
agree that all civil servants must go through a system of
examination as a selection process to get good people to work in
the government. But for representatives of people, I would prefer a
more diverse representation from diverse background (instead of an
elitist one).
I would say that this Examination Power should be a concept of
selection process which would include Power of Electionin the
context of modern Democratic system. This would mean that the
Power of Election must be separated and independently
administered. i.e. The Election Department must be
Independent.
Democracy is not what Mr. Lim's (a writer to ZaoBao on 11 October)
deems to be, majority rule. Democracy emphasizes on people's
power being adequately represented, powers of the system must be
checked and the system must be balanced. If a ruling party
systematically and relentlessly uses its monopoly of the parliament
to amend the Constitution in a bid to ensure its entrenchment and
continuous monopoly of power, then this isn't a compliant to
Democratic principles.
In modern Singapore, we do not have any independent organization
that is entrusted with the power of impeachment. Due to various
reasons (not merely opposition parties do not have enough
candidates) Parliament is monopolized by PAP and lost its function
as a check on the government. On the other hand, the media could
not perform effective checks on the government as well. Under all
such circumstances, it is really undesirable for our long term
development as a Nation.
In Western Democratic discourses, they have realized that there are
weaknesses in majority rule. Such system of majority rule would
end up with tyranny of majority rule. This is basically why in
recent democratic development history in Western worlds, they have
slowly shifted towards proportionate representation. Proportionate
representation is relatively more rational. For example, if a GRC
has 40% of voters that voted the opposition, the present system
would not be able to give these voters an adequate voice or
representation in parliament.
In Western Democratic discourses, they have realized that there are
weaknesses in majority rule. Such system of majority rule would
end up with tyranny of majority rule. This is basically why in
recent democratic development history in Western worlds, they have
slowly shifted towards proportionate representation. Proportionate
representation is relatively more rational. For example, if a GRC
has 40% of voters that voted the opposition, the present system
would not be able to give these voters an adequate voice or
representation in parliament.
In conclusion, I would illustrate the following criteria for a
mature democratic system to evolve:
1) Separation of 5 powers which includes power of
elections/examination and impeachment/ media/ freedom of
expression.
2)A complete political participation of citizens and the exercise
of their voting rights.
3)The checks on the powers
4)The balance maintained in the system
5)The diverse representation of people.
We must seriously examine the potential harm that a prolonged
monopoly of power could bring to our nation. It is very unhealthy
to have a system that lacks real checks and balance for a long
period of time. I believe we should first understand Democracy and
come to the simple conclusion that we have now is far from being
democratic even though it has elections. The only way to prevent
concentration of power of corrupting the human minds and leads to
the corruption of the government is to set up a truly democratic
system.
Most important of all, we must see clearly that there are no
contradictions or incompatibility between Asian values and
Democratic principles. This should not be the reason to reject the
implementation of democratic system. From Chinese ancient history,
we could observe clearly that for Asians, we also have a concept of
checks and balances in maintaining our political system. We are at
a cross road of political development in Singapore and it is an
urgent matter for us to reform our political system now. This is
because we cannot anticipate how the present political system will
evolve in the post-LKY era. We must ensure that Singapore's
political system must develop and extend in a stable manner. I
personally feel that only via building a real mature democratic
system would guarantee long term political stability for
Singapore.
Goh Meng Seng
