"Increasingly, people around the world are beginning to
laugh at Singapore"
Downsides devalue Singapore Inc
Michael Backman
May 31, 2006
The Age
KIASU is the term Singaporeans use to describe the unpleasant side
of their culture. Acting in a kiasu manner means being greedy,
unwilling to share and insensitive to others. Many Singaporeans
feel this is a good description of the Government and its approach
to power. The winner-take-all attitude is out of step with other
nations.
No one can deny that Singapore is an easy place (although not
necessarily a good place) to do business, compared with its
neighbours.
Singapore scores highly on Transparency International's Corruption
Perceptions Index: it is ranked No. 5 of 158 countries. The Global
Competitiveness Report ranks Singapore No. 6 of 117
economies.
The Government likes to broadcast these figures. But it doesn't
broadcast that it executes more people per head a year than almost
anywhere else. Reporters Without Borders has Singapore No. 140 of
167 countries for media freedom.
It is as if Singapore is more a ruthless corporation than a country
with a civil society, its people more employees than citizens, and
its broadsheet, the Straits Times, more like a staff bulletin than
a newspaper. As a Singaporean diplomat once told me, "We don't have
journalists in Singapore; only propagandists."
Increasingly, people around the world are beginning
to laugh at Singapore; they laugh at its Government's
petty and self-serving restrictions on what people can and cannot
do. But in Singapore, many people are unaware of this because the
government-controlled media feed them a diet of only good news
stories.
Race relations are often used as an excuse for restrictions. But
Singapore has one of the most homogeneous race profiles in the
world: 77 per cent are Chinese, the rest comprise Malays and
Indians. Singapore does not have the racial complexities of many
countries.
The Maria Hertogh case is cited as an example of how Singapore is
on the edge racially, and used to justify various restrictions.
Rioting erupted among Malays after a court allowed a Dutch girl who
was raised as a Muslim to be returned to her Catholic parents. This
was 56 years ago.
No viable opposition has been allowed to form, and without robust
national debate Singaporeans are becoming politically de-skilled.
Accordingly, the Government comprises plenty of ministers but few
politicians, and there is little elegance to their art. They know
only how to clobber: too often alternative viewpoints are responded
to with public humiliation, threats, defamation writs and
detention. Business should consider these aspects and not just
competitiveness when assessing Singapore as a place for
investment.
The Singapore Government hates people like me commenting on what it
regards as its internal affairs. It hates it because foreigners
cannot be controlled. But that does not stop the Singapore
Government from intruding in the internal affairs of other
countries.
Eddie Teo, Singapore's new high commissioner to Australia, has
written letters to The Age critical of my recent columns. This is
the first time Mr Teo has lived outside Singapore in 35 years and
no doubt he finds a free media refreshing.
In one letter, Mr Teo claimed Singapore's defamation laws follow
the English model. He is wrong. The British government does not sue
opposition politicians so they are bankrupted and cannot run for
parliament. If the British are to be blamed for Singapore's laws,
then they can be blamed for Singapore's economic success. It was
they who established Singapore as a free-trade port, which has made
Singapore rich.
He says Singapore has a good legal system. That is true, but only
compared with Indonesia, the Philippines, China and Thailand. Laws
that have not had the benefit of open public debate and passage
through a robust parliament are not really laws but decrees.
Rule of law becomes rule by law and many things are possible.
Execution without a jury trial is one; torture is another.
Geoffrey Robertson, QC, writing last month for the Open Democracy
Foundation, describes how torture was used in Singapore in the
1980s. A group of young lawyers, Catholic aid workers and women
playwrights were rounded up by Singapore's Internal Security
Department and detained without trial because they were suspects in
an alleged Marxist conspiracy. They were not terrorists, they were
political activists. The worst they seemed to have done was
distribute Marxist literature.
They were deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and blasted
with refrigerated air. The torture was not physical and left little
evidence, which was its point. Instead, it was psychological and
left what Robertson terms the Singapore scar. The minister then
responsible for the ISD was Lee Hsien Loong. He is now Singapore's
Prime Minister.
And who headed the ISD and Defence Ministry's Security and
Intelligence Division for much of the 1980s? Eddie Teo, Singapore's
high commissioner to Australia, the man who now enjoys our media
freedoms, but who has spent much of his career denying Singaporeans
similar freedoms. Some might regard that as kiasu.
