That's a point I certainly agree with - Singaporeans,
holistically, are a bunch of daft ingrates who simply aren't worth
the time of anyone(and I include honest, albeit foolishly
ineffective, people who run for the opposition in that assessment)
trying to give them another option. In any other healthy democracy,
it'd be appalling to even imagine the ruling party winning
sufficient seats to be empowered to change their constitutions at a
whim!
That said, I think there're a few points about Chee's approach
which are questionable - questionable not because they are wrong,
just that they aren't(and will never be) effective when applied in
the wrong context. For starters, the SDP members who share Chee's
ideology are better off being a civil society group/political
activists(including being an underground one if need be) because
quite simply, their stance(helped in no small part by the fascist
press' manipulation) will simply not get them anywhere at the polls
- let's face it, you don't fight for freedom and democracy in
elections in a state whose politics are teetering closer to what's
preached in North Korea than the US. And civil disobedience is such
an abstract concept to Singaporeans at large that 90% of the
population would probably understand it no better than rocket
science - I think it's just self-defeating to aspire to restore
democracy in Singapore on one hand, yet put themselves through the
same electoral process they have rightly condemned as a dead-end
with regards to having any realistic chance of reforming the
political system.
Personally, I am not convinced Chee actually understands the
framework and circumstances under which Civil Disobedience needs to
function under - for starters, he doesn't even have the sort of
support Ghandhi and Walesa had when they inspired hordes to
eventually overthrow the British and the Communists respectively. I
don't see any hope of a political reform by democratic means anyway
and Chee's concepts and ideas are certainly on the right track, but
for him to succeed, he'll have to be able to reach out more
effectively(inspite of the constraints he faces, of course) to more
people to get his message across and establish his base before he
can even dream of putting his ideas into practice. Chee certainly
needs to understand selling his message across to the average
Joe(most of whom do not understand his politics anyway) and plain
Janes are as essential as selling them to the intellectuals who
have little problem identifying with what he is driving at - but
comprehend the rudimentary logic that in any democracy, an idiot
will have as much power as an intellectual to determine the kind of
system he/she wants to live in. So long as he doesn't reach out to
sufficient average Joes and plain Janes, I just can't see his
campaign being kickstarted regardless of how tough a stand the
fascists take against him. Afterall, few(if any) non-democracies
were ever toppled by democratic means in the 20th Century.
For me, two revolutionary pro-democratic movements in the 20th
Century clearly stand out, illustrating the contrasting
consequences of doing the same thing under grave and grossly
different circumstances - the Solidarnosc movement and the
Tiananmen incident. On close scrutiny of the two events, it's
really not hard to understand how Walesa was able to inspire -
helped in no small part by Pope John Paul II and Mikhail Gorbachev
in the later years of his movement admittedly - a revolution which
eventually swept across the Eastern bloc and realised the
previously unimaginable reality of living in a world with the
absence of the 'mighty' USSR. I doubt there was a better organised
non-violent revolution on a scale as grand as that of Solidarnosc
in recent memory. The Tiananmen revolution, on the other hand,
failed miserably not just because of the Chinese authorities'
heavy-handed approach to dealing with the protesters - ultimately,
I thought the lack of unity and common purpose amongst the
protesters and various groups fighting for different interests made
their efforts self-defeating. Clearly, these 2 events serve as
prime examples of how similar movements hoping to achieve the same
goals(albeit with slightly different measures) met with such
different fates despite the fact Solidarnosc actually started off
on a much more modest scale and had infinitely fewer people than
the quarter-million who packed Tianmen Square in June '89.
At best, I'd liken Chee to spearheading a disorganised, disunited
group(and a minority at that) at the Tiananmen protests. At worst,
he's just a lunatic ranting and raving on the streets who speaks a
language the average chap can barely comprehend. If he's to succeed
with his civil disobedience efforts, I think he'd be better off
first taking a leaf out of Ghandhi/Walesa's book and understand the
fact he will not succeed without sufficient support so as not do
something in vain, much less for a bunch of daft ingrates...
