MS CATHERINE Lim has made what students of philosophy call a
category mistake ("Conviction versus Consensus politicians"; last
Saturday). Conviction and consensus are not mutually exclusive
terms.
Conviction has to do with the reason for going into politics or,
for want of a better term, the soul of politics, while consensus
has to do with the strategy or even style.
Baron R.A. Butler, the late British Cabinet minister and
politician, defined politics as the art of the possible. A
conviction politician may have to seek consensus to achieve half
his objective if the full is not achievable.
In a democracy, and maybe more so in a parliamentary-type
democracy, compromises are a fact of life, whether it is United
States President Barack Obama watering down his health-care
proposals or former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher
retreating on the Maastricht Treaty. Few would argue that all are
conviction politicians.
There is no doubt that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's
accomplishments and moral stature allow him more leeway to say
things that another politician will find quite untenable.
For him, the art of the possible has a greater margin.
But that says nothing of the conviction of another politician,
whose margin may be much narrower.
I would go so far as to suggest that the People's Action Party's
system of candidate selection makes it extremely difficult for
opportunists and old-style career politicians to be chosen.
To suggest that the current Cabinet, or indeed the current
opposition members, consists of non-conviction politicians is to do
them a great injustice.
Eugene Tan
