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Gandhi
Ambalam
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Vantage
The
Economy and PAP History 101
Gandhi Ambalam
22
Jun 07
The PAP was formed in 1954 under the joint
leadership of Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew. It subsequently
came to power in 1959 with mass support from the people and the
active involvement of trade unions, student bodies, and
community-based organizations.
It won a landslide victory
by capturing 43 out of 51 seats in the first
ever, compulsory
universal suffrage to Singapore's Legislative Assembly. An
interesting feature of the 1959 election is that all the 51 seats
were contested; in some constituencies there were even 7-corner
contests.
The PAP split
As is inevitable in
any party that practices democracy, the original PAP also saw its
share of splits and realignments. First there was the split
with
Ong Eng Guan, the PAP minister for national development who had
earlier challenged Lee Kuan Yew for the post of PM. (Ong later
broke away from the PAP and forced a by-election in April 1961 in
his Hong Lim constituency to prove his popularity. He was
re-elected with more than 73 per cent of the votes.)
Ong's
departure was just the tip of the iceberg. A major left-wing
faction of the party subsequently broke away to form the Barisan
Sosialis (Socialist Front) or BS.
Overnight, almost all
the PAP branches throughout the island followed the Barisan,
leaving the PAP with only its top leadership (who were mainly
cabinet ministers), a few members and not many supporters.
The
PAP resorted to silencing its detractors by imprisoning them
under the ISA. On 2 Feb 1963, with the help of the British and
the Malayan government headed by Tunku Abdul Rahman, the
Singapore Government rounded up 115 BS leaders, trade unionists,
journalists, and student leaders.
This was conducted under
Operation Coldstore in the guise of fighting the communists. Many
of the detainees served several years in prison without ever
being charged.
Killing off democracy
From
then on, the PAP openly tinkered with the election process,
brought the mainstream media to heel, and politicized the state
institutions like the civil service and the police.
Basic
human rights, workers rights and the right to information were
severely curtailed by Lee Kuan Yew who had earlier, when he
was in
opposition, championed these lofty ideals:
"If
you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally.
If
you believe that men should be free, then, they should
have the right of free association, of free speech, of free
publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic
processes to be set at nought."
But in the years
after the PAP became the ruling party, Prime Minister Lee Kuan
Yew adopted a very different stance. No longer was he interested
in democratic ideals.
Rather, in the name of economic
progress, Mr Lee sought to centralize power in PAP. Increasingly,
the people were intimidated with draconian laws such as the
Internal Security Act, the Employment Act, the Industrial
Relations Act and the Trade Unions Act. Basic human rights of
Singaporeans were gradually removed.
Lee now struck a very
different tone: "Who your neighbour is, how you live, the
noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide
what is right. Never mind what people think."
Can
politics and economics be separated?
The PAP insists
that economic progress could best be achieved without the
interference and messiness of human rights. In other words, it is
better for Singaporeans to forgo most of the rights in return for
economic progress.
While such rationale is itself
problematic, the economic situation in
Singapore presently
demonstrates that the PAP's promise to the people is not
fulfilled.
While there was a spurt of intense economic
activity leading to overall
prosperity in the late 1960s, the
70s, 80s and 90s, economic progress is less visible in the new
century.
The people having sacrificed their basic rights
as part of their social
contract in exchange for a better
life now find themselves in a position
where they have been
deprived both politically and economically.
Since the
regional financial crisis of 1997/98, Singapore's economy remains
beset with problems. There is widespread unemployment,
underemployment and retrenchment.
An overwhelming majority
of Singaporeans have little choice but to use their retirement
savings to buy expensive HDB flats, leaving them with precious
little for their twilight years.
Foreign workers continue
to flood the local job market, ensuring that wages for workers
remain artificially depressed.
In addition, it is not
uncommon to see elderly people rummaging through dustbins in
search of empty cans and old people selling tissue paper. There
are even homeless families camped out under overhead bridges and
on beaches after being thrown out of their HDB flats.
Many
people have found their utilities cut when they could not pay
their bills. Worse, income disparity in Singapore continues to
widen with the poor seeing their household incomes
plummeting.
Of course, the rich have benefited but the
Government's responsibility is to see that all sectors of society
progress, not just the privileged few.
But without
political rights, economic rights are easily quashed because
they are two sides of the same coin. Without any basic
rights, there's no way for anyone to put across his/her views to
fellow citizens and to the government.
Authoritarian
systems attack and deprive people of their rights – the
right to speak, the right to express and the right to assemble.
These rights are crucial for us to have our say in our economic,
social and cultural directions.
In order to bring about a
knowledge-based, creative and innovative society, one that is
genuinely first-class, we need to adopt democratic practices,
practices that the PAP championed for when it first started out.
Mr
Ambalam is Chairman of the Singapore Democrats. He is a former
journalist.
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