Liberalism Disavowed: Communitarianism and State Capitalism in Singapore

230 Pages·2017·3.46 MB·English

by  Beng Huat Chua

LIBERALISM DISAVOWED
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LIBERALISM DISAVOWED
Communitarianism and
State Capitalism in Singapore
Beng Huat Chua
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
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Copyright © 2017 Beng Huat Chua
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,
512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 2017 by NUS Press, National University of Singapore
First published in the United States of America in 2017 by Cornell University Press
First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2017
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Chua, Beng Huat, author.
Title: Liberalism disavowed : communitarianism and state capitalism in
Singapore / Beng Huat Chua.
Description: Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016050361 | ISBN 9781501713439 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781501713446 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH : Singapore — Politics and government. | Communitarianism —
Singapore. | Liberalism — Singapore. | People’s Action Party (Singapore)
Classification: LCC JQ1063.A58 C48 2017 | DDC 320.95957 —dc23 LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016050361
Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers
and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such
materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are
recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further
information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.
Cover image courtesy of Timothy Chua Yi-neng.
Printed in the United States of America.
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INTRODUCTION
Singapore is easy to denigrate from a distance — the arrogant au-
thoritarianism of the first and long serving, Prime Minister, the late Lee
Kuan Yew; the long-term detention without trial of political opponents,
an estimated 800 individuals detained from 1963–87; the financially
ruinous libel suits against opposition party members through the 1980s
and 1990s; the bank of repressive legislation on labor relations, race
relations, media and civil society organizations, which are all constantly
under threat of proscription and deregistration; and, finally, the aggres-
sive gerrymandering of electoral boundaries and changes in electoral
rules that have ensured the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) uninterrupted
one-party domination of parliament since 1959. The aggregated effects
of these measures have been seen through the lens of liberal ideology as
a “suffocating atmosphere” of political and cultural repression. Liberal
critiques assert that under such conditions, the continuous support of
Singaporeans in every general election of such an authoritarian govern-
ment must be motivated by factors other than good reason, such as
fear of punishment by the government, political powerlessness, political
apathy or striking a Faustian bargain in return for improved material
life. The PAP has indeed transformed Singapore from a regional trading
economy in the twilight of the British Empire to a first-world economy
in one single generation, since independence in 1965. An authoritarian
state with popular support that works is a distressing idea in a world
defined by liberal democracy!
Up close, ironically, it is easy to be seduced, as Singaporeans them-
selves have been, by the city-state’s obvious success as a nation — the
gleaming downtown banking district that signifies a global financial cen-
ter; the smoothly integrated transportation network of roads, highways
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Introduction
and mass rapid transit trains; the endless expanse of high-rise public
housing estates that house the entire nation; the strong sense of orderli-
ness and public security without the ubiquitous police or armed soldiers
that one has come to expect of an authoritarian state; and, finally, the
high standard of material life of the citizens, all under an efficient,
efficacious and uncorrupt government that makes and carries out long-
term, future-oriented plans. Economic success has elevated the small
island-nation in the esteem of the world and given Singapore a voice
in the global economy and political arena that belies its small size. It is
now frequently regarded by many developing nations as a “model” for
development. Obviously, even its harshest critic will not be comfortable
reducing the political economy of Singapore’s success to simply authori-
tarianism at work, or its staunchest supporter seeing this success as
simply the triumph of free-market capitalism.
It would be easy to attribute Singapore’s economic success to its
small and readily manageable size, with all the advantages of an urban
economy without the drag of a rural hinterland except, as the PAP
government habitually warns Singaporeans, smallness has its disadvan-
tages. The island is devoid of natural resources, including land and
population. Even Singapore’s supposedly advantageous geographical loca-
tion is dubious; until the opening of the Changi International Airport,
Bangkok was the international transit point for air travel from the West
to northeast Asia. It is dependent on the regional and global markets
for all its imports, which makes it a very open economy that is ex-
tremely vulnerable to the fluctuations of external conditions. This
“vulnerability” has been ideologically harnessed to generate a string of
political consequences: fear of becoming irrelevant to the global market,
thus constantly in search of niches of opportunities for economic
growth; fear of fragmentation, thus an insistence on tight social control
to ensure social cohesion; fear of political polarization by different poli-
tical parties with different ideologies that might jeopardize national
development, thus an emphasis on the administrative advantages of a
one-party dominant government. In sum, a generalized anxiety about
the long-term viability of the social, economic and political foundation
of the island-nation has been transformed into a set of ideological
justifications for and instrumental practices of tight social and political
control, which taken together constitutes the authoritarianism of the
regime. The much-criticized politics of the single-party dominant parlia-
mentary system is for the PAP the critical element of Singapore’s eco-
nomic success.
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Introduction
Single-party dominant parliamentary states are not uncommon
in Asia. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan and the India
Congress Party are two political parties that have dominated their re-
spective governments since the end of the Second World War. However,
in neither India nor Japan has there been absolute and undisrupted
rule; both parties have been occasionally voted out of power. Indeed,
the dominance of the Indian Congress Party has been severely eroded
by the rise of regional parties in a federal system. Although the LDP’s
and PAP’s situations seem similar, there are differences. The LDP’s
dominance appears unassailable, because the other Japanese political
parties have withered into political insignificance. However, the LDP
is a deeply fractional political party while the PAP leadership is tightly
united. The specific criticism of the PAP is thus less about one-party
dominance than its history of authoritarianism.
Against the critique of authoritarianism, one should note that
during the early 1960s till the end of the 1970s, when political repres-
sion was most intense in Singapore, authoritarian regimes were practi-
cally the norm in decolonized nations and economic failure was the
rule in these regimes. These failed states were characterized by the pro-
pensity of the authoritarian postcolonial elite to plunder the national
wealth; endemic corruption at every level in both the public and private
sectors of their economies; tribal or ethnic antagonism, often encouraged
by the self-interested elite; unscrupulous tampering of ballot boxes
accompanied by violence during elections; and, finally, the increasingly
alienated and restive population that could only be controlled by state
violence involving the police and military. From the struggle to political
ascendancy, the first-generation PAP leaders learned that if they were
to defeat their once erstwhile radical left-wing comrades and win the
hearts and minds of the newly enfranchised citizens, they would have
to equal if not better the asceticism and self-sacrificing attitude of the
radical left. Thus, from the outset anti-corruption was the moral basis
of its rule. To this day, this spirit to serve and anti-corruption remain
core values of the PAP. In addition, the holding of general elections
every five years has been retained although the playing field has never
been entirely equal or fair. The PAP is not beyond using its incumbent
governmental prerogative to modify the rules of electoral contest to its
advantage. In the early years, this prerogative included the jailing of
opposition leaders before elections and heavy-handed gerrymandering.
Beyond these tactics, elections have always been conducted without
violence and without the tampering of ballot boxes, as the PAP realizes
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Introduction
that “clean” elections are critical to its justification and legitimacy to
rule in the eyes of the citizens and international observers.
After 50 years of sustained economic growth, Singapore is now an
overwhelming middle-class society of public-housing homeowners with
an increasingly better educated, culturally diverse and informed citizenry
that is globally connected and globally mobile, as students, tourists or
managers in homegrown or foreign multinational corporations. Given
these changes, the continuing simplistic and reductionist characterization
of the Singaporean as “docile,” culturally race-bound and living in fear
of political authoritarianism is descriptively inadequate. It is a view that
reflects an increasingly misinformed understanding of contemporary
Singapore society. With the cultural diversity engendered by education
and financial affluence, liberalization in the cultural sphere is inevitable.
Under the watch of Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and his successor,
the current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the boundaries of public
behavior, films, art and theater have all been pushed back by artists
and cultural activists, with the government accepting the changes, often
reluctantly. Whereas the Cold War was a convenient excuse for the first-
generation PAP leaders to exercise a heavy-handed repression of their
opponents, the same instruments of repression are no longer readily
at hand for the present or future generations. The potential loss of its
esteem in the global political and economic arenas, including the risk
of economic and political sanctions that unnecessary and/or excessive
political repression could bring, is a price too high for the current
and future PAP leaders to contemplate. In this sense, the liberalization
of culture and politics is inevitable; however, this is not the same as
embodying liberalism in the polity.
Political liberals, at home and abroad, are keen to see Singapore
develop politically towards a multi-party liberal democracy. They pin
their desire and hope upon the general understanding that the rise of
the middle class, which is abundantly evident in Singapore, would lead
to a demand for political liberalism and ultimately liberal democracy, as
it has in Taiwan and South Korea. Sadly, they have been consistently
frustrated in the case of Singapore, most recently in the 2015 general
election. Buoyed by the worst result suffered by the PAP in the 2011
general election, in which it lost six parliamentary seats and received
only 60 percent of the popular vote, there was a widespread expectation
that opposition parties would gain further parliamentary seats in the
2015 general election. Instead, the PAP romped home with close to a
10 percent increase in the national popular vote, winning nearly all the
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Introduction
contested electoral constituencies; the top leaders of the Workers’ Party,
the main opposition party, barely retained the six seats they had won
by a comfortable margin in the 2011 general election. In this latest
general election, gerrymandering was kept to a minimum, and there is
no gain saying that the election was without credible opposition can-
didates and alternative policy proposals to those of the PAP regime.
The final result can only be interpreted as a ringing endorsement of the
PAP government by an overwhelming majority of Singaporeans.
The 2015 general election result showed that the PAP is likely to
continue to stay in power well into the third decade of the twenty-first
century. The general narrative of the PAP government and the economic
development of Singapore are by now legendary. However, details of
its ideological commitments and the concomitant economic and social
political practices remain mired in simplistic explanations of authori-
tarianism in politics and apparently unstinting support for free market
capitalism in Singapore’s economic policy. Indeed, the PAP government
itself might be said to have encouraged the simplistic view of its gover-
nance and economic policies. What this “encouraged” understanding
veils, intentionally or otherwise, is the social democratic origin of the
PAP, which explains some of the fundamental social and economic pro-
grams which are critical to the economic and political success of the
PAP government, and from which it has not wavered in more than
its 50 years in power. The PAP’s social democratic origin, not authori-
tarianism, explains the Party’s vociferous disavowal of liberalism as the
basis of politics and government. This book locates the social democratic
traces that are embedded in, and continue to determine, the political
economy of contemporary Singapore under the PAP government.
Embedding Social Democracy
The PAP was founded in 1954, in a world when decolonization was
the preoccupation of every politically minded colonized subject and the
prevailing political sentiment was invariably anti-colonial and left-wing.
Communism, socialism and social democracy, ideologies of progressive
movements in post-World War II Europe, were also the prevailing
ideologies of the decolonization movements in Asia and Africa. The
PAP, a political party of its time, was constituted by a coalition of two
factions: a group of radical left-wing unionists, many with no more
than secondary school education in local Chinese-language schools, with
an ability to mobilize the masses against the colonial government; and
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