From: zcakilh@ucl.ac.uk (Miss Chee Mei Yeoh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asean
Subject: Democracy in Singapore [a reply to Laurence Godfrey]
Summary: A rejoinder contrary to Mr. Godfrey's point of view
Date: 4 Oct 92 19:12:03 GMT
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium, London

godfrey@sscvx1.ssc.gov (LAURENCE GODFREY) writes :
 
> I have been to Singapore and I didn't think much of it.

You don't have to, but it seems to me, with respect, that your process
of thought is flawed. It is perfectly proper for you to say "I don't
like Singapore, and I won't live there". But it seems to me that
some of your statements read like normative statements about how
the Singapore ought to treat its people. To make such statements with
conviction requires a certain degree of knowledge about a country, about
the level of education of its people, about their economic and cultural
history. "Have been to Singapore" may well be sufficient qualification
for your insight to be penetrating, but somehow I suspect it is merely
ill-informed.

> it seemed to me to be a country in which people were unreasonably
> controlled and it is hardly a democracy, is it?
 
My view is that you're carping about trivial matters. Singaporeans
have a good deal of fundamental freedoms - access to a wide variety
of literature, music, information about the world; substantial freedom
of travel; considerable economic freedom. Set against these, many of
the laws against anti-social behaviour, whilst they may be
criticised, are not 'unreasonable'. As for democracy, Oscar Wilde
once described democracy as 'simply the bludgeoning of the people by
the people for the people.' The point is that more democracy is not a
panacea for a nation's ill; democracy is, I will state at the outset,
a good, but not an unqualified one. Singapore does have some democratic
forms; its parliament is elected for a five-year term, and the franchise
is universal. The fundamental point about elections is that they are
not so much about issues and individual policies, but about leaders and
basic political philosophy. And Singapore has not done all that badly
on this score. By way of contrast, the American Vice-President is a
man who can say "If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure."
Singapore's development as a democracy (such as it is) must take place
in the context of its overall development as a nation; as its people
and its economy mature, it must democratise, but that is a process which
spans decades, not years or months. To merely state that Singapore is
"hardly a democracy" is, with respect to your opinion (such as it is),
facile. What you must address if you wish to make a meaningful
statement is the question - 'Given Singapore's present condition, does
it have enough democracy, all things considered?' To illustrate my
point, we might compare the two communist giants - the former Soviet Union
and China. Russia is clearly more democratic today that China; the election
of Boris Yeltsin and his team of 'democrats' was hailed by many. But Russia
today is facing a severe economic contraction and hyperinflation. The Chinese
economy, on the other hand, has experienced double-digit growth for many
years. Perhaps the lesson we can draw from this is that democracy should
evolve in a country, and that developing states can have too much democracy.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asean