Category Archives: Democracy
Matthew Koh on Politics and the Ideals of Civil Service
Like this:
The rich are different to us…..they have more money
Yesterday I talked about the importance of democracy and inclusive political institutions to ensure inclusive economic institutions and prevent the adoption of policies that only benefit a narrow elite. These days one cannot pick up a government-owned newspaper or turn on the TV without being told that PAP’s goal is to build an inclusive society. However we will find it difficult to build an inclusive society whilst we continue to have non-democratic and non-inclusive political institutions.
The last few weeks we have been treated to tantalizing revelations about how important dynasties and family relationships are in China. In today’s FT there is an article about the downfall of Bo Xilai (Bo’s Downfall Sheds Light on Nepotism, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6be8993e-8962-11e1-bed0-00144feab49a.html#axzz1sUTm09iB). Both Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai are children of revolutionary generals and Bo’s father, Bo Yibo, was one of the “eight immortals” who ruled China behind the scenes in the 1980s and 1990s. Their other siblings all hold important posts in state-owned companies or have control companies that do business with the Chinese government. While Bo Xilai was the General Secretary of Chongqing his wife was a lawyer who set up and benefited from a number of business ventures both inside and outside China. In fact it was the threat that her financial dealings were to be exposed that allegedly led Gu Kailai to kill the British businessman Neil Hayward.
It is ironic that the Chinese Communist Party, which like the Soviet Communist Party, seized power with the tacit consent of the majority by promising to raise the masses out of poverty and eliminate inequality should be captured by a group of elite family dynasties. Recently Bloomberg reported that the 70 richest delegates to China’s National People’s Congress were worth an aggregate of $89.8 billion, or more than a billion dollars each.
“In other countries children of politicians often get opportunities that others don’t but the problem in China is there is absolutely no transparency and there is also a strong sense of entitlement, that this money is their birthright,” said one person with close ties to top political families in China.
“The problem for the Party is that exposing the Bo family businesses makes people realize that this is how it works for everyone.” (FT)
The importance in business of having family ties to or friendships with politicians is of course not a phenomenon that is confined to China. In Africa, Uhuru Kenyatta is reported by Forbes to be owner of Kenya’s biggest dairy company and one of Africa’s 40 richest residents. He served as deputy prime minister of Kenya and is the son of Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta. In the Mideast, the Bin Laden family made its riches through construction contracts for the Saudi government derived from the close relationship of Mohammed bin Laden and his sons with the Saudi royal family.* The former President of Egypt Hosni Mubarak’s family are reported to have accumulated a fortune of US$80 billion. The family of the deposed Tunisian strongman are estimated by Al-Jazeera to have taken US$17 billion with them when they left the country while the Gadhafi family wealth is estimated at a seemingly implausible $200 billion by the new regime.
However one should not be surprised at this. After all non-democratic political institutions tend to be extractive and frequently serve just to maintain the power and privileges of an elite, whether a group of families as in China or a hereditary aristocracy as in Europe. A vicious circle develops in which dominance of political power helps the elite to increase their economic power which in turn reinforces their political power. They have some interest in economic growth as long as it raises their wealth and they have to keep living standards for the masses either rising or not deteriorating enough to pose a threat to their rule. In this North Korea appears to be an exception, as the Kim dynasty is now into its third generation despite having reduced the bulk of the people to starvation and absolute destitution.
Here in Singapore “Inclusivity” will remain just another buzzword without full democratic institutions to back it up. As a former colony there was already a history of extractive political institutions. The struggle to build new democratic ones was not helped by one party walking out and handing a walkover to the other so early in our post-independence history.
Our new buzzword should be transparency. While we have a Code of Conduct for Ministers that requires them to disclose their income, assets and liabilities to the PM upon taking up office – this does not go far enough. I propose that we need to move to full annual public disclosure including the property and incomes of spouses and dependents. The same rules should be extended to senior civil servants, judges and senior management and directors of GLCs. This would only bring us in line with what public servants are required to do in democratic countries. For instance in the US, the Ethics Act requires annual disclosure of financial information by the president, vice president, members of Congress, federal judges, presidential appointees, and other officials and employees earning at or above a specified pay-scale or with policymaking responsibilities. There are similar laws in Canada and many European countries while the UK has announced plans to make public ministers’ tax returns.
* http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/to-do-deals-nothing-helps-like-friends-in-high-places/
In defence of my stand on the chilling effects of defamation laws.
This week several blogs seem to have succumbed to the “chilling effects” I described in my letter to the Wall Street Journal (bottom) and removed my original letter to the WSJ after MICA put up a rebuttal. Son of a Dud, Reinventing the Rice Bowl is not a political blog but as this debate affects all bloggers and goes to the heart of my integrity, I have reproduced the letter below.
Interestingly my letter has been republished by the Wall Street Journal in today’s print edition.
For some context please do look at the original WSJ article about Singapore (“Singapore Blog Flap Heats Up, which prompted my letter .
Whilst this may look like a debate with two sides to the issue being presented (and is definitely a notch above the level, of debate we get about our laws in our own country) I feel that the MICA letter was not really in defence of the defamation laws at all. MICA are simply wrong. This has been pointed out by many including bloggers such as Subra whose article supporting my stand can be seen on his blog , Article 14. here, http://article14.blogspot.com/2012/03/who-got-facts-wrong-kenneth-jeyaretnam.html
Why would MICA make such a foolish gaffe? The letter I wrote was a warning about the chilling effects of defamation laws. I didn’t make my letter personal. Some names attached to the facts had to be mentioned but no-one was derided. My letter was in defence of freedoms and against policies, a system and a mindset that hold us back. I feel the response however, was merely a thinly veiled excuse for a personal attack on me and my integrity and maybe that is how the facts got overlooked.
That smear campaign and the tactics to discredit me have been going on since day one. It is the continuation of the theme that started with the condolence letter I received from the son and continued with the father insulting a dead man and Dr Chee by calling them “Duds”. Post election I even watched a round-up on television where Gillian Koh of the Institute of Policy studies spoke of the Opposition as being divided into the approved Opposition, the Worker’s Party and the rest who were the Riff-Raff. Seriously? Riff Raff.
I later met Gillian at an official reception held by The American Embassy where we were both guests. She was quite apologetic and claimed that this was a phrase that LKY had used and she was merely parroting. Actually I have never heard of him using that specific phrase. Anyway the casual use of extremely derogatory terms is telling. These are the same people who tell us that in our Asian society politics works best when everyone aims to that Confucian ideal of junzi ( being a gentleman).
A a politician all these insults are water off a duck’s back. As all my blog readers know I responded by taking on the Moniker ‘Son of a Dud’ which is now the domain for this blog.
But to accuse me of misrepresenting facts is very damaging indeed. It goes to the heart of my professional status as a fit person to be registered with bodies such as the FSA. Anyone who reads the MICA letter should therefore take note that I am not the kind of person who would seek to misrepresent facts. It is seriously damaging to suggest so.
Whilst my letter was put up here and there by our MSM , MICA’s response went everywhere and I mean everywhere. They didn’t even use, ” MICA has accused KJ ” or “KJ allegedly misrepresented facts” . They all reported it as a straight ” Kenneth Jeyaretnam misrepresented….” Naturally being our Media not one of them contacted me for a response or to ask me if I wanted to rebut the MICA letter so only their view went out.
I stand by my letter . The PDF is a little hard on the eyes so I have reproduced it below in its original form except I have re-attached a link that the WSJ editor removed.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Dear Sir,
Thank you for highlighting the chilling effect the use of defamation laws has on freedom of expression in Singapore (“Singapore Blog Flap Heats Up,” World News: Asia, Mar. 2-4).
As The Wall Street Journal is aware, my father, Reform Party founder Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, was sued numerous times for defamation, culminating in being bankrupted over a few words in an article published in the Workers’ Party newspaper that he did not write and in a language (Tamil) whose written form he did not understand. This resulted in him losing his seat in Parliament and not being able to stand again before he died, which was of course the key objective. Since then it has been clear that defamation suits, which in Singapore are tried by a judge not a jury and in political cases have typically resulted in much higher damages than in non-political cases, are too useful a tool for the ruling party to give up.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has been quick to use the defamation tool himself in the past, having sued a number of international publications, including your newspaper. He has also sued numerous individuals, including my father. In the 2011 election Mr. Lee said that “in the heat of an election campaign…you will find unwise speeches being made, which is why sometimes, after elections, sometimes, after elections,you’ve got court cases to deal with.”something to the effect that the courts were there to deal with defamatory statements made in the heat of the election.
On the other hand, people are learning how to sidestep the restrictions. For example, in the Reform Party’s statement on the budget, I avoided the minefield of the PM’s wife’s appointment as head of Temasek but still questioned why senior management kept their jobs after the losses sustained in 2008.
Also encouraging is the way people came forward to donate money to pay off Democratic Party Secretary General Chee Soon Juan’s fine and keep him out of jail during the election. http://sonofadud.com/democracy/to-help-keep-my-political-rival-out-of-jail/
This gives some small hope that the tactics the People’s Action Party leaders employed in the past will no longer work.
Kenneth Jeyaretnam
Secretary General
The Reform Party
Singapore
Defamation Laws and Control of the Media as a Tool for Repression
Yesterday a letter of mine was published in the Wall Street Journal. This was prompted by two items, firstly an article WSJ published on the recent action taken against bloggers .
http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2012/03/01/debate-over-blog-limits-intensifies-in-singapore/ original WSJ article is here.
The second prompt for my letter was a memory of something the PM said during the election period. At the time I was too busy to deal with it. The link to the MSM article quoting the PM is here (http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1125213/1/.html).
The PM said “in the heat of an election campaign…you will find unwise speeches being made, which is why sometimes, after elections, you’ve got court cases to deal with”
Most of us read something more into this remark and the link between our courts and freedom of speech was brought back into play.
The other side of the coin of the use of defamation laws to silence diversity of opinion is the control of mainstream media by the state to constantly put out spin which cannot be challenged anywhere other than on the web.
The mainstream media can also exercise complete control by a blackout on organisations or individuals whose views challenge their own or interfere with the myth of homogeneity that they wish to propagate. It is relevant here that my letter was published in the WSJ because the MSM fails to print any of my letters or even issue clarifications of basic factual errors that they have made. If on the other hand I made these errors I would be threatened with defamation suits.
Since the early days of the election period there has been a very noticeable blackout on mention of my name and the activities of the Reform Party unless it reflects us in a negative light. This blackout has extended across all media including print, radio and TV and even state-controlled university forums. For example a lot of people wondered why I had not appeared on the CNA televised debate just before the elections, as though I had any choice in the matter! In fact I remonstrated and complained very strongly to CNA to no avail.
This is another very successful tool that the PAP employ. The government demands a right of reply in all media including international, a right which it denies to its own citizens in our domestic media.
This two-pronged attack of the fear of defamation suits on the one hand and complete control of media on the other results in a seamless homogeneity. This gives the appearance that as a nation we are all of one mind, as though the PAP and Singapore are one and the same thing.
As an economist I cannot stress too much that lack of a free market place of ideas will only lead to a lack of prosperity in the longer term. We are one of the few nations in this world where the older generation has worked itself to the bone to ensure that the younger generation has less. This is why you will see throughout this blog that even though I am writing as an economist I consistently bring up these issues of freedom.
Even in China they seem to have a firmer grasp of the importance of freedom than we do. For example when the authorities tried to suppress dissident artist Ai Wei through a tax bill, thousands of ordinary people sent in donations and he was able to pay off the fines thereby avoiding prison.
In my letter to the WSJ I said there are small signs that we are learning to sidestep the repression. To quote the letter,
“Also encouraging is the way people came forward to donate money to pay off Democratic Party Secretary General Chee Soon Juan’s fine and keep him out of jail during the election. This gives some small hope that the tactics the People’s Action Party leaders employed in the past will no longer work.”
I say, ‘some small hope’ because our gestures are still too small and wound up in the personalities involved. (I must digress here and say that I have always been grateful to James Gomez and the fund he organised in support of my father and I am not belittling that) We need to see grander personality-free gestures which support the basic underlying principles of freedom involved. This is also where the calls for ’Unity’ are falling short so far.
I wrote about that underlying principle of democracy last year when I wrote an article entitled “Why I paid good money to keep my political opponent out of jail” [http://sonofadud.com/2011/02/09/42/]. The opinion expressed in that article followed the spirit of the quote often incorrectly credited to Voltaire,
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Of Course CSJ was not my opponent so much as my colleague but I hope you’ll allow for poetic license in my desire to support the spirit of Voltaire.
The point is that we need to protect the basic principles, to fight for them, and to prevent their erosion. So whether we agree with Alex or hate his blog, we need to question why Alex was made an example of and not Scroobal (sic) who still evades detection.
(Many rumours surround Scroobal but the strongest suggest that he was last seen on a primitive flotation device, or that he is hiding at his brother’s house or that he is in fact on a fishing holiday in Malaysia.)
Or let us question why action was not taken against other prominent bloggers during the election. There is a prominent blog which appeared back in May 2011 and is one of the first ones that comes up during a casual google of certain names, recently in the news. No action has been taken. The blogger ends with,
By the way, to Director of the Criminal Investigation Department, Assistant Commissioner of Police Hoong Wee Teck who said after tracking down a blogger online that those who made remarks online and think that they can hide behind the Internet’s anonymity will be found out, please remember you work for the Singapore people, not PAP politicians.
So when we come up against the control in the new media and the main stream media let us double our efforts to express our views and find clever ways to avoid the pitfalls without succumbing to the climate of fear or adding to the homogeneity.
Tomorrow I will publish an exchange of letters I had with the Straits Times, on this topic which were ignored but are still current to this debate. I have a whole host of such letters and exchanges with MSM and others but I must save some of the more chilling examples for my book!
A committee that cannot calculate the median of the top 1000 is either deliberately misleading the public or incompetent.
Happy New Year!
The following is a Press release I wrote in my capacity as SG of The Reform Party. The more I think about it the more it concerns me that the Committee could make such a fundamental error in their understanding of median calculations. You’ll find my explanation of the true figure in the Press release below under the heading,
“The committee said that with the discount, the pay is actually closer to the top 1,400th earner.”
Wrong! The median of the top 1000 is the mid-point between the 500th and the 501st earner. Applying a 40% discount to the amount earned by the 500th earner does not mean that the resultant salary would necessarily be close to that earned by the 1,400th earner or even the 700th earner (which is what 40% more than 500 comes to ). ………”
Did the committee actually deliberately attempt to mislead the public? At the time that I wrote my Press release I thought not – but now I’m not so sure. Maybe when feedback came back to them that linking Ministerial pay with the top 0.02% of earners in the country would send the wrong message they sought to downplay it. The figure 1,400th sounds so much better than 501st or even 700th. The only other explanation for the fundamental mistake is that they don’t understand the Math. We need to be seriously concerned about this. If a civil servant heading an enquiry produced this type of error anywhere else then heads would roll. In may opinion it goes to the heart of credibility of the whole report.
Those of you who are interested can find an earlier release on the same subject published in May soon after the announcement was made where I made proposals some of which have been picked up by the Committee . http://thereformparty.net/about/press-releases/the-reform-party%E2%80%99s-response-to-the-setting-up-of-a-committee-to-review-ministerial-pay/
Anyway please do read on and let me have your views.
Press Release
The Reform Party is disappointed by the report of the Ministerial Salary Review Committee released today. The Prime Minister first announced that a review of ministerial salaries would be commissioned as a response to what was seen as a critical criticism of the Government during GE2011. In short it was a public relations exercise. Judging by the report issued by the committee today, the government may be in danger of scoring an own goal. The overall impression is that the pay review recommendation will entrench the public view of Ministers as overpaid and the PAP leadership as an uncaring, elite out of touch with the needs of the majority of Singaporeans.
We feel it was a mistake to peg the salaries to top earners and by installing a cut in basic salaries the committee is admitting that ministers were previously overpaid. Despite Mr Ee’s description of Singapore as a ‘rock’ with a unique set of conditions he cannot justify the continued disparity between ministerial pay here and that of any other advanced Nation. The amount that Ministers will take home is still obscene and the recommendations will only encourage divisive policies. The committee was not open, sufficiently independent nor transparent in its workings nor did it recommend complete transparency. The methodology is suspect, the statistics are erroneous and the weightings are not disclosed.
We understand that the Committee is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand their recommendations need to placate the public anger over ministerial salaries and so appear to make the PAP elite seem responsive to the voting public come GE 2016. On the other hand they need to continue to make the government political service an attractive and fulfilling career move for the ‘talented.’
Basic misunderstanding of median calculations
We will look at some individual areas of the report and Mr Ee’s preamble in more detail below. But before we go into that we would like to draw attention to a fundamental beginner’s mathematical error made by the committee. According to today’s report by CNA,
“The committee said that with the discount, the pay is actually closer to the top 1,400th earner.”
Wrong! The median of the top 1000 is the mid-point between the 500th and the 501st earner. Applying a 40% discount to the amount earned by the 500th earner does not mean that the resultant salary would necessarily be close to that earned by the 1,400th earner or even the 700th earner (which is what 40% more than 500 comes to ). It would depend on the distribution of incomes between the 500th and the 700th earner. A reasonable inference resulting from this kind of elementary statistical mistake leads one to doubt the quality of the statistics used by the committee to underpin the pegging of the salaries and the Key Performance Indicators for bonus awards. We cannot believe that the committee would deliberately be disingenuous or mislead the public with such an erroneous statement so we must assume that this kind of fundamental error is merely indicative of the ‘top talent’ that the government attracts.
The three guiding principles
Mr. Ee describes the three main principles which he kept in mind whilst producing the report as being
1. a desire to keep ministerial salaries competitive in order to attract the right calibre of talent
2. to safeguard the ethos of sacrifice entailed by public service , hence the discount
3. to produce a clean wage system with no hidden perks
In an interview with Today newspaper in May 2009 I said that absolute power doesn’t produce corruption as generally believed but rather leads to a government of ‘yes men’, which is flabby thinkers, devoid of new ideas. To quote from that interview, “The problem with the one-party system is not corruption – at least not in Singapore because the Government is not corrupt – but it leads to a society closed to new ideas, with too many “yes men”.
Nearly three years later this essential problem has not changed. It is not the salaries that are attracting or keeping away talent, it is a society closed to new ideas that 50 years of PAP rule has produced. Pegging salaries to high earners will only entrench the dearth of talent bringing in as it does all those motivated primarily by concern for their pockets. Within the PAP the cadre system reinforces this by making those who want to advance to ministerial rank dependent on the top leadership rather than on election by their peers. Outside the GRC system and other insults to democracy have long ensured walkovers for those who stand under the PAP banner. In GE 2011 we witnessed Chan Chun Sing move from being a General to being a Minister without one vote ever being cast in his favor by the public who pay his salary.
Principles one and two contradict each other. Public service is either public service and our leaders are servant leaders or they are in it for the money and their salaries need to keep pace with the top 500 earners. A discount on the 500th highest earner isn’t a sacrifice by any definition that any ordinary Singaporean could relate to and to call it a sacrifice is deeply insensitive in the current economic climate.
Principle number three can only be satisfied with complete transparency over actual amounts as well as weightings and statistics used. We see no reason at all why there should not be complete disclosure of ministerial pay including transparency of bonus payments received. This transparency should also extend to ministerial assets, investments and directorships, including a requirement that conflicts of interest be avoided by the use of a blind trust. If the government believes the amounts are reasonable and justified they should have no trouble declaring them.
No qualitative change
In any case the new method of calculating ministers’ salaries by using the median earnings of the top 1,000 earners who are Singapore citizens and then applying a 40% discount represents no qualitative change from the previous method. It is still not clear whether earnings mean purely returns to labour (wages and salaries) or also capital returns (capital gains, dividends and share options).
In any case the resultant benchmark still leaves ministerial salaries pegged at the level of the top 0.02% of Singaporeans. The committee has shot itself in the foot with this visible demonstration of how out of touch the PAP elite are with the other 99.98% of the population that lives on this ‘rock’. They are in effect saying that only the top 500 earners matter. It is the financial version of the cadre system and indicative of a fascist mindset that believes some classes of people matter more than others.
In 1994 the government introduced the proposal to peg salaries to top earners to attract talent and to prevent corruption. Public servants should not be corrupt and should not need to be paid to keep their fingers out of the till and in any case there has been corruption in the civil service despite this. The only safeguard against corrupt practices is openness and transparency.
Encourages divisive policies
It also gives Ministers a powerful incentive to pursue policies that increase the earnings of the top 500 even if this comes at the expense of the incomes of median Singaporeans. An example would be the deliberate policy of allowing the virtually unlimited import of cheap foreign labour which, by compressing wages for those in competition with foreign workers, has swelled the profits of companies operating in Singapore. This would be reflected in the higher pay, bonuses and dividends of their top Singaporean management and the Singaporean owners of companies. In turn, on the committee’s formula this would justify a higher level of ministerial salaries. So it encourages the government to pursue divisive policies that do not benefit ordinary Singaporeans. The Reform Party recognizes that profitability is necessary and that creativity and innovation should be encouraged. We also have no predetermined view on an acceptable level of income inequality. However gains in profitability should be the result of higher productivity and new products rather than by reducing the wages or increasing the squeeze of middle and lower-income Singaporeans.
Ministers can piggy back on genuine wealth creators
Benchmarking ministerial salaries in this manner also allows ministers to piggy-back on the hard work of those in the private sector who are genuine wealth-creators and even to raise the salaries of those in the public sector (both civil servants and executives in Temasek and other GLCs) to justify their own salary increases. The PAP’s record in raising the median incomes of Singaporeans normalized by hours worked over the last ten to fifteen years has been mediocre at best. Our output per hour worked continues to languish near the bottom of the developed world. Yet our ministerial salaries will, even after the pay cuts, be hugely out of line with those paid in countries with a more successful economic track record on productivity. The PM will still earn, in basic salary, about five times as much as the US President or the German Chancellor, yet Singapore’s output per hour worked has increased at only about 50% of the US rate over the last ten years.
Benchmark to Key Performance Indicators
The committee took 7 months to produce the report. Yet, the decision to use a variety of KPI’s was already recommended by the Reform Party in our press release of 23 May 2011 (http://thereformparty.net/about/press-releases/the-reform-party%E2%80%99s-response-to-the-setting-up-of-a-committee-to-review-ministerial-pay/). We called for a much lower basic salary and a variable component which was based on a much wider set of Key Performance Indicators than the GDP growth rate. The GDP growth rate is an unsuitable performance indicator, which can be manipulated by the government through an influx of foreign workers or overly generous tax incentives for foreign investment.
We are thus pleased that the Committee has taken on board part of our recommendation and that the National Bonus will be pegged to the growth rate of real median incomes as well as the growth rate of real median incomes of the twentieth percentile as well as GDP growth rate. However we are concerned that the Committee has not disclosed the weights to be used for the different indicators as well as the fact that the production of the statistics used to calculate the bonus remain under the government’s control.
Lack of credibility
The Reform Party therefore calls for the privatization of the Statistics Department so as to make its independence from the government more credible. We also believe that the use of GDP growth rates as a criterion should be abandoned and that median incomes should be normalized by dividing them by hours worked to get a better measure of productivity growth. In addition it is not clear what will happen when the growth rates of these indicators is negative. Will there be a high water mark, like there is with hedge funds? Will ministers have previous bonuses deducted in these circumstances?
Conclusion
This report and the recommendations demonstrate that the government is not concerned about the welfare of ordinary Singaporeans and sees itself as a class apart. It demonstrates not only the uncaring, elite face of the PAP leadership that lives in an Ivory tower but shows how divisions and fault lines in our society are caused by the government and its tired old elitist policies. Tax payers have no reason to celebrate.
Not in My Parliament
Not in My Parliament. (NMP).
Today we learn that a record number of nominations have been put up for selection for the nine available places for Nominated members of Parliament. (The NMP scheme)
I’ll tell you where I am straight away. I even find it hard to write the phrase Nominated Member of Parliament. It sounds so ridiculous to my ears. It is an oxymoron unless you are unfortunate enough to still be living under a communist regime where it presumably makes perfect sense. In fact, functional representatives nominated or selected by different organisations were used in Hong Kong in the first iteration of the post 1997 Assembly because of Beijing’s aversion to direct elections. Since then the Hong Kong Assembly has been steadily moving towards being wholly directly elected overwhelmingly supported by the people despite opposition from the powers in Beijing. Nominated Members of Parliament and increasing the number of nominated members represents a step backwards for Singapore and a step away from democracy.
Isn’t the whole point about members of parliament that they are elected and therefore have a mandate of the people and are accountable to their constituency? They have a responsibility to the citizens at large to elect laws into being, balance the budget and so forth. Parliament is a serious business. Should we really be running a side-show inside?
The way the State directed media is hyping the record number of applicants is fishy to say the least. Ironically this attempt to create a buzz has unwittingly provided the kind of truth that we rarely see in our papers with all the ‘experts’ agreeing that parliament doesn’t function as it should and can’t hold a decent debate. The Straits Times kicked off the fun fair with Professor of law Thio Li-ann who said, “it could be because in an increasingly re-politicised environment, there is great interest in channels of participation in public affairs, which is a way of keeping the government to account as well as to promote viewpoint diversity”
The applicants comprise those who have organisations behind them and those who are completely independent. How can only nine people with partisan and sectarian agendas representing only themselves promote any meaningful diversity? As they cannot vote and have no mandate to represent the people how can they hold the government to account? What professor Thio is actually saying here is that Parliament is not to be looked to for promoting diverse viewpoints and needs nine selected bystanders to keep it to account. It is also ridiculous to suggest that a PAP dominated panel process would result in diversity of selection, as was evidenced with the last batch. She is clearly showing contempt for the democratic process and the role of the Opposition, hardly surprising as she herself is a former NMP.
She then has the temerity to say, “They can get to the merits (of the debate) without being concerned about grandstanding or … ‘playing politics’.” So there you are Mr Prime Minister. All along you and your parliamentary colleagues have been obstructing the path to the merit of the debate with all your grandstanding and ‘playing politics’. Following the Prof to her logical conclusion we don’t need Parliament or elections, just people like her getting straight down to it. We wouldn’t want to inconvenience her path to running the country with any of that playing and grandstanding.
In fact a system of representatives of groups of people (lawyers, tradesmen, plebs) originated with the Romans and this was carried over to Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany as the bedrock of Fascist government. The idea is that certain groups of people are more important, more worthy, more equal than others and they get a voice. In modern-day Singapore the NTUC is a good example with several MP’s already in parliament plus their chosen applicants for the NMP positions.
In short the NMP scheme undermines the fundamental principle of ‘one man one vote’.
The second apologist canvassed was Bridget Welsh of SMU who said that she see the incoming NMPs, “drawing on their expertise to enhance the debate and offer alternatives on national issues.” It is good to see that she is in agreement with the Prof and also believes that debate in parliament is ineffectual and flat. The good and great nine contestants who make the final cut are needed to enhance the debate and presumably get a Simon Cowell recording contract as well.
Like Thio she is also completely ignorant of the function of parliament when she talks about ‘drawing on expertise’. Again a fascist viewpoint suggesting as it does that rule of the people by the people should be replaced with rule of the people by the experts. Parliament is not about being an expert. They summon experts, they hire and consult. They have the civil service. Ms Welsh’ assertion fits in perfectly with the PAP’s view repeated ad nauseam for the last 50 years that the ordinary people aren’t ready, aren’t up to it, or are just too daft to act in their own best interests.
There is a system for sectarian/ partisan/special interest voices and it is lobby groups and civil society activists. In a truer democracy, diversity and alternate views would be represented by the balance of MP’s from different parties accurately representing the balance of their constituencies and that balance would keep the government to account. We can keep the government to account in a variety of other ways and one would be to install a parliamentary ombudsman.
We do need to start putting in place the building blocks of democracy if we are ever to develop towards being a fully functioning, fair democracy. The NCMP scheme acts as a kind of apprenticeship and is therefore useful for training up parliamentarians for the alternative Parties. The NMP scheme is more akin to a, ‘bring your son to work day”. And here’s the rub. I’ve yet to see any NMP actually go on to stand for election and fight to gain a mandate of the people or even aspire to become an MP, so it is completely misleading to bill this as some kind of ‘politicisation.’
I started this article by saying the amount of hype being given to this is suspicious. Whether you object to the scheme as a perversion of democracy or agree with Dr Tan Cheng Bock who worries that the scheme will harm our diversity and bring in people with hidden agendas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Iji6RqbMAw much of Singapore will jump on the bandwagon and celebrate the number of applicants as a marvellous sign of civil activism.
We will see a lot of commentary on this subject in the coming days. Most of it will echo the language we saw used by the talking heads in today’s ST article. The key words and phrases will be diversity, representation, new society or re-politicised society, strengthening, or enhancing the debate, alternative views, voices, balance, and accountability. The net effect is an attempt to convince you that the NMP scheme can do everything that the people sought from an Opposition force in parliament. It is an attempt to neutralise the demand for change, the demand to be heard and the demand for accountability. It is a magician’s sleight of hand in a conjuring trick. “Watch the pretty girl in the fishnet tights whilst I stuff the rabbit into the hat. Hey presto I made the rabbit disappear!”
Dear Santa, I don’t like the cadre and secret cabal I got last year. Next year I’d like some openness, competition and democracy instead.
Recently the PAP held their first Party convention post election allowing us to scrutinise the cadre system and the iron grip on power that it provides for. AlexAuwrote about it in his blog (http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/four-barriers-to-remaking-the-pap/) where he highlighted his opinion that the cadre system is one of four main reasons why the PAP would fail to learn any lessons from their setback in GE 2011. The rest of his reasons would be worthy of discussion in a separate article in their own right. However as we look back at 2011 I will concern myself with a closer look at the cadre system and how it affects your ricebowl.
It is of course not only the PAP who employs the cadre system. For the benefit of those who may be unfamiliar with the term, a cadre system is one in which the leadership of the Party selects certain members to be cadres. The cadres are then the only members who have voting rights and they elect the leadership. It is of course a completely closed system in which the leadership ensures its position by only selecting as cadres people who will be loyal to them. The cadre vote the leaders who select the cadre who vote the leaders who select ………………..and so on.
In her 1971 political science thesis, “Singapore’s People’s Action Party: Its History, Organisation and Leadership (Oxford University Press)”, Ms Pang Cheng Lian, who sits on the board of Temasek Cares, describes elections to the CEC by the cadres as a “closed system”, in which “the cardinals appoint the pope and the pope appoints the cardinals”. Most of us Singaporeans know this system is employed by the men in white. Sadly, as far as I am aware, every other political party in Singapore employs a variant of the cadre system. This includes the Workers Party, the SDP, the NSP and the SPP. I have no information about the other new parties, the Justice Party the USD (does anyone remember them? ) and the new parties still to come in 2012 but I believe it is safe to assume they all employ or will employ the same system.
Just as Alex believes the cadre system may explain why the PAP is incapable of learning new lessons so I believe that adherence to the cadre system may be partly responsible for the agonisingly slow progress of the Opposition parties and the dearth of new ideas or renewal. It is certainly the culprit behind the endemic Party hopping which discredits all Opposition equally and has nothing to do with renewal of ideas. Party hopping is the same old faces, with the same old ideas but with new titles. It would take a visionary to develop a party with a radically different structure. Or maybe a democracy veteran with no time left to lose who, looking back on his life’s work, realised that closed organisations can’t give birth to Open Societies. Yes, The Reform Party is the only political party in Singapore which is a democracy since it alone does not have a cadre system to protect the leadership and all members have voting rights.
The cadre system has its origins in the Marxist concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “vanguard”. This meant that only a small elite group of individuals were fit to lead the Communist Party and the nation. The masses were not ready for democracy and it was better that they be led by those who knew best. The Communist ideal was one of eventual full democracy once the masses had been educated enough. Leninargued (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism) the ideal vanguard party would be one where membership was completely open and its workings transparent, the “entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience” (from What is to be Done?). He seems to be acknowledging the benefits of competition though cannot speak its name when he goes on to say that a party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that “the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every act of a party man in the political field brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the “survival of the fittest”.” This party would be completely open to the public eye as it conducted its business which would mainly consist of educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled in them.
The cadre system went on to be adopted by both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party and by many other Maoist revolutionary parties throughout the world. Lenin originally intended it to deal with the problems of controlling and maintaining the secrecy of the Bolshevik party which was seeking to overthrow the Czarist regime in Russia, in the face of infiltration by the Okhrana, the Czar’s secret police. Ironically the goal of preventing infiltration, this time by Communist agents, is the oft-cited justification given by the PAP leadership as to why the cadre system was introduced. If so it does not justify its retention today when there is no longer a Communist threat. Even if there were the ideal way of combating it would surely be through more democracy not less.
Of course the Communist roots of the PAP are not a secret. This is why the arbitrary arrest and detention of certain individuals on the grounds that they were Marxists and that they represented a secretive organisation is particularly ironic.
The fact that the PAP continue to maintain a cadre system shows how out-of-step they are with modern democratic parties and how little understanding they have of the benefits of competition and transparency and accountability. While they maintain a closed system which ensures that only people, who hold the leadership’s views, whether out of principle or self-interest, get to vote, it is difficult to see how any renewal can take place. Perhaps it is too much to expect the ordinary people of Singapore to understand the need for multi-million dollar salaries for ministers. They are afflicted with the false consciousness of a belief in democratic values and the equality of individuals. You need elite (the cadres) who are sufficiently intelligent not to fall prey to false consciousness to understand why servant leaders need millions of dollars as remuneration. Hopefully the review board will be able to explain it to us shortly.
However the other parties inSingaporeclearly feel the same way as the PAP that democracy is a dangerous idea and power should not be entrusted to the ordinary members. Or they merely aspire to be the PAP and adhere slavishly to their ideas and methods-PAP LITE, if you will. Whatever the motivation, all of them maintain some sort of cadre system. The argument often given for the necessity of this is that it leads to “stability”. This is just another facet of the argument that democracy leads to gridlock and that the people are too short-sighted or stupid to exercise power responsibly. Even if a so-called extreme faction managed to be elected to the leadership, like the AWARE situation, ultimately democracy ensures competition. If the new leadership fails to reflect the will of its members or is unsuccessful at winning electoral office then it can be replaced.
It is genuinely worrying that so much of the Opposition shares the same mindset as the PAP. This begs the question as to whether their leadership are genuinely interested in change or representation or whether it is merely power that they seek.
To recap on what I said earlier, the only party that does not have a cadre system is the Reform Party. The RP is thus the only genuinely democratic party. Instead of a closed system, the RP CEC is elected by the Party Conference which is made up of delegates. Everyone, provided they fulfil basic criterion, gets a vote. As a result the Party is the purest expression of the will of its members. The Party Conference promotes a free market in ideas as any member can put forward a motion. As it forces anyone running for office to be responsive to the views of the members, it represents the implementation at the Party level of the principles we are fighting for at the national level. We refer to this as Conference being Sovereign. It is clear that when JBJ set up the RP he wanted to have nothing to do with secretive cabals and backroom deals and start a party that would exemplify the virtues of democracy. He learnt from bitter experience, when he was ousted as SG of the WP, how dangerous an unrepresentative clique is. In a way a genuinely democratic party was his legacy to the nation and serves as a model of what we need to see at the national level.
Many are scared away from joining the RP because of the lack of a cadre system which they feel makes it inherently unstable. Certainly its first three years have not been an easy ride. But if democracy itself is something we seek and value then a truly democratic Party is a necessity. As the RP is not a good long term bet for ironclad power, it is less attractive as an option to those who are power hungry or egotists. Why go to all that trouble to infiltrate a party to make it less radical, less viable as an agent of change, when you may be voted out in 2 years time and the Party may simply revert to its former state? This is what we saw happen with Aware. A group of women cleverly saw that getting like minded members in the organisation in sufficient numbers was key to changing its identity. But ultimately Aware was strong enough and its original ideology and had been in existence long enough to shake off that challenge.
No doubt many initially joined RP in error not clearly realising the ramifications of the democratic nature of the constitution. What a shock it must have been to them to realise that Conference is Sovereign and yes, they would actually need to get a majority vote from ordinary members to change the constitution and bring in a cadre system. How much easier it was to simply do a deal for power and leadership elsewhere in exchange for sabotage. And how much more effective to do it in collaboration with the State media, ever hungry as they are for dirt.
But here is the surprising thing. RP as an organisation , as Aware did before them, similarly survived with its democratic nature intact and went on to field 11 candidates in GE 2011. So maybe democracy is not the greatest weakness of a political party but its greatest strength in the long term. Certainly many commentators like Alex are now seeing the cadre system as responsible for hampering progress within the PAP and its greatest obstacle going forward.
What next in 2012? Well the PAP cadres have concluded their convention and business goes on as usual within their closed circles. There has been a lot of talk of Opposition parties joining forces in a grand coalition as well as of new parties being set up. However the important question for voters should be whether any of the parties are genuinely democratic. I would not wish the RP to merge with another party for example, unless that party were also to adopt a democratic constitution and abandon the cadre system. My fervent wish for 2012 is that any new party set up will be Democratic and that through openness and with competition fostering progress we will go forwards as a Nation and not backwards. We need to change the old Singapore/PAP influenced Model so that we can have a better future. As always I am daring to imagine a new rice bowl for an advanced Asian nation.
Like this:
Let’s not kid ourselves! Mr Low is The Leader of The Opposition officially, unofficially and any which way you like.
I read yesterday that MP Mr. Low Thia Kiang had refused to accept the title of “Unofficial” Leader of the Opposition. Good for him and I fully support his position. Opposition – Singapore’s 10 letter Dirty Word. Only here could “The Opposition” be a term which is unmentionable or in Mandarin, “jian bu de guang”.
Speaking to The Straits Times, Low said: “Let’s not kid ourselves. Either you have a leader of the opposition, or you do not have it. There’s no need to have an unofficial leader of the opposition.”
To ask Low to accept the title of unofficial leader is an insult and symptomatic of this government’s attitude to the whole concept of democracy and a two-party system. Let’s remember after JBJ was made an NCMP (and his view on how the PAP won Cheng San from him is clearly recorded) the NCMP salary was cut from 100% to 10% of a normal MP’s salary. This is more of the same.
In most democracies the leader of the leading Opposition party in the legislature enjoys not only a title but a special status and funding. In the United States for example, the title is of Minority Leader of the House or Senate. Our government system is based on the UK system and there and in Canada the term used is, “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.” The reason the largest Opposition Party is given such an honorific title is to demonstrate that although those parliamentarians may be sitting the other side of the House and against the government seating it remains loyal to the Crown and thus the State. It is possible nay absolutely necessary to be Opposition and patriotic.
In the UK, as well as holding a title, the Leader of the Opposition has been paid a salary above the MP’s salary since 1937 and receives almost as much as a Cabinet Minister. In addition he has the use of an office and an official car of equivalent specification. Opposition parties are also provided with funding for research and a staff so that they are not theoretically at a disadvantage compared with Ministers who have the assistance of the Civil Service. In Britain funds known as ‘short money’ are allocated according to the number of votes each Party gets at election. Labour currently receives about £15,000 per seat plus £30 for each 200 votes plus £700,000 for the leader of the Opposition’s office. The leader of the Opposition his chief whip and two staff also receive additional salaries from public funds.
A similar arrangement applies in most other advanced or First World countries where The Leader of the Opposition may even have an official residence. Additionally, Leaders and shadow cabinet members have privileges not always granted to members of smaller parties. These include meeting with visiting foreign dignitaries being assigned to speak first after the government and receiving more time in question periods than other opposition parties. Rather like some of the roles assigned our elected President. In fact our strong National desire for an official opposition and a check on the PAP was reflected in the recent EP election.
The Opposition in any First World nation or true democracy is official because it has a very real task. It has the responsibility of keeping the government in check. More importantly the Official Opposition maintains a shadow cabinet with MPs who often have the same portfolios as actual ministers. If the government loses the confidence of the House or the Official Opposition party wins a general election, the party is ready to become the government. And this is why it is known as a ‘government in waiting’ which is a recognised and honourable role.
Back on the 6th September 1999 my late father had spoken on parliamentary democracy in parliament. Those of you who are interested may like to read his speeches and writing which can be found on page 126 of “Make it Right for Singapore”
He starts his response to a government motion by saying,
“ Mr Speaker, Sir, did I misread the motion on the Order Paper? I thought we were going to debate parliamentary democracy. But we heard this afternoon, Mr Speaker Sir, hardly anything about parliamentary democracy. We have been treated to speeches after speeches of how good the previous Parliaments have been, how effective, how they have men of integrity and so on and so on but not a word about parliamentary democracy except, I must hasten to add for the speech from Mr Chiam See Tong from the Opposition bench.”
He goes on to suggest that the PAP congratulatory motion be re-worded to read, “…regrets the persistent attempts and measures of the governments since 1965 to impede the growth of genuine parliamentary democracy and urges the present government to take such measures as may be necessary to facilitate the growth of genuine parliamentary democracy in Singapore.”
It was this continued failure of Singapore to make any real headway towards a parliamentary democracy which prompted him 37 years after his political debut, to found the Reform Party to fight specifically for constitutional reform. I can’t imagine what it has been like for Low the last 20 or 30 years. I have found myself defending my view that they term Opposition is an honourable and vital one for only three years now and it is exhausting.
In 2009 in an interview with Today Paper I was quoted as saying my aim in standing was to normalise democracy. Late in GE 2011 Mr Low stated that his aim was to “institutionalise democracy.” That may sound like the same thing but the two are different albeit working towards the same end goal. By ‘normalising ‘ democracy I mean that I want: to rid the word Opposition of its unmentionable connotations, to make party, ideological or philosophical allegiance an everyday action, to encourage normal citizens to join a party and stand for election and actually get everyone normalised to getting out and voting. The success of that aim was shown in a slew of new faces, in that we almost had no walkovers and in the way the following EP election was conducted.
Of course supporting the term Opposition was only part of it. I also had to advocate for the very term ‘Democracy’ itself -another dirty word in Singapore. And of course I had to present the alternative view point every time the term “Westminster style politics” and gridlock was brought up as a scare tactic. I continually bring up the Privy Council judgement to those who continue to refer to my father as a criminal and I think you all know my stand and support for Dr Chee just before GE when it looked as though he might be imprisoned.
We all of us need to entrench, respect and encourage our Opposition. In short without an Official Opposition we can’t claim to have parliamentary democracy.
Whilst we move inexorably towards a true parliamentary democracy we must be aware of the pitfalls. An Opposition which forms a government in waiting can actually be a charade when the Opposition is to all extents and purposes the same as the government. Here in Singapore we must also be particularly vigilant against tokenism or a tame “opposition” created by the PAP in order to create an impression of democratic debate.
We must also beware PAP approved opposition ( i.e. all the ones not referred to as Riff-Raff by MM Lee a derogatory term repeated on live TV recently by Gillian Koh from IPS) and selected rather than elected MPs as embodied in our now totally unnecessary NMP scheme or in the case of walkover wards.
Along with the progress we have already made we can see more clearly the barriers to parliamentary democracy that need to be dismantled. Insulting Mr Low is one part of it. The impossibility of raising sufficient funds, the use of the courts, the ISA, the restriction on freedoms of assembly, the GRC system, the state controlled media. We all have a long way to go with our different approaches but even though in GE2011 didn’t open the floodgates we are seeing a clear crack in the dam. That crack will leak and the trickle will turn into a stream.
Why I paid good money to help keep my political rival out of jail.
I recently found the following article on the popular alternative political website The Temasek Review. Written by blogger Gen Ji, it deals with Dr Chee’s conviction.
“….. the deafening silence from the other local opposition parties with regards to the verdict. Unlike the chorus of condemnation and messages of solidarity that one might expect to find in other countries, the lack of response from the other local opposition parties is a testament to how poisonous the relations are between the opposition parties in Singapore. So far, only Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the youngest son of the illustrious and noted democracy advocate J.B Jeyaretnam (who was himself extremely close to the SDP Secretary-General) and current leader of the Reform Party has spoken out against the ruling and pledged funds to keep him out.” *
On January 31st, I had written a post on my personal Facebook page entitled, “Here’s why I’ll be contributing to Soon Juan’s fund!” **. I had expected that this would act as a catalyst for other Opposition leaders to follow suit but I was wrong. Unlike the blogger quoted above, I see no evidence that the silence is a testament to how poisonous the relations are between the opposition parties. However, the failure to respond clearly opens the opposition up to criticisms of poisonous behaviour and is damaging to all of us in many ways.
The motives for the deafening silence are a matter for speculation but we cannot rule out the fear factor. There is of course an ever present, substantiated fear that by showing unity and commenting on the sentence we will be accused of questioning the integrity of our judiciary or even of scandalising them. Alan Shadrake’s recent conviction is a perfect example of why you wouldn’t want to do that.
Action for defamation is also a very powerful whip for authoritarian governments to crack. It is a line drawn in sand on the beach. With each tide it becomes harder to see where that line is drawn but it is there and we prefer not to move rather than to risk unwittingly crossing it. The penalties are too severe.
My own father was very familiar with those penalties. He lost his profession, his place in parliament and was subsequently bankrupted, despite a Privy Council ruling reversing the judgement. After his death and at his funeral thousands of people expressed their regret and feelings of guilt at not standing up for him when he was alive. We seem to have learnt nothing from our history.
Even the so called free and independent press of advanced democratic nations succumbs to this fear of defamation suit and self censors rather than run foul. The governments of Sovereign Nations are usually swift to act when restrictions are placed on the free flow of their goods across borders, contrary to the rights enshrined by the WTO. Restriction on the free sale of newspapers and their advertising is a basic restriction on trade yet the media corporations receive no support from the trade delegations in their respective governments. Is it any wonder then, that we find it so hard to combat the restrictions?
One reason Parties may be silent is the hope that if they shut their eyes and hide under the bed covers, the bogey man may pass them by. This is a foolish hope. One thing we know from history is that when you sit silently by whilst the authorities take your neighbour away, they will come for you next. Each time there will be less resistance, fewer voices to speak out.
It matters not a jot whether you support the SDP, (Dr Chee’s Party) or whether you like or dislike him personally or indeed whether like me you are a fiercely competitive political rival. What matters is that we have free and fair elections here in Singapore and to do that we need to uphold the principles of Voltaire often paraphrased as “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ~
We must continue to demand those basic freedoms of expression guaranteed in nearly every other advanced Nation in the world. Absolute, unchallenged authority leads to a government of ‘yes men’, flabby thinking and decisions hurried through parliament without proper debate. And without freedom of expression we are prevented from putting up an effective challenge to those ‘yes men’.
So if the rest of the world is silent, if the foreign Press self censors, if our own Press is State controlled, who will speak for us? We must speak for ourselves. We cannot rely on International NGO’s. Our only defence is openness and strength in numbers. We must show that the will for democracy comes from within. If the other Secretary Generals and Party Leaders were to join together and donate to the fund thereby keeping Dr Chee out of jail, we would send a very clear message indeed. I also call on my colleagues to come together and to pen and send out a joint statement. Before it is too late! This is a golden opportunity for all The Opposition parties to demonstrate unity of purpose whilst maintaining our individual ideologies and present a real challenge to the behemoth that is the PAP.
*http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/02/04/noted-democracy-icon-dr-chee-soon-juan-is-going-to-prison
**http://www.facebook.com/#!/kenneth.jeyaretnam/posts/150637384989692
