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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:
You’ll be dead before you can spend it! Singaporeans enter the 20th year of unnecessary, self -imposed austerity.
Watching the Euro-zone unravel has so far almost been like a moral fable for Singaporeans. Be honest! Who out there isn’t feeling a sense of Schadenfreude? The original Greek or Irish problem on the periphery of Europe and investor flight from European sovereign debt has spread via Spain and Portugal, to Italy and even France, Austria, the Netherlands and Finland.
This moral fable could be said to illustrate the dangers of profligate governments who have bought electoral popularity with populist policies and high levels of welfare spending and are now paying the price. As an economist I would say that the only certain moral to this story is, ‘beware the folly of entering a currency union without a fiscal union’. The rest is open to debate.
In a desperate attempt to stave off default and unlock emergency funding from the ECB and latterly the IMF, those beleaguered states have agreed to scale back their generous social welfare programmes, increase existing taxes and impose new taxes. All of this results in an externally imposed, endless round of “austerity” budgets. As I write it is not only the financial axe that is being wielded. The Euro-zone governments are discussing a solution which will essentially involve a loss of political and economic sovereignty by the countries facing insolvency. This prompted one friend to say that the Germans, by having the most competitive exchange rate when entering the Euro (coupled with a high level of productivity and skilled labour) have achieved a mastery over Europe where Hitler failed.
However, the solution being imposed on the weaker economies would be likely to condemn them to years of lost output and slow growth as compared with higher levels of output and employment in the stronger countries. Without a true political union, which is unlikely to be acceptable to the richer Euro-zone countries such as Germany, it is difficult to see how the currency union can survive longer term.
According to the popular logic of the anti-populists such policies as free health care, free education and old age pensions, lead to a lazy workforce that demands uncompetitive levels of wages. Thankfully for us our wise government has never fallen for the easy route of giving the people what they want (or need or deserve). On the contrary they have ensured that Singaporeans have been kept on an austerity diet almost since independence. Pity the struggling European economies but don’t forget to look in your own backyard when you shed a tear.
We have very little welfare spending (except the ‘ give-aways’ at election time when the government throws around money away in an untargeted manner) and one of the lowest expenditures as a proportion of GDP in the developed world on education and health. Let me repeat that. One of the lowest public expenditures as a proportion of GDP in the developed world on education and health. As we know the expenditure in terms of private money coming from your own pocket is very high indeed with exam success being directly correlated to expenditure on tuition. In Singapore we are proud to have developed a world class system of ‘hire ‘education. As well as the private financial burden we have the devastating personal social costs of long term medication and care required for old age, cancer, chronic illness or disabilities both physical and mental.
Despite the government’s harping on how this has resulted in low taxes for median-income Singaporeans compared with Europeans, these income groups are not really any better off. Europeans generally receive free health care and completely free education -which is mostly compulsory up to the age of 16. (a vital child protection safeguard). Singaporeans have to pay for medical care with Medisave and Medishield and are often forced to top this up or go without treatment because of gaps in coverage or inadequate savings. We also work up to 50% longer hours to achieve living standards on a par with the less affluent Euro-zone countries.
The end result of this scrimping and saving is familiar to all. The Government has run huge and persistent surpluses as a proportion of GDP(between 5% and10% of GDP though in 2007 it was considerably higher than this) for over twenty years. This includes revenues and receipts from current and past reserves as well as revenues from land sales and capital receipts. I believe it is misleading to exclude these revenues and receipts from the Budget. The Government further disguises its exceedingly comfortable fiscal position by using an accounting convention of subtracting both current and development expenditure from current revenues. It then adds back only (at most) 50% of the revenues from the Sovereign Wealth Funds, Temasek and GIC. Our Opposition needs to demand a proper accounting
The high levels of government saving are partly responsible for a current account surplus of over 20% of GDP. Because the MAS intervenes to prevent the Singapore $ rising too far, this is reflected in the growing holdings of official reserves and the overseas assets held by our Sovereign Wealth Funds, Temasek and GIC. It is true that Singapore has avoided a situation where the Government has had to issue foreign currency debt and in fact has a substantial net asset position (particularly when its ownership of 80% of the land is included!). The benefit is that we have avoided the problems of the Euro-zone where the deficit countries are being forced to cut back on spending and raise taxes.
But is this a good thing and does it make our government fiscally wise? In a way that is like saying that a starving man has avoided having a starvation diet imposed on him by voluntarily deciding to impose it on himself first. Some of you will be acutely aware that those holding the food supplies make sure they themselves have a very rich diet. The wonder is that whilst they earn millions of dollars for cabinet roles you agree to tighten your belts, take on extra work, move dad into the corridor, rent out your rooms and die slowly without the dignity of care and medication. If you are still feeling smug bear this in mind. Even with cutbacks the countries embracing austerity programmes will still have almost free public health and education while Singaporeans do not.
There is really no justification for the continual accumulation of reserves and government surpluses once these have reached a level sufficient to provide for a serious crisis. Our Government passed this level some years back but continues to insist on its necessity. Meanwhile CPF holders are being forced to take unilateral changes in the terms on which they can get their money back. This is despite the low returns on CPF savings having been one of the major contributors to the growth in overseas assets. The present generation of Singaporeans has been robbed, supposedly to pay for a future generation of Singaporeans, despite accelerating technological change and productivity growth making all but certain that future generations will be much richer than the present one.
The big question is will we even benefit from our enormous overseas assets? I believe we are fooling ourselves if we think that by actually saving all this money we will get to spend it or that our children will. GIC, Temasek and MAS have yet to come clean on how much it has invested in Euro-zone sovereign debt and how much it stands to lose should there be a debt default in the worst case or just a restructuring. As I said before, there is no-one in Parliament willing or able to demand an account.
Presently the countries that have run large current account deficits for many years, such as the US and many members of the Euro-zone, are acutely aware that the counterpart of their deficits is excessive saving in the surplus countries, mainly China but also Japan, Korea, Germany and of course Singapore. They know this prevents them from being able to achieve satisfactory levels of growth, output and employment. The Euro-zone has already turned to China and asked the Chinese Government to buy more Euro-zone debt. This has allegedly infuriated many ordinary Chinese who complain about how poor they are compared with the average European. Their anger should be directed at their government which has held down consumption and domestic living standards to create a level of reserves far higher than necessary. This has allowed a situation in which they now find themselves held hostage to the debtor nations. It is likely that our Government faces the same pressures from the EU to invest in bailing out the insolvent members of the Euro-zone.
It would be far better if our reserves were spent on benefiting Singaporeans in the first place rather than hijacked by political considerations. That is why I have consistently called for a reduction in our general budget surplus, measured as widely as possible, to a much lower figure, say under 1% of GDP over the course of an economic cycle. The funds could be invested in basic improvements to Singaporeans’ health and education as well as cutting taxes.
I have also called for the privatization of Temasek and GIC with the distribution of shares to Singaporeans. If they are owned directly by the people then it will be more difficult for them to be held hostage to foreign political pressures.
National Day Message
National Day 2011 Message from the Reform Party
Published: 9th August 2011
My Fellow Singaporeans,
Today we Singaporeans meet to celebrate our Nation’s 46th National Day. Today we can look back with excitement to a general election recently fought on a new political landscape. But today we must also look ahead with trepidation to challenging economic times on the horizon.
This election was exciting in many ways with the historic toppling of a GRC. But it also marked the introduction of a fresh political landscape for Singapore with the first new Political Party to enter the arena and contest an election in decades. With new and credible opposition figures coming forward as a result and with (almost) every single seat contested.
On National day it is common to look back at the journey we have taken and where we came from in order to measure how far we have progressed. Some of us were born and starting to grow up in the region before Singapore became a Nation. Others will have come here only recently. But most of us will be benefiting in one form or another from the hard work of the generation that founded Singapore through the sweat of their labour. Founding fathers like J.B. Jeyaretnam. JBJ, founder of The Reform Party, was the man who in 1981 first broke through a 16 year monopoly to give our Nation its first elected opposition Member of Parliament. He and the Singaporeans who voted for him put our Nation on the first rung of the ladder leading to true and fair democracy. A democracy and a way of government decreed in the National Pledge that will be recited today. A democracy still not realised.
JBJ often said that it was necessary to dismantle the GRC system, if we were ever going to break the stranglehold of the authoritarian (virtual) one Party state that is Singapore under PAP rule. In 1997 JBJ came close to doing it at Cheng San polling 45 % in a constituency where the Prime Minister felt it necessary to stand inside the Polling Station. That percentage of 45% was not bested until this year, 2011, with the historic victory at Aljunied. The length of time it has taken to topple that first GRC is a measure of how firm the PAP’s stranglehold still is and how far we still have to go before we have true and open debate in Parliament.
It is right to be proud of our success as a Nation but that hubris must be balanced with humility and we need to be ever mindful that not all of our fathers’ generation are able to retire in wealth and health. For every comfortably retired PAP minister with a lavish pension there are 100 ordinary, elderly Singaporeans facing daily financial hardship and a health care crisis.
When JBJ set up the Reform Party he broadcast in his inaugural speech the following message , “I appeal to all Singaporeans to cast off the slumber into which you have been led over the last 50 years, to wake up to your rights as human beings to your proper role as citizens of your country.” After his untimely death The Reform Party did not collapse but regenerated and to his appeal to Singaporeans to Wake Up! the Party added the appeal to Stand Up! By coming forward myself and standing I stated that my aim was to normalise democracy. I hoped to show by example that you did not have to worry that you would lose everything and be ruined for exercising your political rights. That ordinary and credible men and women could and should stand for public office if real change was to come about. That ordinary people needed to face down the climate of fear which has gripped Singapore since the PAP came to power.
And you did stand up. The 2011 election was the most exciting one for decades. It brought many new faces forward. Nearly 90,000 of you voted for The Reform Party, a new Party in its debut election, with a pioneering and sometimes difficult message. We were overwhelmed by your response and by the gratitude of an electorate who had been denied the opportunity of voting for so long.
However to this government it seems like business as usual. Despite 40% of you voting for change this translated under our rigged and gerrymandered electoral system into only six seats in Parliament for the Opposition out of 87. Before we get too excited about our new Parliament let us question why they do not feel the need to sit till October despite having gained the mandate in May. We are in the midst of a global economic crisis and our leaders are demonstrating breathtaking arrogance. No better proof could be given that Parliament is just regarded as a rubber stamp for the executive arm. The Reform Party wants to change this so that the actions of the government are held up to scrutiny by Parliament and the government is made accountable.
During the election campaign our leaders presented a report card to show how well they had done to justify their re-election. They spoke of a rosy economic future and the tremendous opportunities that lay ahead for Singaporeans. What really took the biscuit though was how they handed over a small proportion of the government’s surplus that year as a pre-election goody bag while paying Ministers and senior civil servants big bonuses. Despite the PM’s historic apology, and a few sacrificial victims who were due for retirement anyway, it appears that there is to be no real change in this government’s policies. And while the electoral system continues to deprive you of any real voice you will continue to get economic policies that are not in your interest.
Today we stand on the brink of a double-dip recession that I pointed out was likely some time ago. Singapore’s GDP fell last quarter and will almost certainly fall again in the current quarter which would constitute a technical recession. Today the government will continue to claim that the boom years are the result of the PAP’s wise economic stewardship and that the recessions to come are the result of global economic forces beyond their control. I have no doubt you will be reminded of the need to have a toughened hide in the future to take the risks of life with no safety net and to be grateful for the policies of ministers who may dance and sing on stage.
Minister Lim Hng Kiang said in May that the Reform Party was out of step even with the other Opposition Parties. And yet we have seen even the PAP now start to talk of Reform with a committee set up to review Ministerial salaries. Some opposition parties are now paying homage (belatedly) to JBJ with others picking up and subscribing to our pioneering message for pluralism, competition, accountability and transparency.
This National Day, do not be discouraged. The Reform Party was not out of step. We are just ahead of the times, living up to our name at the forefront of proposing better policies and now everyone is falling in with us. You have already shown the government that you are losing your fear and that you want things to change. JBJ told us that we have “rights as human beings” But he also reminded us that you have,” your proper role as citizens of this country.”
On this our 46th National Day we would like to extend our gratitude to all Singaporeans who have supported us over the last 3 years. You cannot shirk this role now and let things go back to how they were. Like long dormant shareholders in a company where an arrogant management has for too long had its way, it is time for you to wake up, speak up and even stand up. We are finally looking forward to emancipation 46 years after throwing off the Colonial Yoke.
Kenneth Jeyaretnam
Secretary-General
