Not a police state

Distressed by the seemingly endless amount of bad press it attracts, Singapore is hitting back at its critics with a two- pronged strategy to improve its international image as a repressive, dour society.

With one hand, or rather a clenched fist, it is aggressively pursuing and punishing academics and journalists whose opinions of the city state stray from the accepted line, while with the other, this an open palm, it is extending invitations to known critics to come and debate their opinions with the government.

It may be facile to say so but the approach does seem fundamentally flawed.

As William Safire, a New York Times columnist and long-time critic of the virtual one-party state, noted, traveling to Singapore and expressing views contrary to those of the government invites the possibility of a long jail sentence and he for one won't be going.

Safire's comments often tend toward the exaggerated and to anybody who has worked or lived there, Singapore is not the police state that the right-wing writer and some of his peers make it out to be.

Convicted criminals are handed severe penalties that can include colonial-style beatings, censorship is pervasive, the government intrusive, there is no independent press and the political opposition has been so marginalized that it would not be a factor even if the current administration was not one of the most efficient in the world.

But for most Singaporeans the benefits of living in Singapore compensate for the lack of personal freedoms and satellite television.

They enjoy an enviable level of wealth, the comforts of modern society, low crime rates, low unemployment and a host of other advantages of a well-managed nation.

Whether the two -- prosperity and individual freedoms -- are incompatible or even relevant is where Singapore and its critics diverge.

-- The Nation, Bangkok