S'pore faces challenges of success

By Bilveer Singh

SINGAPORE (JP): Born rejected, condemned and doomed, Singapore has proved its critics wrong at every turn. All the doomsday scenarios about the resourceless and vulnerable republic have been wishful thinking. On the contrary, some quarters today even venture to the extent of describing the republic as a potential economic and military threat.

While the outside world watches her closely, and Singapore is an inviting target as a political punching bag, the real challenges and problems for the republic are essentially within.

Many scenarios have been painted about the dangers and threats to Singapore from without, with the Kuwait analogy used extensively, though insensitively. In actual fact Singapore has developed an extensive safety net as far as external threats are concerned. Being essentially a Chinese state, she is not an inviting target for absorption by her neighbors.

Economically the country is strong, with more than US$100 billion in reserved assets. In terms of security, the republic has diversified its partnership, maintaining an exceptionally close security link with the Western world, especially the United States, Britain and Australia. Singapore has also developed security ties with Malaysia and Indonesia, especially the latter. The international community has great stakes in Singapore's survival.

Ironically, today her weakest link is located internally, the area where the republic has been believed to be the strongest. All the notions of Singapore being a "police state", a modern tyranny, "Asia's gulag", etc. are exaggerations which fail to capture the growing political pluralism and sophistication of a modern metropolis.

What has worsened this situation is the fact that Singapore remains one of the weakest states in the region. While the paraphernalia of institutional building, including military structures, would tend to indicate that Singapore has enhanced its power, this is actually, more apparent than real. Singapore's weakness is derived from many sources, many of which are not new.

Her small, geographical size means she has very limited strategic depth. Her poor geographical location, being sandwiched between two large countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, means that she is very limited, with almost no room to maneuver and where the interests of her bigger neighbors have to be factored in very closely. Her regionalization strategy is aimed at partly overcoming this handicap and vulnerability.

Due to an accident of history, created by British immigration policies in the 1860s, Singapore is also unfortunate in that it is a Chinese majority state located in a sea of Malays. Slightly less than 2 million Singapore Chinese are surrounded by more than 200 million Southeast Asian Malays and this represents a sense of perpetual weakness and vulnerability.

With Chinese constituting 77 percent, Malays 16 percent and Indians 6 percent, making it a multiracial state, where the notion of "Singaporeanism" has been systematically weakened through deliberate fanning of ethno-nationalism, the republic has become extremely pluralistic. The various policies for making the ethnic groups look inwards have enhance ethnicity rather than nationalism of Singaporeans and this is extremely dangerous for a small republic located at the crossroads of the world's economic, political and social-cultural highways. Any negative rise of ethnicity in the region would have dire consequences for the republic.

However, all these problems can be easily contained because of the many benefits the Republic's leadership has provided, since 1959, under the People's Action Party (PAP).

Her achievements in public housing, full employment, medical care, public education, personal security to name a few are very noteworthy. Due to the ability of the PAP government to deliver these goods under the social contract theory, the people voted it into office repeatedly. This situation led to the opposition's ineffectual performance. Singapore boasts one of the few democracies in the world where the people have voted in the same government year after year. This was not so much due to coercion as much as it was to the excellent track performance record of the PAP government. At that time a bond existed between the government and the people.

After 35 years of PAP's hegemony of the Singapore's political system, the country seems to be suffering from "PAP fatigue". At the same time, the people are caught in a dilemma as there appears to be no alternative to the ruling party. Their growing frustrations are largely due to their measurement of the government in circumstances of plenty and great success. If the PAP government had failed, and if the republic had suffered calamities and misfortunes, this state of affairs would not have arisen.

Rather, the grouses and unhappiness of Singaporeans stem from the very fact that Singapore is a great success story. Unfortunately, what is not appreciated by most Singaporeans is that success does not come easy or cheap. One of the greatest prices Singaporeans have had to pay for their economic success, being the 19th richest country in the world today, is that costs have escalated. Confronted with an essentially anti-welfare state and anti-subsidy government, the leadership has passed the bulk of the cost to the people and this has caused great unhappiness among the populace.

What is often not appreciated by many policy makers while real wages have increased, is that real costs have also increased. More and more, cars and houses are beyond the reach of the majority of Singaporeans. Public housing, once the pride of the PAP government, has become a major issue with waiting periods too long and the costs too high. At the same time it is losing its "public" character due to the closing gap with private housing. Medical and transportation costs have escalated. Education is not cheap.

Even basic necessities have increased greatly with many, including the government, profiteering from the Goods and Services Tax introduced in April. While in the past only high income earners were taxed, today everyone suffers in this regard, with the poor, fixed income and pensioners the most badly hit.

The ruling party has proposed a massive jump in salaries for ministers and civil servants, which can be defined on economic principle. Yet, politically and socially, the public received it badly because of the general frustrations of costs which have hit the majority of the population.

What is now emerging in Singapore is a society that is faced with growing impoverishment even though a fortunate minority is still reaping profits and the queue for a Mercedes 320 is still very long. What the statistics hide through the law of averages and generalization, is that the majority of Singaporeans are basically living hand-to-mouth and it is these Singaporeans, who constitute the majority, that have become increasingly alienated with the government.

This represents the greatest source of weakness for the modern Singapore state, with the Housing and Development Board estates, where the majority of Singaporeans live, increasingly becoming alienated from the government. A class problem is fast emerging in the country.

What is more unfortunate is that the political leadership is unable, or unwilling, to either appreciate or understand the predicament of the majority. Therein lies one of the problems of Singapore's success. As the government has been in power since 1959, and believes it has weathered many obstacles in the past, it believes, rather erroneously and arrogantly, that it will be able to do so again. Hence there is no need to respond to or address the rising grievances of the populace. When particular issues are raised, such as raising car, medical and housing prices, these are often dismissed as problems of a "select minority".

Unfortunately, these are no longer seen as issues of a select few, but rather national problems. Failure to address them will lead to great problems for the country, which through a cumulative process, could lead to a point of no return for the PAP government. This is the greatest danger for PAP and the Singapore state, and stemming from this growing gap, real and perceptional, between the people and government. A good barometer of this loss of confidence by the people is the decrease in votes the ruling party has been receiving at general elections.

The real slide began in 1981 and continued with the ruling party receiving slightly less than 60 percent of the votes in the last general elections in 1991. It will be very surprising if PAP will be able to turn this tide if its majority dipped below 57.5 percent in the next election.

At a time when the opposition is in total disarray, this signals that the ruling party is living dangerously and this trend will continue if PAP persists with its "I know best policy". Its past strategy of "killing chickens to frighten the monkeys" no longer works. The price of success is growing political pluralism and it remains to be seen how and when the PAP government will succumb to this, notwithstanding the fact that it remains one of the great success stories of our times.

The writer is a senior lecturer in political science at the National University of Singapore.

Window A: What is now emerging in Singapore is a society that is faced with growing impoverishment even though a fortunate minority is still reaping profits.