Autocracy, Belief and Control

What seems to me a highly intelligent posting at The Online Citizen explains more clearly than I have ever managed to explain it my discomfort around an election that has, according to the media, been contested by a group of people called the People’s Action Party (PAP) and another group of people called ‘the Opposition’.

The author of the piece, one Karen Tse, quotes the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard as saying ‘Once you label me, you negate me’.  ‘A cursory glance at the state-controlled media reveals how labelling of “the opposition” by the PAP is problematic because it suggests an unruly quality in all opposition parties,’ says Ms. Tse.

I agree.  Where I am less inclined to agree so wholeheartedly is where Ms. Tse describes ‘The primary problem that Singapore is facing…’ as being that ‘the PAP has established itself to be the sole party capable of running the country with good intentions.’  On the contrary, the primary problem it seems to me that Singapore is facing is that the people of Singapore don’t seem to be as universally accepting of the ‘PAP Good, Not-the-PAP Bad’ mantra as they used to be.

Since this most recent election, Minister Mentor (MM) Lee Kuan Yew, who was a founding member of the PAP, has already been heard to say ‘2011 has seen a generation that does not remember whence we came’.  Even if you assume that statement to be true, it seems to me unlikely that even the mighty PAP can make a whole 40% of the population remember whatever it is they are supposed to have forgotten.  Other PAP figures, most notably George Yeo in his final campaign speech, have instead acknowledged a need for a transformation within the PAP.

Transforming itself is going to be a challenge for a party that’s comprised primarily out of advocates for the ‘PAP Good, Not-the-Pap Bad’ mantra, unfortunately.  Ex-Minister Ms. Lim Hwee Hua (a team mate of Mr. Yeo’s in Aljunied) commented just yesterday that ‘the test would be whether after the transformation people feel that the PAP has tried really hard, and is now better able to reach out to more people’.  I don’t know that very many Singaporeans, not even the 60% of them who voted for the PAP in this most recent election, want to see a party that is ‘trying hard’ nor even one that is ‘reaching out’, however.  Rather, Singaporeans of all political persuasions are anxious to not only be heard but be taken into account, I think. 

The PAP must give up believing that the only reason 40% of the people don’t seem to like its policies is because, unlike the other 60%, they don’t properly understand that those policies represent what’s best for Singapore.  Instead, it must accept that different people might have different opinions about what’s best and that, in a democracy, it’s up to the voters to decide whose best they prefer.