Excellent article by Catherine Lim :
"If the relationship between the PAP government and the people in the past was described as awkward and uneasy, today it can be said to be shattered and irrecoverably broken. Never have the people shown a greater loss of faith in their leaders; never have the leaders been more desperate to regain that lost faith.
The proof for what must be seen as a major national problem, is in the people’s continuing expression of anger throughout the nearly two years since the General Election of May 2011. The PAP’s worst ever performance then had been followed by a quick succession of equal electoral humiliations, culminating in the loss of the Punggol East by-election in January 2013.
Yet the people’s anger had by no means abated, spilling over into the broader arena of Government decisions and policies. It vented itself in open skepticism about a Government-initiated national dialogue with the people, and more specifically, in a carefully organized mass demonstration in February 2013 against the government’s White Paper which, in announcing its plan for a target population of 6.9 million by 2030 through an increased intake of foreigners, had only succeeded in reviving an issue that had been the most bitterly contentious in the General Election.
On its part, the Government, to its credit, has worked hard to repair the relationship, such as by substantially reducing the controversial ministerial salaries immediately after the election, promptly dealing with issues related to housing, transport, health care, education, the special needs of the poor, the elderly, the disabled, etc., and even readily casting off the old PAP loftiness and arrogance for a new attitude of friendliness and approachability.
So why are they not succeeding in regaining the trust of the people?
Much has been said about the problems to be expected of any major transition in any society, such as the necessary disruptions and upheavals of change and adjustment, all of which usually diminish and disappear with time. But one senses that the present loss of trust in the PAP government is not merely transitional and temporary, but enduring and far-reaching, not merely the outcome of a tumultous General Election, but a deeply rooted malaise that the election had succeeded in bringing to the surface.
Indeed, this emotional estrangement between the government and the people has been around, in one form or another, for much of PAP rule, and has only now managed to express itself freely, owing to an amazing convergence of forces, including the explosive power of the social media, that had led to the watershed General Election. That event had brought about the emergence of the Singapore version of people power; once out in the open, the genie can never be forced back into the bottle, but looks around to further assert its new freedom.
The problem facing the PAP leaders as they try to manage this new force is their failure to understand the limitations of their usual communicative mode of rational, sustained discourse, which has little room for feelingThe problem facing the PAP leaders as they try to manage this new force is their failure to understand the limitations of their usual communicative mode of rational, sustained discourse, which has little room for feeling. It is a modus operandi that no longer works with a new electorate so intoxicated by the power of the new media that it has cultivated an intense, self-conscious and aggressive emotionality in its response to all overtures from the PAP side.
But the new mood seems to be completely lost on the supremely rational, efficient and logical PAP, with the result that there is now a huge disconnect between the PAP’s invariable use of a measured, steady appeal to reason, and the people’s equally invariable use of the quick-fire response, based purely on feeling. It is a heady cocktail of antagonism and expectation, implacability and bravado, present triumph and past hurt. It is as if a dormant volcano of suppressed feeling over more than the four decades of PAP rule had suddenly erupted.
In no mood for the leaders’ lengthy, careful and often patient explanations regarding the White Paper, they had seized upon the single damning 6.9 million statistic, as symptomatic of leadership incompetence and irresponsibility that would allow a future influx of foreigners to make life even more difficult for local citizens.
So wide is the present gulf between the government and the people that even if they share the same goal of a better Singapore for the future, there is no way of narrowing, much less of bridging this gulf, to get the process of transition started at all.
Just how did things get so bad? A more pertinent and useful question would be: Now that things have got so bad and are likely to stay that way, what can the PAP do about them? How can the PAP regain the trust of the people, without which there can only be discord and polarization in the society, making it vulnerable to the exigencies of a rapidly changing world?
The first move to solve a problem of this magnitude can only come from the government, in its position of dominance and control of the wherewithal for a solution. And the first step in the solution should be to endow it with a scale to match the magnitude of the problem, that is, make sure it is something so big as to go well beyond the current slew of mundane, utilitarian measures related to day-to-day living, thus placing it on the much higher plane of large, symbolically significant overtures. Only then can the proposed solution signal a major transformation in the political landscape, based on a major shift of leadership mindset.
If the operative word is large, just what may these overtures be?
In the context of the special controversies that have coloured the Singapore political situation, three such signalling gestures that may be made by the PAP government come to mind:
1.
Making known to the people that if those political dissidents who had been forced into permanent exile abroad, choose to return, they will not be prosecuted.
2.
Acceding to the request made by six ex-political detainees to establish a Commission of Inquiry to look into the allegations that had been made against them
3.
Abandoning the much feared and hated instrument of control, the Internal Security Act (ISA) that had been used liberally against political dissidents.
These overtures which would have been unthinkable in the past are necessary at this time of critical transition, when national reconciliation requires both sides to go beyond the merely instrumental level of socioeconomic concerns to the spiritually significant one of facing the past with honesty, truth and courage. A nation, after all, does not live by bread alone, but also by the inner needs and promptings of a collective soul that must look into its past to examine, cleanse and revitalise itself for the future. Only through this nationwide exercise of catharsis and reconciliation, can the negativities of the past be erased, and a new bond of understanding and trust established between the government and the people.
But the intriguing question is: how can the PAP leaders be expected to undertake actions which are so much at odds with their ingrained intolerance of political dissidents?
All these social and economic enterprises, laudable though they are, have limited value for the exercise of re-bonding, for the simple reason that the people see them as no more than what is expected of the government, and receive them matter-of-factly.The answer is that it is precisely the unprecedented boldness of these actions which the leaders should welcome and focus on, for it is the very thing that will convince the people of their sincerity and readiness to change. It is an effect that not even the most ambitious projects for improved housing, transport, education, recreational facilities, etc can achieve. All these social and economic enterprises, laudable though they are, have limited value for the exercise of re-bonding, for the simple reason that the people see them as no more than what is expected of the government, and receive them matter-of-factly.
Only something that exceeds and transcends them will jolt the people from their present state into a new willingness for a re-bonding. Only this gigantic, never-before-seen, never-before-dreamt-of initiative by the PAP will stop the skeptics from saying, ‘The Singapore Conversation is a farce—what’s the use of giving any feedback when it will make no difference?’, as well as the cynics, once and for all, from saying, ‘The PAP is incapable of reinventing itself, as it claims. It can only tinker with small, token changes at the edges, to placate the people, while it continues to do exactly as it wishes.’ Only such a leap of courage and political will on the part of the government will inspire a matching leap of goodwill and co-operation on the part of the people.
The strongest argument for the adopting of this strategy of the large symbol, both undeniably alien and alienating to the PAP temperament, has actually to do with PAP survival itself. The winds of political change cannot be shut out and will, at their appointed times, sweep through the world of practising, struggling and aspiring democracies intricately connected by the Internet. In Singapore, at some time in the future, whether foreseeable or distant, there will come the demand from Singaporeans to do away with this or that instrument used against this or that civic liberty.
Surely the best way for the government to prepare the ground for the future PAP leaders is to accept the inevitable and abandon the present grindingly slow and grudging pace of political liberalization, for a more speedy, forceful and convincing process. The longer the present leaders take to bring about this change, the more difficult it will be for their successors to do so in the future.
If the PAP has little hope, in the three or four years before the next General Election, of sweetening the ground for the next generation of leaders, they can at least spare it further toxicity. And there is no better way to do this than to take into serious account the emotional will of the people, and the aspirations linked with it. Only in this way can the PAP get rid of the political baggage from the past and provide a clean slate for the future leaders to work out a relationship of real trust and understanding with the people.
