This is Dr Chee's piece on Lawrence Wong. This is what I called real opposition.
With all the attention drawn to the Committee of Privileges these past several days, something important has gone under the radar.
It has to do with Minister Lawrence Wong who wrote a marvel. Not for its literary depth or intellect rigour, but rather for its brazenness in continuing the PAP’s justification in its undemocratic rule.
Titled “Managing the tensions of tribal politics” (ST, 23 Nov 2021), the piece was actually the full text of his speech he gave at the Institute of Policy Studies.
Now, if you’ve been around politics in this country long enough, you’ll know that coming from a PAP man using words like “race”, “harmony”, “community”, “democracy”, “conflict”, the thesis can only go in one direction – the warning against the ills of democracy and the continued employment of censorship and detention without trial to keep the peace.
See what I mean: “Our founding leaders…took tough but necessary action,” Mr Wong predictably extolled. “They invoked the Internal Security Act [ISA] against chauvinists of all ilk.”
Apparently so. And against their elected parliamentary colleagues on the other side of the House no less. Mr Wong’s predecessors incarcerated scores of opposition politicians and activists in the 1960s and 70s. One MP was locked away for more than three decades with nary a legal charge – and all because he refused to confess that he was a communist his captors accused him of being.
Years later, the ISA was used against chauvinists of another ilk – social activists fighting for the poor. Now, they were accused of being Marxists. Slapped, kicked and psychologically brutalised, they were forced to confess. For good measure, the government put them on TV to make the “confession” public.
With the opposition emasculated, cvil society brow-beaten, the media crushed into a “nation-building” microphone, we have now, according to Mr Wong, become a “Singaporean Singapore”.
Of course, such harmony must be tended to. Hence, Mr Wong's pronouncement that the “harmonious state of affairs will always be on a knife-edge; so it needs constant attention and careful management.”
And so, the Singaporean society trundles along, constantly reminded that the without the PAP’s undemocratic rule, society will just fall apart.
This is why laws are introduced and rules are changed to enable the ruling clique to maintain its grip. It was the GRC system first that put gerrymandering on steroids, followed by the introduction of the Public Order Act that outlawed protests even by one single body, then the change of the constitution that further narrowed persons “qualified” to be president, then the enactment of POFMA that restricted online debate and, most recently, the passing of FICA that gives the government unprecedented power to further accuse anyone of being aided and abetted by foreigners.
I've spoken repeatedly about this gradual political suffocation of our society. At a time when opening up the political system is critical given the changing needs of the country, the continued approach of maintaining fear and control will do this country irreparable harm.
Many have asked why I continue the political struggle after so many years. It is such utterances by this young Minister and his group – unable to imagine a new and enlightened form of governance that this nation so desperately needs – that keeps me going.
Resisting them and bringing about a hopeful future for ourselves and our children is the only thing to do.