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SCMP Reporter

WITH its owner-occupied apartment blocks still bedecked with flags celebrating its recent 29th birthday as a nation, Singapore is enjoying one of its periodic bouts of self-congratulation as a green, prosperous and well-ordered republic.

  Its self-esteem has been boosted recently in an international confrontation with the United States over the flogging of an American teenager convicted of vandalism.

  Despite the personal intercession of President Bill Clinton, which led to the teenager, Michael Fay, being lashed four times with the rotan instead of the six meted out by the judge, Singapore carried out the sentence.

  Fay, who had been thrust into the role of a victim of an authoritarian state by the US media, expressed no bitterness or resentment when interviewed after his early release in July for ''good behaviour''.

  The US media was then presented with a sensational new story - the troubles of sports star O. J. Simpson.

  The anti-climax may well have robbed two instant books on the Fay case of the lucrative US market at which they were aimed.

 Asad Latif, leader writer of The Straits Times, gives his plain-cover book the emotive title The Flogging Of Singapore: The Michael Fay Affair, while neurosurgeon-cum-novelist Gopal Bara-tham's has a pair of bare white buttocks strapped for lashing, and is simply entitled The Inside Story By A Singaporean - The Caning of Michael Fay.

  Asad has the right idea - raising the case beyond the immediate froth of US media coverage and the Singapore media's response to what is really no more than the normal level of inaccuracies in the US press covering an incident in a far-off country.

  He asks, but does not discuss the question, ''was [Fay] being turned into a national symbol by a media culture that was responding to America's [diminishing] position in a fast-changing world?''.

  Gopal argues interestingly that the case was an over-reaction from the start: that the Singapore Government misapplied the charge of vandalism, which carried a mandatory sentence of caning for those convicted.

  This law was first instituted by the young republic to counter the politically inflammatory graffiti which left-wing subversives were daubing on buildings in a frustrated attempt to defeat the more moderate policies pursued by the ruling People's Action Party.

  Fay could more appropriately have been charged with committing the less serious crime of mischief (the spray paint which he used on the cars in an upmarket residential section of Singapore caused no permanent damage and was easily and cheaply removed), which would have allowed the judge greater discretion in sentencing.

  But neither author deals with the question of whether Fay was charged with vandalism rather than mischief to make an obvious point in the international debate between the liberal supporters of human rights and the proponents of ''Asian values'', for whom former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew has become an eloquent and highly visible spokesman.

  Those who argue that the West's respect for the rights of the individual is exaggerated and has been implemented at the cost of the good of the community are finding an increasingly sympathetic hearing among the beleaguered middle-classes of North America and Europe.

  And, as well as running with the juicier Simpson story, the Western media doubtless sensed the feckless Fay was an unsatisfactory stalking horse for their continuing onslaught against Asian authoritarianism.

  Unfortunately for the Singapore public, neither book even looks at the claim (both here and in the US) that penalties such as flogging help keep Singapore crime free. The island nation is not crime free. Its streets are relatively, not totally, safe. Japanese tourists have also been murdered in their five-star hotel rooms. Cars continue to be spray painted and messed up.

  Neither author paid any attention to the case of Hong Kong teenager Shui Chi-ho who, when his case came to trial, argued vehemently that the confession was beaten out of him.

  What is interesting is not Shui's allegation, but the fact that just as his court case began, a Singapore Broadcasting Corporation half-hour documentary on wrongful arrests was pulled off the air on orders from the Home Affairs Ministry.

  Gopal's book, however, takes the reader beyond the rehashed quotes of US and Singapore media and contains interesting interviews, with Home Affairs Minister S. Jayakumar and a prison attendant, Moorthy, who flogs prisoners for extra money.

  Gopal quotes Moorthy on his role as flogger: ''I trained for six months before it was felt I was fit to flog an inmate . . . some learnt to do it in one week, some in three. I took the full six months. Then I was allowed to flog real prisoners . . . I hit them as I was supposed to but I didn't make them wait for the pain. Some floggers twirled their canes about after the count and hit when the prisoner is least expecting it. I hit on the count when they were best prepared . . . After a few months, I could take it no longer and quit. Some . . . looked forward to a flogging. Not the money, but the pleasure.''   It is perhaps unfair to expect instant books to examine the longer-term implications of the debate over the Fay flogging. The fact remains that Gopal the liberal is no more unrepresentative of East Asia's modern societies than is Lee Kuan Yew.



West's values take a beating in Asia