In post-Lee Kuan Yew era, governance in Singapore must adapt to changing times
- Some critics say the ruling party has lost its way, but today’s PAP is a logical extension of what it was already destined to become under Lee’s leadership
- Efforts by fundamentally good people to achieve national immortality and success now face the prospect of a reversal of fortune, if flaws get out of control
The more critical among them, including some of the party’s own supporters, will even say it has lost its way, strayed from the path of its founding leadership. Others, when asserting their disapproval of some PAP politicians’ behaviour, will remark that Lee would never allow that if he were still alive.
In fact, there has not really been a rupture between today’s PAP government and its “original” form. Today’s PAP is merely a logical extension of what it was already destined to become under Lee’s vigorous leadership.
The seeds that Lee planted have now taken root and sprouted. If still alive and influential, he almost certainly would have taken pains to remove the diseased leaves, but he would probably not have taken drastic measures like replanting or planting something altogether new.
It wasn’t very long ago when scholars and commentators tended to plot the prospects for political change in Singapore according to the slow succession of prime ministers and their respective leadership goals and styles.
Lee was unsentimentally tough, fearsomely intelligent, hugely charismatic, politically astute, and openly brutal towards his political opponents and anyone who appeared to challenge his authority and determination to build the postcolonial Singapore that he envisioned. Fear, more than love, was the basis of his Machiavellian rule, though he could certainly elicit both substantially.
The considerably more technocratic Goh Chok Tong, who was handed the prime ministership in 1990, promised that his government would be kinder, gentler, and more consultative in style, all without departing from the fundamental principles governing its policies. During Goh’s 14-year tenure, civil society grew and the public service reformed itself by taking dressing from the most beneficial features of the private sector.
This bare-bones narrative of political change in contemporary Singapore seemed loosely to fit orthodox, though now viewed as too simplistic, theories of modernisation. As authoritarian states pursued urbanisation and economic development, their societies became more highly educated, individualised, and middle class in their wants, needs, interests and capabilities.
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These changes, the theories argued, formed the engine of democratisation and political liberalisation, of which we have seen signs in Singapore over the decades since independence.
But this account of political development in Singapore downplays the significance of another narrative embedded within it, the shift from political authoritarianism to market fundamentalism, what is often pejoratively called neoliberal globalisation.
No doubt, much of Singapore’s material success was built upon the gains achieved from effective neoliberal policies. But are we at the point where hubris is propelling Singapore into a rather dogmatic pursuit of such policies?
One of the wealthiest countries in the world is also now one of the most expensive and unequal in terms of income and wealth. New forms of poverty have emerged.
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So while in the past, Singaporeans more readily accepted the neoliberal orthodoxy that economic globalisation and technological advancement are good for economic growth, are they as convinced these days that the government is doing enough to redistribute the gains from globalisation’s winners to its losers?
Meanwhile, Singapore’s practice of meritocracy – a key element of its success story – has exhibited expressions of elitism that seem unfair and unjust to those who have not made it and even to some who have.
To those Singaporeans who feel burnt out in the constant pursuit of opportunities that seem ever more elusive, the view of how the wealthy and powerful live in crazy rich Singapore is hard to accept. The image of elite opulence contrasts starkly with the reputation for austerity that the elder Lee’s team assiduously cultivated in their leadership of a Singapore that seems so long ago.
Critics who speak up for those who are left behind, question authority, and criticise those core aspects of the system that fail to address social exclusion and exploitation are constrained through increasingly sophisticated modes of political control.
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Yet other critics may find fertile ground in the politics of populism. This, I predict, will be the next phase of Singapore’s political development, the rise of authoritarian populism on the right and on the left of the political spectrum.
It is very tempting to characterise this as political decay in terms of the “third-generation curse”, where the current generation of political leaders – popularly referred to as the 4G leadership – is seen to be squandering the political and social capital accumulated by Lee Kuan Yew’s generation and then maintained and expanded by Goh Chok Tong’s and Lee Hsien Loong’s subsequent administrations. In this rather cynical view, decay is natural, even inevitable.
However, this perspective encourages a nostalgic romanticisation of the founding generation. It also plays into Lee Kuan Yew’s sceptical assessments about future generations, views that led him to devise institutional reforms in the 1980s and 1990s that have become problematic today.
A second of these reforms has to do with high public-sector salaries, which Lee Kuan Yew – buoyed by the currents of neoliberalism – controversially insisted would be vital for improving the quality of future leadership. No sensible Singaporean would begrudge paying their leaders well. But paying them salaries that are many times higher than what the leaders of the United States and Britain earn remains to this day a contentious issue, one that resurfaces every so often.
Evolving circumstances and challenges demand fresh approaches. Can the current Singapore system deliver? And, if not, will 4G leaders have the imagination and courage to make big enough changes to a system that worked so well in the past?
The Singapore Story is heroic, but there could be tragic dimensions too. Will this monumental effort by fundamentally good people to achieve national immortality and success – in a sense, to defy the fate of an improbable nation – now face the prospects of a reversal of fortune if fatal flaws that are all too human begin to exceed the limits of what we can realistically control?
Kenneth Paul Tan is Professor of Politics, Film and Cultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University.
