Unnoticed by the rest of the world, something significant
happened in Singapore on Saturday: former Deputy Prime Minister
Tony Tan has, not surprisingly, won victory in a field of five
candidates to become the country’s seventh president. But it was a
narrow victory, with Mr. Tan getting about 35 percent of the 2.1
million votes cast.
This somewhat untidy result, in contrast to the 99.8
percent victories typically recorded by third-world dictatorships,
is further evidence of the fact that, if still in many ways harshly
authoritarian, Singapore has quietly moved a long way toward
genuine democracy. It is, by Asian standards, an open
society.
In a world apparently dominated by gloom and disaster and
apparently run by people enthralled to irrational ideas, it is
refreshing to see Singapore gradually moving from one-party
authoritarianism to a genuine multi-party state, and continuing to
give its people a good standard of living while doing
so.
The thing that strikes me in most developing countries is
the cult of leader-worship, often taken to grotesque extremes. In
the Singapore national museum a diorama shows the first opening of
the island’s independent Parliament. Lee Kwan Yew, the great
architect of Singapore’s government who for long had the undisputed
last word in everything, is shown as a tiny model
figure.
This, as far as I know, is the only statue or
representation of Mr. Lee to be found anywhere on the island. This
is in glaring contrast to the monstrous statues of the reigning
dictator dominating the plazas of the Third World, plainly destined
to be hurled down by vengeful mobs the moment the dictator is
destroyed or overthrown.
The musical fountains at the theme park of Sentosa
Island play music each evening to a backdrop of illuminated
water-sprays: there are no pictures of the Great Leader. There are,
instead, some large representations of the “Merlion,” half-mermaid,
half-lion, which has been selected as Singapore’s symbol. Among the
tourist attractions advertised is not the great leader’s birthplace
but rather a chimpanzees’ tea-party at the local zoo.
It is ironic but fitting that, because he will have
nothing to do with the creation of any cult of personality, Lee’s
personality and reputation has dominated Singapore from the first
days of its independence. It should, by all the portents, have
evolved into another crazy, fly-blown dictatorship.
When it took power in 1959, Lee Kwan Yew’s People’s Action
Party (PAP) was a fearsome, apparently leftist machine which
dominated politics. There were absolutely no natural
resources (even drinking water had to be imported from a sometimes
unfriendly Malaya). With most of Singapore’s population ethnic
Chinese, the Communists had high and apparently well-founded hopes
for power.
However, it didn’t work out like that. Despite the
bleating of Western clergymen and other leftists, many of whom have
been conspicuously silent over the little matters of the Communist
killing-fields in Cambodia and the Gulags of Laos and Vietnam,
Singapore prospered.
Today’s British visitor, coming from the squalid chaos of
Heathrow, finds the sparkling, palatial, miraculously efficient
Changi Airport something of a rude cultural shock — and unlike the
airports of some developing countries, it is no Potemkin village
effort. Certainly, some of the Nanny State provisions have been
onerous, including the banning of the fireworks beloved by the
Chinese.
Other bans, such as that on chewing gum, make a good deal
of sense for people who do not want their suits ruined. Signs in
elevators warn against urinating in them, and durians, the
sweet-tasting but evil-smelling fruit, are banned on the
underground railway system.
One T-shirt on sale bears the slogan “Singapore is a fine
city,” proceeding to list the things for which one can be fined. It
is not hard to imagine the fate of anyone wearing a T-shirt making
equivalent complaints in Burma or North Korea.
Artistic and intellectual life has been dull and
conventional (like Plato, Lee Kwan Yew seems to have distrusted the
arts) but this is gradually changing. The university carries out
important research.
There are plenty of complaints to be heard, especially
among the legal profession, but at least there is freedom to
complain, and sometimes the complaints result in action. Further,
it is hard to know how deeply these complaints affect the essential
idea of Singapore, and Lee Kwan Yew’s stated goal of creating a
“rugged society.”
On frequent visits since 1969, I have been able to see the
press gradually becoming freer and more critical. Further, the
generally fairly docile nature of the press has at least as much to
do with Confucian cultural ideas of politeness as it has with
censorship.
President Tan has said the Presidency is above politics
and he was not officially endorsed by the PAP, though he is clearly
supported by it. The election result shows the people want change,
but they want it in a decent, peaceful and democratic manner. From
nothing, they have built a little island nation to be proud of, and
while further reforms are inevitable, they would be crazy to do
anything to imperil that achievement.
