POLITICS-ASIA: Singapore, Laos in Democracy Deficit Class

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 27 2006 (IPS) - Singapore may be South-east Asia’s richest country but its one-party electoral system has uncomfortable parallels to that of the region’s poor man, communist-ruled Laos.

The scheduled poll in the affluent city-state on May 6 for the 84-member legislature has the difference, this time, that the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled the country with an iron grip since 1959, will not be able to claim victory on nomination day, Thursday.

This minor hurdle in the way of the PAP’s attempt to steamroller its way into power again – already a foregone conclusion – stems from defiance by three opposition parties that had the gumption to field candidates. When nominations closed, opposition groups like the Workers’ Party, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) and the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) had fielded enough candidates to force a contest in over half the parliamentary seats. The PAP was sole contestant in 37 other seats.

But it is still business as usual with the PAP and its runabouts preventing opposition parties from campaigning in the run-up to the polls – despite Singapore’s claim to be a democracy.

These attempts by the government of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, to silence opposition voices and prevent the customary pre-election debates, is no different in spirit and intention to what is on display in Laos. Opposition voices in Laos have been denied a space to argue their case ahead of the Apr. 30 polls for the country’s 119-member national assembly, being held a year ahead of schedule.

A Laotian exile could very well have been echoing the sentiments of a Singapore opposition activist when he states: ”The people of Laos have no right to present their independent and opposition party’s ideas.” That comment by Wangyee Vang, secretary general of the U.S.-based Laos National Federation for Peace, Democracy and Prosperity, was posted on the group’s website soon after the communist party of Laos, which has run the country since 1975, announced plans for the April poll.

In February 2002, during the last elections for Laotian national assembly, all but one of the 166 candidates who ran for the seats in the legislature were from the ruling party.

The common philosophy that binds the governments of Singapore and Laos – as best seen during election season – has also been echoed by global media watchdogs such as the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (or RSF). Both countries were ranked by RSF in its 2005 survey among the bottom 20 of 167 countries reviewed on the right to free expression, a cornerstone of any democracy. While Singapore came 140th, Laos was the 155th. The ranking was similar the year before.

”Despite being far advanced in the use of new technologies, Singapore is still in the Middle Ages when you look at the way it deals with freedom of expression in cyberspace,” Philippe Latour, RSF’s South-east Asia representative, told IPS. ”For the current electoral campaign bloggers and website managers do not have the right to back a particular candidate’s programme. It (Singapore) is no better than Laos or Vietnam in this regard.”

The plight of the opposition SDP and its leader, Chee Soon Juan, is a case in point. The Singaporean government has banned Chee’s views criticising the PAP being broadcast on the SDP’s website and has cracked down on the SDP for the opinions expressed in its party newspaper, ‘The New Democrat,’ in addition to police repeatedly harassing Chee.

It comes after Singapore’s founding father, former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, and his successor, former premier Goh Chok Tong, pursued a strategy favoured by the country’s ruling elite to silence dissent – bankrupting the dissenter through legal suits. Chee became the target early this year with a defamation case filed against him by Lee and Goh, demanding 500,000 US dollars in damages.

As if that is not enough, the government is also determined to silence Chee, a neuropsychologist educated in Singapore and the United States, by banning him from speaking in public ahead of the polls. The ban also holds true for groups who try to read any speeches written by Chee in public.

All this comes in spite of the PAP currently controlling 82 of the 84 seats in the Singapore legislature.

”This is a new policy. It is part of the effort to control freedom of expression because the PAP is worried about criticism and the questions the public will raise, particularly the young voters,” Sinapan Samydorai, president of Think Centre, a Singapore-based non-governmental group, told IPS in a telephone interview. ”The opposition cannot use blogs, the Internet, podcasts, the entire electronic media during the election period.”

Lee Hsien Loong, in fact, refuses to acknowledge such realities as he faces next month’s poll, his first as the leader of the PAP, since he inherited the post without an electoral contest in August 2004 when Goh stepped down. Lee is the son of the country’s founding father, who transformed Singapore from a developing country to a developed one by ensuring that the PAP ruthlessly dominated the government with able support from a supine judiciary and fawning media.

”The political system here is as fair as you can find in any country in terms of your being able to stand up, to have a view, to organise, to mobilise and participate, and not need a lot of money or lot of power to get moving,” Lee was quoted as having told ‘The Straits Times’, a government controlled daily, this week. ”You just need good people and passion, and you can win.”

He will have to do more than that to convince the Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia, an organisation of democracy activists in the region, which has given Singapore a failing grade in its 2005 ‘Asia Democracy Index’ (ADI).

”Singapore ranks second from the bottom, just one place higher than Myanmar (Burma),” states the index, which studied the climate for civil rights, elections, governance, media, rule of law and public participation in 16 select Asian countries. They included Japan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Thailand, South Korea, Cambodia, Pakistan and Malaysia.

”This may surprise many who are not familiar with the island-state’s politics,” it adds. ”Yet, the results of the ADI dispels the myth and shows Singapore for what it really is, a highly repressive society.”