Singapore Democrats

In 1812 Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry approved new, convoluted electoral borders that favored the Democrats. A cartoonist of the day showed how the electoral map now resembled a salamander. He coined the word "gerrymander", meaning to redraw constituency boundaries so as to include more supporters and deliver votes to one party.
- DK Eyewitness - Vote, Pg 49, copyright 2008

In a small place like this, why is there a need to redraw the boundaries at every "election"? Is it to "fix" the opposition and at the same time deprive the electorate from voting which is compulsory in Singapore?

On every nomination day, the PAP gets "reelected" because of blatant gerrymandering. Thus, the election results obtained are "freak". All these years, the PAP remains in power through "freak" election results cooked up by a department that comes under the prime minister.

First things first. I laud SfD's move to submit a report on the electoral system in Singapore to the UN UPR. I also read about James Gomez' intention to meet up with UN representatives in KL.

Bravo!

I repeat what I had previously said that any increased capacity politically in Singapore - democratic reforms, in this case - is necessarily going to have an external impetus because such capacity does not exist within Singapore to the extent that we would like. SfD's detractors, like SDP's ones, know this intuitively which is precisely why they would normally gear up for negative commentary, usually taking the form of opportunistic xenophobia following such moves.

I end off by saying that I truly hope that the public consultations that SfD is planning be made online as well to maximize participation.

When it comes to the abolishment of GRCs, which I believe all right thinking people want, I really hope that the SDP will not travel down the same path as some of the other opposition parties are doing which is to elbow out minority race participation in politics - minority race representation is too much an ideal to ask for right now - in the name of "meritocracy".

We already have some proof that not guaranteeing minority race participation after any abolishment of GRCs will result in an all-Chinese or at least a disproporionately higher Chinese Parliament.

9 out of the 9 current SMCs are helmed by Chinese candidates, even the two SMCs held by opposition parties. And I don't recall any of the non-walkover SMCs having been contested by any minority race candidate from either side.

Do all political parties know something about the disadvantage in fielding a minority race candidate in an SMC that they are not telling?

Is the situation going to get worse for minorities when the number of SMCs goes up to 12? Or worse, when GRCs are abolished and no institutionalization of minority race participation is guaranteed?

Whenever such issues are raised, people say that that's poiitics. Others also do it, Malaysia and all.

But don't we take pride in the claim that we don't do what others do, and so our "leaders" wear white to signal incorruptibility?

When supporting high salaries for our ruling politicians, did not LKY imply that, unlike those of neighbouring countries, ours don't have "greasy hands" and take even higher amounts under the table?

Or is it that we restrict "incorruptibility" to mean only money concerns?

Then we should just wear grey.

Robox's concern about maintaining minority race representation is understandable, but it implies political immaturity of a people with less than rational emotive ties.

Only Malays can represent Malays, Muslims Muslims? And so too with Indians, Hindus, Chinese, Buddhists, Christians and all?

A Malay might be less knowing and understanding of, and have less sentiments and empathy for Malay interest than a Chinese or Indian. Or a Malay might represent Chinese interests better than a Chinese. And so on.

Are not many Malays in Malaysia realising that their Malay politicians they elected might have been enriching themselves instead, leaving the common Malay still lagging behind, etc? Are not self-styled Muslims bringing disgrace to Islam by their so-called Jihad?

Running our electoral system in a manner that reinforces this sort of racist prejudice, instead of trying to politically educate the people, might not be in our best long term interest, even if practically necessary for the time being.

Please read what I said.

I very explicitly said "minority participation" as opposed to "minority representation".

The first is about whether a minority race candidate, and especially one from an opposition party, can hope to be elected to office given the demographic structure as well as the prevailing mindsets in the electorate.

I also qualified myself. I said, "...minority race representation is too much an ideal to ask for right now..."

I am not holding my hopes too high about how any minority race candidate in Singapore has the capacity to represent his or her ethnic community because of the mediocrity we have all been asked to espouse to, thanks to the PAP government, a mediocrity that we see in all other facets of political life in Singapore.

Instead, all I am saying is that if I were to be a minority race candidate in any election, even without being bothered about representing my ethnic community which is the situation now, can I hope to be elected given the demographic structure as well as as the prevailing attitudes?

And even if I am better than the Chinese candidate that I am standing against.

GROUND CONDITIONS

The demographic structure of every SMC is such that ethnic Chinese constitute the majority more or less in the same proportion as it is nationally. Any understanding of the ground conditions necessitates not being in denial of them; racist attitudes are one of the factors that influences voter behaviour and in that respect Singapore is no different from any other country in the world.

Specifically, the attitudes are:

1. Chinese chauvinism: In voter behaviour, this translates as the Chinese candidate always being uncritically perceived as better and therefore more deserving of their vote: racism

2. Sinocentricism: It is this, and not ethnic chauvinism, that is by far the more widespread attitude and is largely a by product of being in the numerical majority and less to do with hostility towards the non-Chinese – in voter behaviour, this manifests itself as an exclusive focus on ethnic Chinese candidates, beginning with in the imagination of voters - “Majority, what?” – and a casting of the vote for the only person, the Chinese one, who exists in tone’s imagination, which then is racism.

For example, when has TOC ever featured a non-Jeyaratnam minority race candidate in any of its news stories - (“Majority, what?”)? Readers’ attitudes – and this includes readers from the ethnic minorities – are correspondingly shaped to exclude any imaginings of ethnic minority politicians. (I leave TR out of this because it doesn’t carry much in the way of stories initiated by itself.) Online, is there any discussion centred on any non-Jeyaratnam minority race candidate? In neither of the two instances may there be malicious intent but they do indicate the presence of sinocentricism.

Both of the above hurt the chances of any ethnic minority candidate at elections. Indeed, I recall that even the PAP, in its defence of the GRC system, admitted that its own ethnic minority candidates had been faring worse on average than their ethnic Chinese counterparts.

Yet, are ethnic Chinese the sole factor in this conundrum? This brings me to the next two factors that negatively affect the electoral chances of minority race candidates:

3. Internalized racism: Yes, it’s true. In a racist social environment, even ethnic minorities often uncritically perceive a Chinese candidate as the better candidate and, naturally, vote for them even if the opposing candidate is a member of the same ethnicity as themselves.

4. Hostile relations among ethnic minorities: This is another little discussed area. It is indeed true that there is mutual hostility between some Indians and some Malays; an Indian candidate might not be voted for by a Malay voter and vice versa. Additionally, many if not most Indians and Malays view Eurasians – EW Barker, Kenneth Jeyaratnam, Michael Palmer, Christopher D’Souza - and possibly some others such as David Marshall, as privileged minorities and not disadvantaged ones. (It’s the hierarchy of skin colour that is in operation here.)

Thus, any Indian or Malay candidate is severely disadvantaged even before they have opened their mouths to say anything; I am of the opinion that being an Indian or Malay candidate in any of the opposition parties adds an additional layer of disadvantage.

SOURCES OF NEW LEGISLATION

Given that prevailing ground conditions that I have described above, it is with legislation pertaining to systems or subsystems that any government is legally obliged to correct those ground conditions; ground conditions are in fact propel new legislation or amendments to existing ones. (A current example is the discussion on the possibility of new legislation – or amendments to the current ones – in reaction to the spate of fatal accidents involving the transporting of foreign workers to and from work.)

Additionally, new legislation to correct the ground conditions disadvantaging minority race participation in politics must bear Article 12 - the “equal protection” clause – of the Constitution in mind; the equalities I speak of here are those of “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome”, the latter equality being subject to ceteris paribus of course.

Indeed, I would urge the SDO to view this essentially as an employment discrimination issue, the employers being the majority of voters in any one SMC.

Robox,
This might have been an exception, but it seems to show issues can become so much a concern that people can be educated to forget race and vote on issues. That was probably an important reason LKY, according to Devan Nair, was so sore after Jeyaretnam won the Anson by-election, through Chinese support. And so, also, he had continued to win subsequent elections.

So successful had been PAP's stress on multi-racialism that the pragmatic, situationist LKY seemimgly had to unwittingly countermand it in telling the electorate, at a PAP final Fullerton Square election rally, that the opposition could never form the government as Jeya, LKY reminded them, was Indian and therefore could never be PM in predominantly Chinese Singapore.

Jeya countered by accusing LKY of playing with racism. LKY did not sue, not even, if my memory is right, reply.

Tai Wei:
It would be interesting to obtain a copy of the news article in which LKY said that Singapore PM can never be an Indian.

He said it not quite so directly, but slantwise.

Something like this.

Let's pretend that a coalition cabinet the opposition had to form. Now, can you imagine this chap leading this party and that party to be this or that minister...?? And so on, down the list.

The real punch came last. Now who would have to be prime minister...? Had to be Jeya? But then, given our racial composition....

I heard it at the rally itself. But I'm sure ST had a version of it.

And now for my reply to Tan Wei Wei.

If I'm reading your thesis correctly - that JB Jeyaratnam could win an election despite being an ethnic minority - then you are correct to say that it was an exception.

JBJ is the oft cited example in the context that we speak of, and unfortunately the only one. That's tokenism. JBJ also happened to be someone who loomed larger than life in many people's minds as well as being someone who appeared on the scene at the right time ie. at the height of Lee Kuan Yew's excesses. The electorate just needed someone who could whack Lee Kuan Yew hard and JBJ could do it; they promptly abandoned him when they realized that all that hard whacking.

However, you did point out examples of other race-based obstacles as did the person two posts after you. LKY had also previously said that Dhanabalan could not become PM solely because he would not be accepted by the Chinese, which may well be true. (Just look at how the racists in the opposition are taunting SR Nathan by calling him Prataman.) However, I think that LKY was only trying to reinforce the non-acceptance of an Indian PM in the Chinese population by sending a signal of approval for it.

On the other hand, would Malays be accepting of an Indian PM? I did allude to this possibility too in one of my posts.

A correction to my post in which I stated that the equalities I speak of that need correction are those of “equality of opportunity” and “equality of outcome”.

I was short.

On further thought, I realized that there are actually six types of equality – out of the eight enumerated in academia – that actually need amelioration with regards to this issue. They are:

1. Moral equality:

This is the primitive type of in/equality which if not dealt with in the first instance results in the in/equalities of the other types. (I use “primitive” in the non-connotative sense of “original”; it also conforms to another meaning of “primitive” which is “characteristic of early ages or of an early state of human development) The SDP would be familiar with being meted out this type of inequality – among others – in that it is rooted in the PAP’s belief, or Lee Kuan Yew’s belief specifically, that the political ideologies of the political left are morally inferior to their/his fascist one; ill-treatment of anyone espousing the political ideologies of the left is then justifiable to the PAP, Lee Kuan Yew himself, and all the Singaporeans that they have indoctrinated the idea with. In the study of race relations, inferiority based on ostensibly moral grounds, and thus moral inequality, is conferred upon those ethnicities darker skinned than one’s own. The illustrations of these are too numerous to write here so I shall leave them out.

(cont...)

(...cont)

2. Equality of civil liberties

The civil liberties that I will refer to specifically are the “freedom of speech” and the “freedom of association” for ethnic minorities. Clearly, any system that excludes, or has the potential to exclude, ethnic minorities from participation in politics also denies those ethnic minorities candidates/politicians from having a say on those issues that they can raise in an elections campaign or in Parliament. This denial of the freedom of speech becomes further exacerbated should there be ethnic minority candidates/politicians who are also able to represent their own ethnic communities’ interests or the interests of all disadvantaged ethnic minorities; the freedom of speech is then denied to entire communities whose interests cannot then be represented by their hoped-for or elected representative in Parliament. When it becomes clearer over time that the election to Parliament of ethnic minorities is an impossibility or a near-impossibility due to the system in place with evidence such as the one I presented about the current composition-by-ethnicity of the nine current SMC MPs extrapolated across all wards, then there can be no incentive for any ethnic minority individual to even join political parties; the freedom of association for ethnic minorities is severely compromised. Why pursue any activity for which the end goals are unreachable?

(cont...)

(...cont)

3. Formal equality or “equality of treatment” as it is more commonly known:

From my enumeration of the prevailing mindsets in the post titled “Ground Conditions”, I meant to elucidate that those prevailing mindsets predispose voters with any combination of those mindsets to unequal treatment in their voting behaviour based on the ethnicity of a candidate.

4. Equality of opportunity:

There are actually numerous ways in which it is clear that there are already reduced opportunities for ethnic minorities in political careers, only one of which has been illustrated in Tan Wei Wei’s first post. But I will focus more on a future system in which GRCs are abolished without the institutionalization of ethnic minority participation. Clearly, the opportunities for direct participation by ethnic minorities in politics as candidates are lowered especially when it becomes clearer over time or when, again, evidence such as the one I presented about the current composition-by-ethnicity of the nine current SMC MPs extrapolated across all wards.

(cont...)

(...cont)

5. Equality of access:

This is quite self-evident and in fact often closely linked to the above type of inequality, so I will not elaborate further except to say that it is also a very wide ranging discussion.

6. Equality of outcome:

This should more rightly be “equitability” of outcome rather than its “equality”, at least in this case – it’s what I meant by the “ceteris paribus” qualification. It is about creating a system in which all the ground conditions that negatively affect an ethnic minority candidate’s chances at elections are brought down to the barest minimum so that his or her ethnicity can no longer have a bearing on the outcome of the contest; only the candidate’s capabilities in political work would. (Thankfully, such a system already exists.) That would be true meritocracy, and not the more common understanding of libertarian meritocracy which applies the economics theory – only - of “free entry and exit to markets along with free competition” to sociological conditions that are fraught with inequities of all manner. (Incidentally, despite the name, most libertarians are conservatives.)

(cont…)

(…cont)

The two remaining types of equality are “legal equality” and “affirmative action”, both of which I will speak to now.

7. Legal equality or equality as reflected in the law as it is written:

I have no doubt that any legislation with regards to an SMCs-only system will be written in such a way so as to appear to be colour blind. But equality under the law as it is written, as well as equal protection under the law which is really about protection from loss accruing to a person or person’s due to inequalities, is untenable if the substantive equalities numbered 4 to 6 in my previous post, are not simultaneously forthcoming. Legal inequality then only becomes as worth as the paper it is written on. This is what I really meant about the libertarian notion of meritocracy, and the dominant understanding of meritocracy in Singapore engendered by the PAP; it as blind to the existence of sociological conditions no matter how serious they are even if it aspires to being colour-blind.

(cont...)

(...cont)

8. Affirmative action

This type of equality exists only when it is implemented; it can also be viewed as exercise in equalization. I have previously written that with ethnic minorities, affirmative action seeks to ameliorate disadvantage arising from;

a) history, historical experience, or circumstances brought about by history;
b) small numbers; and,
c) race-based discrimination;

all of which accrue to circumstances external to ethnic minority individuals and not to the same individuals themselves. Affirmative action is not an act of charity by the dominant group, and ethnic minorities especially need to be conscious of this. The institutionalization of ethnic minority participation in politics is in fact affirmative action according to the strict definition, though I have often advocated that it is more correctly ameliorative action.

The mischief-motivated view – racism by another name - of affirmative action is that it is a method of shooing in individuals into positions that they are not qualified for. While this has indeed occurred, the same critics inadvertently reveal their tendency towards racism by assuming that there is no such thing as a beneficiary of affirmative action who is actually qualified but is overlooked for the position that s/he is seeking. (I’ll also bet the same mischief-motivated racist individuals have absolutely nothing to say about affirmative action for Asian countries in the World Cup.)

In truth, the beneficiaries of affirmative action fall into both categories, but there is one qualification to this: the reason that some individuals who are not as qualified are also recipients of affirmative action has entirely to do with the factors a) to c) that I have listed above, which are all experiences that erode a person’s capacity and can therefore not be deemed as “their fault”. I somehow doubt that political parties whose very existence is predicated on being popular are interested in fielding anyone who is not qualified and could end up a liability to them instead. This debunks Kenneth Jeyaratnam’s assertion that guaranteeing the participation of ethnic minorities is tokenism; persons qualified for a position are not tokens.

(cont...)

(...cont)

I also take the opportunity to address the assertion by Workers Party member Png Eng Huat that the GRC system is itself an example of affirmative action for ethnic minorities in a letter he wrote to the Straits Times:

http://pngapore.blogspot.com/2010/04/isnt-grc-system-affirmative-action.html

Png Eng Huat is wrong. The GRC system is not an affirmative action program for ethnic minorities so long as the majority of its beneficiaries who are Chinese candidates also receive the easy ride to Parliament even though they are not qualified, something he mischievously seems to allege that ethnic minorities are. His singling out of ethnic minorities for this unfavourable mention is racism, pure and simple.

(cont…)

(...cont)

DEMOCRACY

This was my intended first post, but it will serve just as well as a conclusion.

I have found it useful to understand democracy by examining it from its Greek root words:

demos: people
kratos: will/power/force

Thus, democracy is the will of the people expressed either in their own capacity, through institutions – and political parties are one such institution – or through candidates whom they hope to represent them in the legislature or elected politicians themselves; it implies the maximizing of participation in the political process by the people.

Thus any system, or subsystem within a larger system such as an SMCs-only system is within the larger electoral system, can only be considered a democratic one if and only if it does not discourage or deny participation by any one segment of the population. With the demographic structure of all wards in Singapore being largely homogenous acting together with the prevailing ground conditions that I have written about, I’m afraid that an SMCs-only system that does not ameliorate for those two factors by disregarding the need to guarantee the participation ethnic minority if not representation, would be an undemocratic subsystem.

(This next part is additional to my original post.)

I would point out that my critiquing above of any future legislation regarding the abolishment of GRCs without correspondingly institutionalizing minority race participation belongs to one of five schools of understanding and critiquing the law, namely the school of critical approaches, a product of the 1960s that is now conventional wisdom in much of the developed world. Critical approaches is a school that is influenced by the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and psychology.

(cont...)

(...cont)

DEMOCRACY

This was my intended first post, but it will serve just as well as a conclusion.

I have found it useful to understand democracy by examining it from its Greek root words:

demos: people
kratos: will/power/force

Thus, democracy is the will of the people expressed either in their own capacity, through institutions – and political parties are one such institution – or through candidates whom they hope to represent them in the legislature or elected politicians themselves; it implies the maximizing of participation in the political process by the people.

Thus any system, or subsystem within a larger system such as an SMCs-only system is within the larger electoral system, can only be considered a democratic one if and only if it does not discourage or deny participation by any one segment of the population. With the demographic structure of all wards in Singapore being largely homogenous acting together with the prevailing ground conditions that I have written about, I’m afraid that an SMCs-only system that does not ameliorate for those two factors by disregarding the need to guarantee the participation ethnic minority if not representation, would be an undemocratic subsystem.

(This next part is additional to my original post.)

I would point out that my critiquing above of any future legislation regarding the abolishment of GRCs without correspondingly institutionalizing minority race participation belongs to one of five schools of understanding and critiquing the law, namely the school of critical approaches, a product of the 1960s that is now conventional wisdom in much of the developed world. Critical approaches is a school that is influenced by the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and psychology.

(cont...)

(...cont)

It is very timely that the SDP has posted this blog entry that appears in the lower half of this website:

http://www.yoursdp.org/index.php/perspective/booksreviews/3856-not-for-profit-why-democracy-needs-the-humanities

While this is a reference to education in the humanities and therefore a not entirely different phenomenon, I quote something from the same article that comes to the same implicit conclusions that I have above:

[Quote]

The citizen educated in the art of following "argument rather than numbers", Nussbaum writes, "is a good person for a democracy to have, the sort of person who would stand up against the pressure to say something false or hasty. A further problem with people who lead the unexamined life is that they often treat one another disrespectfully."

This aspect of tolerance and openness occupies the core of Nussbaum's case. "By generating pleasure in connection with acts of understanding, subversion and cultural reflection", she argues, serious critical study of the arts becomes a crucial factor in the ability to put oneself in another person's place - in order to understand them, to see and feel the world as they feel it, and marvel at its difference, rather than outmanoeuvre them in business or battle.

[Endquote]

See how Teo Chee Hean is justifying the late announcement of boundary changes:

http://www.pap.org.sg/petir_articlepage.php?id=51&articleid=6727&cid=84Latest

On another note, I sincerely believe that the way to successfully campaign against the GRC scheme - in addition to the inherent unfairnness, the unconstitutionality, of it to the opposition parties - is to show how the quality of PAP MPs themselves has detiorated because of the "banyan tree under which nothing grows" effects.

Also, proposing a return to an SMCs-only scheme which at the same time guarantees minority race participation sends a strong signal to minority races themselves about support for them, which can hopefully translate into votes. Incidentally, the majority of Chinese Singaporeans I know see the sense in guranteeing minority race participation in politics.

The SDP will only stand to win goodwill.

A very timely find:

http://www.ipu.org/dem-e/minorities/ipu-undp07.pdf

This is not about electoral reforms per se, but I hope that all opposition parties will be on the look out for any similar incidents at the next election.

At the last elections, the PAP instructed the People's Association to hijack several busloads of seniors who were out on a city excursion and forced them at bribepoint - free food and drinks - to attend an ill-attended PAP rally. (I feel sorry for them for having to had to put up with the drone that is the PAP's political discourse.)

Did someone say "astrofuring"?

What this amounts to is the misuse of public funds to serve party objectives. It's corruption. Needless to say, no legal action has ever been pursued and the lawless thugs that fill the ranks of the PAP got away with this crime.