Talking to the youngish products of this system, it has always seemed that they did not have a good word to say about National Education. They complained about its banality and its heavy handedness. Many seemed to be so cynical about their government that one could be forgiven for wondering if National Education had simply produced a generation ready to rebel against authority.
Certainly the government was seriously concerned about the electoral impact of this generation as they grew to adulthood and became more significant politically. Hence the government’s constant expressions of worry over the last decade or more that the generations that never knew the hard and insecure years of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s did not appreciate what had been done for them and would flirt with alternative pathways. This was why it paid so much attention to finding the right balance in managing the internet in recent years: allowing a relatively free flow of ideas in the normal course of events while crushing any blogger or news source whose content or demeanour seriously challenged the government.
Singapore’s general election on 11 September 2015 settled such matters. The internet generation may not love the PAP like their grandparents do, and may delight in jokes at their expense, but they have swallowed their National Education lessons whole. They cannot countenance Singapore without its traditional ruling class — which is epitomised by the Lee family.
This was the major take-away message from the PAP’s overwhelming election victory. The ruling party received 70 per cent of the vote (up from a record low of 60 per cent), reduced the opposition’s share of elected members of parliament from seven to six and came within a few hundred votes of reducing the opposition to a single seat — which is where it started way back in 1981. The opposition has, in fact, been reduced to its core support base of 30 per cent of the vote, despite the government’s performance over the last decade being a litany of missteps and policy errors.
It was a stunning outcome that clearly surprised no one more than the winners. In his post-election press conference, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong — the son of Lee Kuan Yew — made it clear that he had no doubt about the most significant aspect of the victory: the support of the younger voters.
This result means that the longevity of the rule of Singapore’s current elite is all-but assured in the medium-to-long term. No one should look for any great shifts due to generational change on the part of the electorate. The people of Singapore — including young, educated, middle class voters — have overwhelmingly endorsed a form of technocratic authoritarianism and turned their back on any prospect on the development of a two-party democracy. From now on, the main danger to the ruling elite in Singapore is the fruits of its own success: hubris, insular groupthink and arrogance. What was shown on 11 September is that, even with such factors in play, they will still survive comfortably.
This outcome is most important to Singaporeans, but it will also bring solace and comfort to authoritarian regimes more generally. It will particularly comfort the ruling party in China, which models itself to some extent on Singapore’s technocratic, capitalist, authoritarian system (but of course without even the superficial trappings of democracy). Scholarly discussion of so-called ‘hybrid regimes’ that presume a drift towards democratisation as the country becomes better educated and more middle class also needs to take note: the well-educated and the middle class are perfectly capable of endorsing authoritarianism.
Indeed the trade-off of democratic and liberal rights in exchange for a safe and prosperous society should be regarded and accepted as a rational choice, as unpalatable as this formula may be.
Michael D. Barr is an associate professor of international relations at Flinders University and Editor-in-Chief of Asian Studies Review.
It may be useful to clarify what “sort of technocratic authoritarianism” is supposed to mean. The people in really authoritarian countries would be very happy to have it Singaporean style…
Michael. D. Barr: “The people of Singapore — including young, educated, middle class voters — have overwhelmingly endorsed a form of technocratic authoritarianism and turned their back on any prospect on the development of a two-party democracy.”
Encyclopædia Britannica: “In government, authoritarianism denotes any political system that concentrates power in the hands of a leader or a small elite that is not constitutionally responsible to the body of the people. Authoritarian leaders often exercise power arbitrarily and without regard to existing bodies of law, and they usually cannot be replaced by citizens choosing freely among various competitors in elections.” That does not fit Singapore!
It is also useful to understand the PAP victory in view of weaknesses of the splintered opposition. The share of all valid votes was 12.48% for the Workers’Party and 3.75% for the Singapore Democratic Party, the other six opposition parties being negligible.
“The people of Singapore — including young, educated, middle class voters — have overwhelmingly endorsed a form of technocratic authoritarianism and turned their back on any prospect on the development of a two-party democracy”.
I probably fit in your definition of young, educated, and supremely middle class. No. I do not endorse a form of ‘technocratic authoritarianism’. I also do not think that the votes reflect support for the PAP, but rather the brand of comfort and status-quo that most in Singapore have grown accustomed to. We are certainly approaching a time of recession, where fears of unemployment, rising costs of living have possibly pushed voters into making more conservative decisions, i.e. voting for the only ruling party of the last 50 years.
This general election was supposed to be held next year, the electoral board (which includes the PM, aka L,K,Y’s son) simply thought it was a good idea to have it this year on the anniversary of the world trade twin towers tragedy. The elections rode on the enormous grieving for L.k,Y’s death, the civil servant’s promotions, the numerous newly introduced welfare packages for the elderly and the poor, and then the biggest 50th birthday bash Singapore had ever seen. PAP has never been more desperate.
The more seasoned PAP candidates dwindle among the freshly groomed PAP politicians, in an almost ceremonial fashion, rarely saying anything during parliament, sometimes sleeping. (http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/current-affairs-lounge-17/gggt-why-our-pap-ministers-sleeping-parliament-4690982.html) Their physical presence may serve to act familiar faces to our elderly voters, and perhaps provide a tangible reason to vote for PAP.
In the alternative media, PAP leaders are caught saying the most strange things like how compulsory 2 year military service for all males is a privilege for S’poreans, while new male citizens do not need to do the same. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsMmd4NQIow
It almost seems irrational to vote for the PAP, unless one did it out of transferred gratitude and loyalty to LKY’s son, esp since now L/K/Y has passed on. To the large privileged Chinese majority in SG, guilt played a huge role in their vote, and many felt like they would betray the (LKY)PAP if they voted for opposition. Polling Day was also scheduled on the same day of the year as one of the most tragic events of the century, and in the month of the Ghost Festival. Superstition lives alive and kicking in Singapore. Voting for the other is simply not an option, not even in the face of technocratic authoritarianism.
Yes, I am a Singaporean opposition supporter, yes I am still paranoid of the State so I write in fear, no I do not believe my vote is secret, and no, not everyone is ‘safe and prosperous’ in SG.
Associate Professor Barr writes: “…the trade-off of democratic and liberal rights in exchange for a safe and prosperous society should be regarded and accepted as a rational choice, as unpalatable as this formula may be.”
Since when did the author’s personal political preferences form a valid tool of political analysis?
It is a stunning self-condemnation of the author’s cultural and political bias.
Moreover, from someone who is supposedly an expert in Asian Affairs, it reveals a disturbing inability to understand Asian perspectives on social structures. “Liberal rights” whatever the author considers them to be, are a Western construct, and even then dependent on certain interpretations of human right. Human rights are, in turn, a Judaeo-Christian concept, and one not evident in the corpus of other than a small handful of Chinese philosophers (principally the Neo-Confucians of the Song Dynasty).
The author would be better withholding judgment on the Singaporean voters, and instead trying to understand why values so dear to his own heart may not be as important to voters in Singapore.
The PAP has been essentially Confucianist in its philosophical approach to government, and this resonates strongly with an ethnic Chinese population.
Alternatively, one can take a Western approach and accept that certain traditional strands of conservatism stress protecting the individual by providing a strong state which prescribes clear boundaries to personal conduct, but allows people full autonomy within those bounds. This is also a good way of understanding the perspective of the majority of Singapore’s voters.
Several comments seem to be agreeing with my main point while purporting to disagree with me. My main point is precisely that young, educated, Singaporeans have made a conscious decision that the authoritarianism/democracy is NOT the prism through which they see politics.
They are willing to accept paternalistic authoritarian government providing they can have a comfortable life. Providing that they personally do not suffer, they don’t mind if a few others get persecuted in the foolish cause of keeping the government accountable. They rests secure in the knowledge that they will not personally suffer because they will make sure that they will not be silly enough to stick their own heads over the parapet. They trust the government to be run by professionals with sufficient technocratic skills to successfully run a reasonably effective government and to perpetuate a prosperous capitalist society (i.e. a technocratic authoritarian system) for fear that the alternative will be worse. For decades those uncomfortable with this sort of scenario (including myself) have rationalized the successful political prosecution of this system by reiterating that it was down to the government’s monopoly of information and the media, its propaganda, its intimidation of opponents, the restrictions on opposition, the power of a bureaucracy devoted totally to the political service of the elite, restrictions on the operation of civil society and free assembly, etc. And then there is the strategic deployment of various fears. Depending upon which phase we are talking about it could be fear of communism, communalism, economic catastrophe, Malaysia, China, religion-in-politics. These considerations are all valid, but now there is less excuse for blaming these. There are now plenty of alternatively sources of information, the media has had to lighten up and compete with online alternatives. Even the intimidation and restrictions upon opposition politicians and civil society are not as severe as they used to be. There is now less basis for saying that people don’t know, and basically no basis for saying that young, educated, internet-savvy Singaporeans don’t know. They do know, and they have decided to go along with it. This is new.
Of course this does not apply to each and every young Singaporean, nor to every older Singaporean either. Thirty per cent of the electorate still voted for the opposition, even in 2015. But looking to the future, we can now say with confidence that a new generation has bought in to technocratic authoritarianism – with its eyes wide open.
And let’s face it, the conduct of working democracies in the West has not been very edifying of late – and is unlikely to become more so in the near future, so in the battle of ideas, democracy is at a low point anyway. But this just reinforces the point I am making. The standing of democracy and human rights and freedoms is now being held at a discount and technocratic authoritarianism is on the up – despite itself being beset with a heap of problems and failings that I believe will eventually bring it into disrepute as well. (Eventually everything disappoints.)
Anyone interested in public debates on the contest between technocratic authoritarianism and democracy might care to have a read of an article that appeared in the July/August 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. It is The State of the State: The Global Contest for the Future of Government, by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. (They use a slightly different concept to my ‘technocratic authoritarianism’. They refer to ‘modernizing authoritarianism. “Technocratic authoritarianism” is a concept that emerges from my own work over many years on technocratic governance in Singapore and which I am employing in the new history of Singapore I am currently writing.)
I think your last sentence hits the nail on the head. Ultimately most people just want freedom from worry – worry about safety, worry about employment, worry about retirement etc – and different countries achieve this in different ways. The outcome IS the key. There’s nothing unpalatable about how Singapore or China govern so long as their people are given what they want.
The American democracy is hardly a model form of government if people are worried about getting shot by their own police and bills may never pass when Congress and Senate are held by different parties. Or if large swaths of the country can deny the fact of climate change and the necessity of vaccines. In a semi-autocratic government, health laws, gun laws and environmental laws vital to the safety of the masses could be more easily enforced without having to get the agreement of everyone and their mother with different self interests (NRA, big oil…). Problems can be solved swiftly. Yet out of the chaos and freedom and argument and differing viewpoints comes some of the best scientific and artistic work of the world, which is fantastic, but maybe that’s not a priority in every nation.
The first election win by PAP without the presence of legendary Lee has truly silenced the critics.The PAP’s winning of 83 out of 89 seats is remarkable.The authority, legitimacy, orthodoxy and slogan for development put forwarded by Lee in his longest tenure as the PM of Singapore has paid very well.The current PM Lee Hsien Loong has rightly won the young voters of the city state without which this victory would have never been possible. It would worth watching how government would carry out and fulfill the new demands of the young voters.