Hard Choices

Challenging the Singapore Consensus

Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, Donald Low, Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, Donald Low

• Publisher: National University of Singapore Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9789971698294
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Singapore is changing. The consensus that the PAP government has constructed and maintained over five decades is fraying. The assumptions that underpin Singaporean exceptionalism are no longer accepted as easily and readily as before. Among these are the ideas that the country is uniquely vulnerable, that this vulnerability limits its policy and political options, that good governance demands a degree of political consensus that ordinary democratic arrangements cannot produce, and that the country's success requires a competitive meritocracy accompanied by relatively little income or wealth redistribution.
But the policy and political conundrums that Singapore faces today are complex and defy easy answers. Confronted with a political landscape that is likely to become more contested, how should the government respond? What reforms should it pursue? This collection of essays suggests that a far-reaching and radical rethinking of the country's policies and institutions is necessary, even if it weakens the very consensus that enabled Singapore to succeed in its first fifty years.

3

Governance and Democracy: Past, Present & Future

11

The Old Normal is the New Normal

Thum Ping Tjin

Between 1955 (Singapore’s first election for partial self-government) and 1963 (Singapore’s independence from Britain), Singaporeans went to the polls an average of once a year: three general elections, four by-elections, one City Council election, and one National Referendum. Through these intensely contested, open, and fair elections, the people held the government accountable. Competing parties presented different ideas about how Singapore should be run, and the people of Singapore evidently made wise choices, for Singapore went on to enjoy unparalleled growth and development over the next few decades. Out of this period came the widely admired policies that underpinned Singapore’s prosperity for the next 40 years: housing, education, social security, and infrastructure. The Central Provident Fund (CPF) was created in 1955; David Marshall introduced Meet-the-People sessions in 1955; a flexible and open trilingual system of education came out of an All-Party Report on Education in 1956; Nanyang University—the first popularly funded university in Southeast Asia—was proposed in 1953, commenced classes in 1956, and officially opened in 1958; the Housing and Development Board (HDB) succeeded the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) in 1959; the Winsemius survey that led to Singapore’s industrialisation was done in 1960; the Economic Development Board (EDB) followed in 1961.

Singapore’s success is derived from democracy, diversity, and dissent. But this lesson is missing in the official government narrative of history. Instead, the 1950s and 60s are characterised as a turbulent and unstable time.^[1] Through the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) continuous rule since 1959, it has been able to shape Singaporean history to present a specific and purposeful viewpoint.^[2] In portraying this period as being a time that was dangerous, rife with subversion, and when Singapore teetered on the brink of communism, it links the liberal ideas of justice and democracy with chaos and instability. The period thus serves as an instructive contrast to the relative peace and stability created by the illiberalism of successor governments.

This perspective imposed by the PAP helped to justify its hold on power, meet the imperatives of nation-building, and satisfy the political realities of the Cold War. Its perspective on history is also dominated by stark political categories and is written to edify and instruct, or as apologia for the post-1965 regime. This subjective account of history, narrow and partial—and by definition incomplete—is today seen as authoritative and complete. But it leads us to incomplete and erroneous conclusions about Singapore’s past, makes us forget the lessons of Singapore’s history, and makes us lose sight of the basis of Singapore’s success.

When we misapprehend the basis of Singapore’s success, we limit our understanding of the present and unnecessarily constrain our choices for the future. A careful reading of history based on the British archives and contemporary vernacular sources, however, presents a different view of Singapore’s history and demonstrates the limitations of the PAP narrative, especially cherished myths on which its principles of governance are based on—in particular, myths surrounding Singapore’s development, authoritarianism, and vulnerability.

Inequality and Discrimination

By 1930, Singapore was the richest country in Asia, “outwardly one of the most prosperous cities in the British Empire.”^[3] It was famous then for many of the same things it remains famous for today: tall, glittering, modern buildings; massive department stores; cutting edge technology; cosmopolitanism; its multiethnic community; trade; prosperity. Jean Cocteau, stopping off on his voyage around the world, was struck by Singapore’s cleanliness, the “elegant modernity”, and how its jungles had been domesticated into neat parks, playing fields, and golf courses.^[4] He marvelled at the tall neoclassical buildings surrounding the Padang, luxuriated in the Raffles and Adelphi Hotel, wandered through Raffles Place and the offices and shopping centres around it.^[5] Another traveller, Bruce Lockhart, was struck not just by the modernity but also by the diversity. “It’s like Liverpool,” he remarked, “except that Liverpool has more Chinese.”^[6]

The Japanese Occupation interrupted this period of success, but could not stop the indomitable spirit of the island’s occupants. Singapore quickly shrugged off the economic effects of the Occupation. By 1950, it was largely back to where it had been in 1939, once again the glittering economic capital of Southeast Asia, one of the most prosperous cities in the British Empire.^[7]

But Singapore’s colonial government was not accountable to its people. It was responsible to London and to the demands of international capital. As a result, it created an incredibly wealthy Singapore, but also a colony that was extremely exploitative and discriminatory.

For the European and local elite, Singapore was the most important commercial, transportation, and communications centre in the Far East, a temple to commerce and technology, the biggest market in the world for natural rubber and tin, a specialised commodities futures market, and a major world oil distribution centre.^[8] This rich, wealthy metropolis had a per capita income of about $1,200, higher than any other country in Asia, second only to metropolitan Tokyo.^[9] It was conspicuously wealthy and “almost certainly the only place in Asia where there is really a substantial middle class”. It had 30 people per private motorcar; the Federation had 70, and no other country in Asia had fewer than 120.^[10] Travellers from all over the world marvelled at the clean and orderly city, experiencing exotic tropical Asia while living in the luxury and partaking of all the comforts of civilisation.

Most remarkable was the sheer breadth of its cosmopolitanism. More than New York, London, or Calcutta, it was the twentieth century’s first truly global city, “a city of infinite ethnic fractions”.^[11] The world came to Singapore for trade and for pleasure. The thriving cultural and entertainment scene catered to all tastes, no matter how high or low. It was the centre of Southeast Asian filmmaking, art, music, and literature, exporting its cultural products across the archipelago. With good reason, Singapore was compared with the legendary Italian renaissance port cities of Venice and Florence.^[12]

Yet this incredible growth also produced extremely sharp divisions. The city depended heavily on cheap labour to keep Singapore’s wheels turning. These people were the chauffeurs, houseboys, guards, gardeners, and maids upon whom the Europeans depended. They were also the dockworkers, bus drivers, shopkeepers, trishaw riders and taxi drivers, factory workers, street cleaners, night soil removers, and hawkers who kept Singapore running. By far the largest employer on the island, the government was able to establish the main criteria for employment. By refusing to employ anyone who did not have an English-language education (regardless of their ability to speak and write English), it condemned most of them to manual labour.

Just as the jungle was pushed to the periphery and hidden away, so too were the labourers upon whom the city’s prosperity was built. Over 20,000 families (over 100,000 people, a tenth of the island’s population) lived in squatter colonies surrounding the municipal area, crowded into “huts made from attap, old boxes, rusty corrugated iron etc. with no sanitation, water, or any of the elementary health requirements.”^[13] They were the lucky ones, who had managed to find space on the outskirts of the city to build their own homes. In the city, many workers lived where they worked. Lightermen lived on boats, coolies in godowns, labourers in factories. Some even lived under bridges.^[14] Yet even these, with space to breathe and cool ocean breezes, were preferable to the cubicles that most people were confined to. Within the municipal area, multiple families crammed into spaces in subdivided houses measuring only a few feet across, taking turns to rest and work.^[15] Two-fifths of municipal residents lived in houses of 21 inhabitants or more, and the average number of inhabitants in each house was 34.^[16] In 1957, there were still over 313,000 people—a third of the island’s population—crammed into subdivided houses.^[17] They lived in squalor, stalked by tuberculosis, rickets, typhoid, and beriberi, suffering from malnutrition, diarrhoea, and tropical sores.^[18]

These people were very poor. In 1957, 19 per cent of Singapore households and 25 per cent of individuals (over 360,000 people) were officially defined as living in poverty. For a family of four, the poverty line was $101.85 per month. Yet the modal (most common) wage of male workers in regular employment was about $100–$120 per month, as compared to Singapore’s mean (average) wage of $1,200 per month.^[19]

This difference reflected a deep structural wage inequality. A 1953 Sin Chew Jit Poh (SCJP) study comparing Singapore with Britain found that while wages of senior civil servants in Britain were, on average, three times the wages of dock workers, in Singapore they earned six times more. The SCJP calculated that if the British wage structure was transposed onto Singapore, anyone earning above $800 a month would have their salaries cut in half while wages of low income groups would be doubled.^[20] Furthermore, as the official Benham Report on Malaya’s GDP noted, “the cost of living was appreciably higher in Malaya” than in the United Kingdom after adjusting for purchasing power parity.^[21] Overall, it was estimated, the real income of Malayan blue collar workers relative to purchasing power parity was a tenth of British workers’.^[22] Yet British workers still felt unfairly treated and went on strike about as often as their Singapore counterparts, resulting in one-ninth of each working day lost per worker.^[23]

The level of direct taxation was significantly higher in Britain, but in return British workers enjoyed free healthcare, pensions, and paid vacations, in addition to having twice the real wages of their Singapore counterparts. Singapore lacked any significant social welfare provisions. It had no minimum wage, little regulation of working hours or conditions. Some shop assistants received wages of only $15 to $28 per month; others worked fifteen-hour days.^[24]

With regard to wider legislation enforcing humane conditions for workers, the official government position was that local conditions made it difficult to enforce a uniform standard.^[25] Apart from this, labour legislation by the government either recognised principles that workers had already won via their own industrial action, updated previous legislation without changing fundamental principles.^[26], or was designed to further control and limit strikes^[27]

In fact, widespread unemployment meant that even a wage, however meagre, was beyond the reach of many. Official statistics estimated unemployment at 5 per cent, but this was achieved by considering anyone who averaged just 15 hours of work per week as being “economically active”.^[28] This included many temporary workers who were hired based on demand, including construction and dock workers. It also included those subsisting as hawkers, trishaw riders, small traders, and nominal employees of small shops, trading concerns, and eateries, who were considered “self-employed”.^[29]

Their livelihood was tied to global trade cycles of boom and bust, creating a precarious existence. Unemployment was also driven by a massive population increase, “the highest in the world.”^[30] It was 3.3 per cent between 1931 and 1947, and 4.4 per cent between 1947 and 1957. From 1949, there was an end to the pre-World War II “safety valve” of immigrants returning to their country of origin if sufficiently remunerative employment could not be found in Singapore.^[31] All these people scratched out a desperate existence, living just one or two miles from the gleaming colonial city, yet all but invisible to the island’s elites.

Housing and employment were the most pressing issues that caused widespread unhappiness, but they were not the only ones. The government refused to recognise any language but English in most of its official dealings, although they were happy to be multilingual when it suited them. For example, law enforcement was multilingual. Preferential treatment was accorded to Europeans, who could quickly receive citizenship after just two years’ residence, while tax-paying Asians who had lived in and contributed to Singapore for 30 or 40 years were denied citizenship.^[32] The roads and transport system were designed for the cars of the wealthy, while pu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction
• The Limits of Singapore Exceptionalism
• Policy Alternatives for Post-Consensus Singapore
• Governance and Democracy: Past, Present & Future