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Show SACRIFICING DEMOCRACY IN THE NAME OF PROSPERITY: THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN SINGAPOREAN DEVELOPMENT Nick Barker paper are divided into two types, ordinary and management. When all newspapers were forced to go public, private parties invested in ordinary shares while the government invested in management shares. The result was less control for the individual owner and more control for the PAP, which now had a voice on the board of directors, meaning that "subversive" material would not be published. However, there are other ways in which the press is controlled. Lee forced the two main Chinese-language newspapers (Nanyang Siang Pan and Sin Chew jit Poti) to merge, forming a new English-language paper, the Singapore Monitor, to challenge the sometimes critical Straits Times (Davies 1991, 89). The PAP also appointed one of its members, S.R. Nathan (former boss of Security and Intelligence at the Ministry of Defense), as the chair of the Straits Times Group, effectively curtailing its sovereignty in making publishing decisions (Davies 1991, 90). Afterwards, "Lee ordained more deaths and reincarnations," by closing papers, opening new ones, and combining existing papers to create media holding companies (Davies 1991,90). Restrictions on the foreign press were introduced as well. A 1986 amendment to the NPPA allowed the government to control the inflow of foreign journalism (Perry et al. 1997, 64), and at one time or another, Time, Newsweek, the Asian Wall Street journal, the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Asiaweek, the London Financial Times, and others have been either subject to quotas or banned outright (Davies 1991, 91-103). These foreign publications enjoyed huge popularity because "the dull and lifeless Singaporean media rarely debated important issues...but reproduced official handouts. The sad fact was that foreign publications sold well in Singapore because Singaporeans read them not merely to know what was going on in the world or the region, but also to find out what was really happening in Singapore itself (Davies 1991, 97). As one Singaporean reporter noted, "faced with good-news stories about the ruling party, no matter how journalistically justified and truthful, readers are incredulous, thinking they are being served propaganda and that something is being concealed from them" (George 1992, 111). Predictably, the PAP has an entirely different conception of the press; for Lee, the media's role is "to inform people of government policies," rather than to question these policies (Loong, 1990, 2). One story in particular demonstrates the attitude of the Singaporean government on civil liberties. The Internal Security Act, which had been used to kill the writ of habeas corpus in the 1970s, was invoked in May 1987 to arrest a group of 22 activists whom the government characterized as a Marxist network (Turnbull 1989, 322). Those arrested were mainly Catholic church leaders and dramatists. Asiaweek (mentioned above) was restricted because it reported that Singaporean leaders had used questionable tactics (i.e. abuse, sleep deprivation, prolonged interrogation, threats, and torture) to get confessions out of the detainees (Davies 1999, 97). It was later discovered that the reason the activists were there in the first place was to help Filipina maids who were themselves being tortured, activity for which the U.S. State Department's annual review of human rights violations had cited Singapore. Dahl's free expression and associational autonomy criteria (#5 and #7) are simply not met in Singapore. Singapore's Public Entertainment Act outlaws public speaking unless it is 1) at a government-sponsored meeting, or 2) one has obtained a permit from the police. These requirements undoubtedly have a chilling effect on speech. Additionally, any public meeting of five or more requires a police permit. Further, most associations with more than ten members must register with the government under the Societies Act. This act also restricts political activity to registered political parties only, meaning that other interest groups are not allowed to lobby or speak out on political matters (National Democratic Institute for International Affairs 2001, 15-16). Clearly then, rights to free speech, assembly and protest are not protected in Singapore - a situation leaders justify by appealing to economic criteria. PM Goh argues that allowing civil liberties would jeopardize prosperity, saying "if you have... demonstrations, right away the impression is created that government is not in control of the situation - that the place may become unstable. That will have an impact on foreign investors" (Sesser 1992, 57). Thus, political freedom is being sacrificed on the altar of economic prosperity. Civil liberties, generally considered as a necessary condition for a democratic government, either do not exist in Singapore, or exist in name and not in essence. The PAP has subjugated press, speech, assembly, protest and free association rights to the point of extinction. Through the Internal Security Act, the writ of habeas corpus has been killed, meaning prisoners can be detained for no reason at all (or on some vacuous claim of "national security"). Clearly, in the western conception of polyarchic liberal democracy, Singapore does not measure up. THE PAP's SOCIAL ENGINEERING OF THE SINGAPOREAN POLITY "I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yet, if I did not.. .we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbor is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think. That's another problem." Lee Kuan Yew, 1986 (Tremewan 1994, 2) One last area of policy that unmasks the PAP's commitment to economic growth at the expense of democratic pluralism is that of social engineering. As Singapore gained a solid footing in the 1980s, the PAP began to concentrate less on physical survival and more on cultural survival. There was a percep- 16 |