Authoritarianism, not dictatorship in Singapore?

By Gerry Garcia

Singapore, practically our next-door neighbor in the Southeast Asian region, is also home to not a few of the multimillion OFWs from this benighted republic of ours who found the pastures there even greener than they expected.

What’s doubly remarkable about this prosperous island-city is that, to quote France’s President Chirac, the country rose “from the threshold of subsistence to one of the highest living standards in the world in 30 years.”

In fact, we pinoys vividly remember it was during the 60s that we tended to look askance at Singapore as merely a land of   coolies, 2-wheeled man-drawn passenger vehicles while Pinoyland, granted independence few years back by other America, was gathering speed economically. Singapore was then a British colony, together with Malaysia.

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The man behind Singapore’s rapid development, ‘who, almost single-handedly, built a great nation from a small island’ as former Japanese Prime Minister Kiiichi Miyazawa once said, was Lee Kwan Yew, law graduate from Cambridge University who became Prime minister of Singapore at 35 in 1959, five years after he had formed the People’s Action Party which catapulted him to the post.

Today, 46 years later, Lee remains as Senior Minister while advising the current generation Prime Minister.

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There’s something in Octogenarian Lee’s driving force which propelled Singapore’s rapid rise to newly industrialized country level when he was his nation’s first Prime Minister. Lee Kwan yew was not exactly a dictator in it’s worst sense… but a strong-willed authoritarian with steady commitment to public service more than the pocket type.

Singapore is known for it’s rapid development and tight control over political and cultural activities.

We are told, for instance, that a member of the opposition bent on venting his rage in public often finds himself hopelessly frustrated because under Singapore’s Public Entertainments Acts, he is required to get a speaking permit to be able to speak on a street corner in the business district!

Selling opposition-oriented newspapers also needs a permit otherwise news vendors won’t sell the papers as these vendors would risk the pain of suffering outlandish penalties, like multi-fold lashing or imprisonment or whatever. Police can also detain people indefinitely without charge, and opposition leaders have lost numerous libel suits filed by the powerful People’s Action Party.

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To  people like us, however, who are still trying to make  both  ends meet in out third World and, worst, who are more prone to be touchy and talkative over the smallest thing, this Lee Kwan Yew-type of authoritarianism can be no different from Ferdie’s Martial Law. Save for a few brave souls maybe who are sober enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But given our abnormal obsession for violations of human rights and our penchant for free-wheeling irresponsible democracy, the fight for  cha-cha and the eventual shift to a unicameral parliament is bound to be frustratingly long and we’ll never stop being the “sick man of Asia” up to the onset of the 22nd century.

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