As the next election draws inexorably closer, the PAP are up to their usual tactics: bamboozling Singaporeans. After calls for “harmony” Lee Hsien Loong’s loyal seat-warmer Heng Swee Keat has come out to say Singapore cannot afford “adversarial” politics:

“I will say that even across the world, the systems which have operated well in delivering a better life for their people have been systems in which people are prepared to deal with differences, but not in an adversarial way,”

Which systems is Heng referring to? The richest countries in the world are all democracies, except for oil-rich monarchies like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Brunei. A country cannot truly be described as democratic if elections have never resulted in a change of government and in most democracies parties alternate in power regularly. Heng insulted the Malaysian journalists to whom he spoke because Malaysia is a democracy and Singapore is not. It is only through adversarial politics, transparency and accountability to the electorate, through competition to get elected, that governments in democracies strive to make their citizens better off and to provide them with safety nets to cushion the impact of failure.

When he talks about systems which have delivered a better life for their people Heng presumably means the Communist system. That’s strange because the Soviet Union and its puppet regimes collapsed after having failed to deliver despite at one stage in the 50s being thought capable of overtaking the US. Does Heng think that the Chernobyl nuclear accident and its subsequent cover-up by the Soviet Government are not proof that systems in which information is kept secret and decisions by leaders go unquestioned are inferior to democracies?

Like many in the West (who would not tolerate for a single second the loss of personal liberty) who sing the praises of what are euphemistically called communitarian policies, Heng undoubtedly is referring to China. When contemplating opening up to the West Deng Xiaoping visited Singapore in 1978 and met with LKY. Singapore is the role model for China in how to develop without liberalising or giving up political control.

China may have succeeded in the biggest and fastest rise in living standards the world has seen but a large part of the credit goes to the way China, like Singapore, Japan, Germany and Korea, was able to game the World Trade Organisation and take advantage of the US’s relatively open markets while throwing trade and non-trade barriers in the way of imports from the US. As Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, said today, slow growth is the “new normal” for China. The question is still open as to whether, given its aging population, China will ever overtake the US if their economies are measured at market prices and even less likely that it will approach US living standards.

Whatever rubbish Heng talks, the Communist model is not attractive to better-educated Chinese. Those who have become rich during this period of growth know that their new wealth can be confiscated at any time if they fall foul of the Communist Party. We do not see people lining up to get into China like they do into the US and other Western countries. Despite Singaporeans’ submissiveness to authoritarian dynastic rule that is against their self-interest, they would find Chinese rule even less attractive.

The PAP are the only ones practising “adversarial” politics against anyone who disagrees with them. Lee Hsien Loong and his father crushed my dad who was accused by both father and son of trying to destroy the PAP system just because he wanted to see more accountability. They are the biggest threat to Singapore, not democracy, because their repressive rule will stifle all innovation and creativity. Meanwhile the PAP conveniently label as “adversarial” or troublemakers anyone who attempts to find out the amount of assets the state controls, how they are managed and the controls in place to prevent conflicts of interest and in particular how much the PM secretly pays his wife or the assets his family have accumulated after 60 years of unchallenged rule.

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam