What can Singapore learn from other countries on Covid-19?

Does Singapore still have an advantage in the lockdown era?

On 3 April 2020, Singapore became one of the last major economies of the world to enter a lockdown. Singapore's lockdown came 2 weeks to a month too late, after the pattern of case doubling had already been observed in early March. The international media has used the massive outbreak in Singapore's guest worker dormitories to write off Singapore as a role model for the pandemic.

To be fair, Singapore's SARS textbook response is a mitigation model aimed at containing the spread of a virus and eradicating it over time. Once community spread and outbreaks occur, Singapore as much as the rest of the world is in uncharted territory. Singapore's mitigation model will become relevant to the world again after nations emerge from their suppression model lockdowns. As for being 2 weeks to a month late to the global lockdown party, Singapore's leaders can fashion its own lockdown policy and implementation from mistakes and successes from the rest of the world.

Did Singapore do everything right in the coronavirus epidemic?

Even in the developing global Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, the nation state of Singapore punches above its weight when the main action takes place in China, South Korea, Japan, then Iran and mainland Europe. Singapore—or some facsimile of it—is summoned, bound and fashioned by the intersection of medicine and politics.

Depending on the narrative, Singapore is a nigh impossible to imitate exemplar of epidemic containment, a non-dysfunctional authoritarian-technocratic polity poised to seduce the democratic West and its allies in its hour of crisis, an embarrassing failure because panic buying did break out in its otherwise well-behaved, obedient, and acquiescent population, or an embarrassing failure because it was for several weeks, the country with the highest incidents of coronavirus infections outside China. Then there is the  Global Health Security Index, whose inaugural October 2019 edition considered Singapore's pandemic preparedness far behind the developed West and even its neighbours in Southeast Asia.

Did Singapore really do everything right? How could it have done everything right if it wasn't expected to do everything right? Can Singapore's pandemic response be considered a success despite its populace succumbing to multiple bouts of panic buying?

Plague in London, 1625
Title artwork from Thomas Dekker's pamphlet "A Rod for Run-awayes"

Singapore's Speak Mandarin Campaign clown show moment

A funny thing happened on the launch of the 2017 edition of the Speak Mandarin Campaign. The poster, unveiled at the official launch by a minister on 12 July, promotes the 2017 slogan for the campaign, which should translate as "Listen, speak, read, write". Except that the third character 渎 isn't the one for "read" 读. The character 渎 actually means "diss" or "disrespect".

This is what COVFEFE looks like in Chinese. This is what sheer incompetence looks like in Singapore.

We need to reconsider how Singapore remembers WW2

Yes, the Syonan Gallery has been renamed to the less offensive and traumatising "Surviving the Japanese Occupation: War and its Legacies". But have the professionals behind the formulating, marketing, chronicalising, and critiquing of Singapore history learnt from this episode? Should they seriously reconsider an approach and narrative that is not just stale, not just failed, but poisoning the Singapore identity?

Historical facts are always already mediated.
No historical narrative corresponds to the sum total of historical facts.

PAP upgrades its own Upgrading Carrot

 
Uniquely Singapore inception

Minilee is expected to dissolve parliament some time after the NDRS. Nevertheless, campaign season has already begun: the opposition has resolved its coalition talks to great success, and all parties have begun unveiling their candidates.

Trust the PAP to trot out more upgrading carrots. They've already begun in Sembawang, Tanjong Pagar, Jalan Besar, and Bishan-Toa Payoh. Presumably, some MPs did not got the party memo, which upgrades the HDB upgrading carrot into the GRC master plan carrot (see media reports on Tanjong Pagar and Jalan Besar).

The Apotheosis of Lee Kuan Yew V

To boldly go...

It is possible to typify the leadership of early Singapore and the PAP as a triumvirate consisting of Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Keng Swee, and S Rajaratnam. The first was a political man of action who wielded charisma, power, and authority to get people to comply with the national plan. The second was the technocrat who made sure every aspect of the plan was sound. The third was the ideologue, the voice of wisdom put a human touch to the plan.

Star Trek's holy trinity

In this way, the PAP early leadership serves the same archetypical functions that J Michael Straczynski sees Kirk, Spock, and Bones fulfilling in the Star Trek narrative: the Warrior, the Priest, the Doctor.

Living with Myths VII: Discipline and proscribe

Being a review of the 7th in a year-long series of seminars
 

Maps and narratives are the product of power/knowledge relations
through discipline of the self and proscription of the body politic

Narratives exist in an "always already" tense; they retroactively over-determine and limit the sum total of competing possibilities and strategies of reading history. Yet without a narrative, there is no subject to be constructed, to be made known, and ultimately deconstructed...

The myth of Singaporeanness: values and identity in Singapore education

Taking the audience through the succession of "moral education", "好公民" (literally: good citizens), "civics", "religious knowledge", and "national education", subjects taught in schools in Singapore, Christine Han's presentation is a rudimentary introduction to the academic critique of citizenship education. That is, the ideas of citizenship and civic-mindedness are the products of discursive formations within the institutions of state-directed education. To simplify even further: social engineering creates the next generation of Singaporeans who believe in a unique and exceptional Singaporean nation and Singaporeanness, and know how to conduct themselves as decent Singaporeans.

Han identifies rigid morality, resorts to prescriptive teaching, and cherrypicking of history as some of the major weaknesses of Singapore's model of citizenship education. Unfortunately without a proper introduction to just what citizenship education is about, or a cross comparison with other countries, it is impossible to say conclusive what Singapore is doing wrong, even if it's easy to say what's so annoying about Singapore's citizenship education efforts.

We would have recommended Yeow-tong Chia, who has actually written several comparative studies on citizenship education, to take this presentation.

Political lawyers: The development and clampdown of the Law Society in the 80s

Teo Soh Lung limits her narrative to the year of 1986, between the election of Francis Seow as Law Society president to Parliament's amendment of the Legal Profession Act to remove the statutory duty of the Law Society to publicly comment on legislation, white papers, and bills.

The tenor of her presentation centres on the dissatisfaction of young lawyers over the lack of open and transparent consultation between the legislative body and the bar association. Given their interpretation of its "statutory duty" and the supermajority of the People's Action Party in government, it appeared that laws were bulldozed through parliament without due consultation with lawyers and legal experts.

The fury of Papalee and his perception of an activist, political Law Society is understandable considering what is known of his philosophy of government. Left unsaid is the fact that the legal profession everywhere else has access to legislators, whether mandated through the charters of bar associations or as a result of activist activity from the lobbying arms of law firms, precisely because of lawyers are experts at legislation and the legislative process.

The banning of a film

Chua Beng-huat offered a sociological analysis of the banning of Tan Pin Pin's To Singapore With Love. Chua posits that the government's response and rhetoric to Tan's film hardened and became more extreme over time (culminating in Minilee's declaration that it was an insult to the people who lost their lives in the struggle against Communism) only because there anti-Communism (i.e. "Socialism that works") is the founding narrative of Singapore, and that the PAP has failed to develop a popular successor ideology to keep itself relevant. Without a new ideology modern Singaporeans can believe in (witness the quick succession of citizenship education models in Singapore!), the PAP is forced to keep alive antiquated enemies, to continue to define itself in oppositional terms to long-defeated enemies.

Chua suggests that the ban is self-defeating and yet inevitable; it jibes with the PR/makeover campaign the PAP has embarked on after losing Aljunied GRC, but yet is the logical endpoint of holding on to an outdated ideology.

Living with Myths VI: Apathy

Being a review of the 5th in a year-long series of seminars

What sort of counter-narrative can an academic conjure?
Would it be just as false and dark?

As Singapore marches towards its 50th anniversary of its expulsion from Malaysia (but not of independence, because Singapore was declared an independent nation by no less than Papalee himself on 31 August 1963), an anxiety falls onto both its rulers and their subjects.

It is significant that a leader of a modern, prosperous, and successful Singapore would need to bolster his legitimacy, competence, and charisma by invoking the nation's founding narratives, and how a grouping of academics have taken it as their mission to debunk the same founding narrative—especially if no one in Singapore really believes in the official national narrative despite the lip-service paid to it, thanks to how often it gets camped up and begins to deconstruct itself yearly in the musical numbers at the National Day Parade.

Is the national narrative a totalising narrative? Can histories of Singapore be written without the anxiety of influence of the national narrative? Should histories of Singapore be written without reference to the national narrative?

These were issues raised by Prof. Chua Beng Huat at this seminar, unspoken but lurking in the background of his detailed critique of the individual presentations of all 3 speakers, and ultimately a challenge to the Living with Myths seminar series—which still has half a year more to go.

I mention Chua because he is one of the most unapologetically outspoken anti-establishment senior figures in Singapore academia, and a formidable intellectual. That he has chosen to attend a Living with Myths session is significant; that he has chosen to demolish each presentation with precision and accuse the speakers of being irresponsible is perhaps even more significant.

Apathy, or how history is written by the elites

Loh Kah Seng's presentation serves as an introduction to his recently published book on the Bukit Ho Swee fire, Squatters into Citizens. Beginning with the permanent Urban Redevelopment Authority exhibit on public housing, Loh establishes the official portrayal of Singapore's kampong population in the 1950s-70s as apathetic and indifferent to modern housing and who should be so grateful to the city planners, who in turn were grateful that the unfortunate outbreak of fires that destroyed entire urban kampong settlements also solved their problem of promoting public housing.

From his interviews with former kampong residents and newspaper reports, Loh paints a picture of hardly apathetic but very much plucky "smallfolk" - farmers, hawkers, and others employed in the casual urban economy and small-time gangsters who 'protected' them. Loh enumerated the manner in which these heroic smallfolk resisted the authorities, actively and frustrated resettlement and eviction efforts, and inadvertently sabotaged firefighting efforts through what he termed "weapons of the weak".

Chua listed several reasons to reject Loh's presentation of Singapore's urban history: the issue is not about apathy or agency; the historian's job is not about fetishising agency but to make sense of historical events against the longue durée and in particular, situate the urbanisation of Singapore's population against the transformation of Singapore's postwar economy and workforce.

Further, Loh has been less than careful in his framing of an official narrative: it is only in the URA display that typifies Singapore's 'squatter' population as apathetic. If the Municipal Council and newspapers of the day duly reported on the daily resistance of kampong residents, it follows that the "apathetic squatter" line was never the official narrative. That this forms the narrative of the URA exhibit does not make it a national narrative, and certainly not a totalising narrative that needs to be debunked.

If Loh had wanted, he could have easily repurposed the presentation as a discussion on the myth of the Kampong Spirt (or gotong royong) without incurring the wrath of Chua.

The Myth of the Inert Buddhist: Toward a History of Engaged Buddhism in Singapore

Jack Chia begins with an assertion that the myth of Buddhism in Singapore is that of social apathy: reclusive monks who are most concerned with meditation, and only emerge to engage with society by officiating at funerals.

His counter-narrative consists of running through the career of the abbot Venerable Yen Pei and the various charities the abbot founded and social causes he championed in Singapore as a form of the "engaged Buddhism" movement in the religion.

During the Q&A, Chua pointed the two elephants in the room:
1. Is there even a myth that Buddhism in Singapore is typified by apathy or social disengagement? Is this even how Singaporeans view Buddhism, or the narrative that comes first to mind when the issue of Buddhism is mentioned? If no, it would be extremely irresponsible of any academic to invent such a myth as a convenient straw man to knock down.

2. The manifestation of socially engaged Buddhism in Singapore is identical to the model of religious-run charities, self-help groups, and worthy causes that are promoted by the state, in lieu of a system of social welfare. What is the historical context of the development (and clearly branding) of "engaged Buddhism" in Singapore, where in fact, every other country in Asia with a Buddhist majority and strong sangha has seen often violent monk-led riots and protests? Why would a responsible academic proffer, as a 'counter-narrative' to a non-existent myth, a Big Man Story?

The Trishaw Industry: From Public Transport to Myth

Some time in the final months of WW2, the trishaw was introduced to Singapore and quickly replaced the jinrickshaw as the mode of public transport. Jason Lim began with a picture of a trishaw rider lazing in his vehicle and proceeded to present a well-researched history of the trishaw and its riders in Singapore. This social history intersects with the history of public transport in Singapore, the rise of the labour union movement (and subsequent crackdowns on communist-controlled unions), and the story of Nantah. More than mere labourers, exotic transport personnel, these were flesh and blood people who were engaged in the social and political life of a nation.

While the presentation seemed well-researched, Chua objected to the use of the "lazy trishaw rider" picture. Where on earth did this picture come from? Is it even part of an official narrative? Did Lim's presentation really need to debunk a straw man?

The limitations of doing counter-history

Perhaps the Living with Myths series does require a Chua Beng Huat to serve as a check on the temptation of imperial overreach. That is to say, there are historical subjects that can be studied outside of the contestation between the state and a group of academics on Singapore's official history, and to bend these intellectual endeavours to fit into the narrative of these academics would be intellectually dishonest and irresponsible.

Living with Myths III: Beginnings

Being a review of the 3rd in a year-long series of seminars

Even as the Singapore state and its proxies in academia and the newsroom charge the Living with Myths project and various historians associated with recent historical research with the thoughtcrime of "revisionism", it is heartening to note that the seminar series had, despite a shaky start, has consolidated its theoretical position by turning the spotlight and the charges back towards the state.

Academics are stepping up to the challenge to show that "The Singapore Story" is always in a state of flux, that the state itself is always reinventing and reinterpreting history in response to changing political and policy environments.

Consequently, if there exists no unbroken history, no always-existing stable subject, then there must have been a Beginning in the form of a violent rupture and reconfiguration in terms of thinking and seeing things, the establishment of a master narrative that attempts to portray itself as orthodox, natural, and arising out of nothing.

"Beginnings" then is a reference to Foucault's zero point, the introduction of a particular discourse that has since shaped how we see the world, describe it, and picture ourselves in it—such that we can scarcely think of any other way to see the world, describe it, that it appears as though from time immemorial we have always been seeing the world this way... naturally. (As an example, see the invention of kiasuism and observe how Singaporeans can't seem to talk about themselves without using the word.)

It follows also that Living With Myths, as a historical project, is a form of discourse analysis that studies such historical breaks to demonstrate that certain paradigms of thought, of social perception, of the ideology-ladenness of historiography weren't always so, and should never be taken as natural or commonsensical.

Living with the Myth of Rags-to-Riches in the Nanyang Diaspora

In his presentation, NUS prof Huang Jianli examines the rags-to-riches narrative of the captains of industry in early 20th century colonial Singapore, and the place of this biographical genre in popular culture. The popularity of this discourse corresponds to the intersection of multiple interests: the subject who seeks validation in self-aggrandizement (and denial of setbacks), the reader who seeks validation that perfect social mobility exists (and denial of class), and a capitalist social order that requires validation of narrow economic rationality and methodological individualism (and denial that people act, negotiate, and compete in groups).

Huang argues that the national histories that document the "rise of the nation" are in fact the same genre writ large. The unspoken implication is that national histories also suffer from the same anxieties of influence and defensive denials and narrative blind-spots and lacunae as "big men of industry" narratives.

Huang points out also the depoliticisation of the subject in rags-to-riches narratives. The rehabilitation process of Tan Kah Kee and other Chinese businessmen in Singapore history involves an agreement to write out their involvement and interests in the politics of their time; what's more interesting and unmentioned is how the politics of many Straits-born Chinese and Chinese who made their fortunes in Malaya involve (or indeed problematise) issues of national allegiance, citizenship, and loyalty—in an age where the nation was not quite a thing, where Malaya (or Singapore) were not quite colonies and not quite nations either.

The Myth that the Battle For Merger was a Battle against ‘Communists’ and ‘Pro-communists’

The Battle for Merger is a series of radio talks given by Lee Kuan Yew as prime minister between September to October 1961 in the immediate aftermath of the split in the People's Action Party that led to the left wing of the party joining the vote of no confidence against the PAP government and the subsequent formation of the Barisan Sosialis. (The entire series is available on the National Archives of Singapore website, just search for the exact phrase here)

Seng Guo-quan performed a very close reading of the first speech in the Battle series, where Lee sticks the Communist label onto Lim Chin Siong (alleging that he had always been a communist and that his renunciation of communism as part of his negotiated release was insincere) and the pro-Communist label onto Woodhull, Fong, et al (alleging that their renunciation was real but they were influenced by Lim to rejoin the cause).

Of course Lee uses the meaning of pro-Communist vaguely and in variance with how the phrase had been reported by Singapore's newspapers previous to 1961, when it had actually meant, pro-"Communist Party" or pro-Soviet. Seng points out how Lee in this speech is creating history ex nihilo by inventing categories from scratch, turning his political opponents into subjects via classification into these categories, and making these categories inform their political identities in the eyes of an obviously politically illiterate populace.

Where Seng doesn't go (and Dr PJ Thum, an organiser of Myths, almost picks up in the Q&A session) is how this exercise of governmentality, categorisation, and classification is really an attempt by Lee to carve up a safe zone for his party in the political context of the 1950s and 60s. Thum points out this was a time where the electorate was largely left-leaning and voted for socialist and redistributive policies and parties, and where virtually all the parties in the political landscape—PAP not exempted—were left of centre, leftist, or radical left.

Following Thum's logic, Lee's move is equivalent of declaring his rump-PAP as the acceptable Decent Left of the 1950s. Where the popular, unofficial narrative has Lee "betraying" the Left or the official narrative has Lee "riding" the tiger of the Communist Left, what Seng and Thum inadvertently prove is that Lee's rump-PAP, despite its actions against the Barisan, remained firmly on the Left even through that difficult decade.

Casino Debates Revisited: Learning from History and Las Vegas

Thanks to tools like Newspaper SG, it is possible to go back in time to see that for all the national angst, calls for a referendum, a parliamentary debate (with the whip lifted!!!) about building a casino in Singapore that really isn't a casino, that we've actually been here before. In the early days of independence when a Sentosa casino was earmarked, as in officially planned and approved. With appearances from PM Lee expounding his vision of how a neo-Spartan Singapore will not be corrupted by a casino in Sentosa.

NUS prof Lee Kah-wee examines the 'modern' debate surrounding the RWS and basically comes to the same conclusion as Ho Chi Tim in the previous seminar: that for all the neo-Spartan rhetoric about the government being against casinos (and welfare) and promoting a rugged, tough, individualistic society, it has ironically been administering national gambling (in the form of the Sentosa Casino planning as well as the institution of Toto) and social welfare schemes even as it dresses them up to conform to its official anti-welfare, anti-gambling ideology.

Living with Myths II: Silent spaces of history

Being a review of the second in a year-long series of seminars

As a counterhegemonic project to the PAP's master narrative of Singapore history, the first Living with Myths seminar needed—and failed to establish—the strong case against the establishment's accusation of "revisionist history"; that is, the state itself is always reinventing and reinterpreting history, rehabilitating historical villains and excluding inconvenient heroes, re-imagining its core and boundary in response to changing political and policy environments.

It is only through a demonstration of the varied historiography of an assumed 'stable subject' like a nation that an audience is sensitised to the link between history as a narrative (or historical narratives) and ideology, as well as the various myths (history as grand narrative, history from above and below, history by academics, politicians, or people), and more importantly, all good history (hegemonic, counterhegemonic, naive, or otherwise) is based on a vigorous, evidence-based questioning and testing of what is currently known.

Imperium: Myths and the Nature of Governance in Singapore

Thum Pin Tjin's opening presentation in Myths II redressed the problem we identified in Myths I. Instead of presenting a paper or a piece of research, Thum embarks on a thought experiment (or what we might call a brief thesis proposal) to compare the self-historiography of the final days of the Roman Republic, the final decades of British administration in Singapore, and the early decades of the PAP administration in Singapore.

It is a thought experiment in the sense that Thum does not delve into or even quote the Res Gestae Divi Augusti, the Colonial Office archives, documentary reels, or newspaper reports of speeches. Neither does Thum compare policies or policies or even histories (official, authorised, popular, and suppressed) between these eras.

But given what is broadly known, Thum makes the case for a historiography of Empire based on the myths of exceptionalism and vulnerability (of the polity, which justifies unprecedented legal oppression), and meritocracy (legitimising the party as "fit to rule").

There are three pitfalls to this approach, none of which are the fault of the thought experiment approach. It is one thing to identify Rome, the British Empire, and Singapore as grounded in Thum calls imperialistic myths, quite another to identify or prove they resorted to employing imperialistic narratives of history. Thum suggests how the 3 groups of  "illiberal imperialists" and their narrative of the polity created and controlled the historiography of the polity, both enabling and circumscribing citizens and subjects to experience the polity-as-written, but evidence is presented for legislative control of public discourse of the polity, not for the analysis of this public discourse. Most importantly, the chance is missed again to point out that grand narratives are anything but; beneath the veneer of mastery lies an anxiety of influence, a conscious revisionism of previous narratives, a defensive reaction against contemporaneous competing narratives.

Social welfare in Singapore




Ho Chi Tim's presentation examines the gap between the PAP government's rhetoric on social welfare (it is invariably a very bad thing, being financially unsustainable and encouraging indolence and discouraging self-sufficiency in the people) with the very real social welfare programmes it runs.

A former social worker turned historian, Ho sets up an ironic dichotomy between the PAP ideology on welfare and the very concrete policies, ministries, semi-government bodies and social organisations that make up the social welfare ecosystem in Singapore—and identifies the ecosystem as a largely intact inheritance from the Labour colonial administration from the 1950s, and its laissez faire "administration" of Singapore's varied populations.

What Ho leaves unexamined is most interesting: Where does the PAP's anti-welfare ideology originate? How are the originating societies faring now in terms of the "dangers" of social welfare? Does the PAP's anti-welfare rhetoric affect the extent and implementation of social welfare? How well does the colonial era structure of social welfare serve the needs of an independent and modern Singapore?

Heritage in Singapore

Freshly minted with a PhD, Wong Chee Meng attempted to summarise his thesis paper in the space of 20 minutes for a lay audience.

Had Wong possessed better time management or the audacity of Thum, he would have reworked his presentation on the heritage sector to focus on its role in the invention of tradition, to apply Hobsbawn's concept of how national tradition and culture is always a modern (re)invention to the "Singapore story".

The varied case studies which Wong had insufficient time to expound on would show how Singapore as a very recently independent polity has had to invent and repurpose its colonial history (as part of the Straits Settlements, as a Crown Colony, as an administrative idea called Malaya, or even part of an intended Dominion of Malaya), its subjects and heroes (who as naturalised citizens of the British Empire and dual citizens of two empires by right of Manchu, KMT, and early communist China's jus sanguinis law never actually belonged to it) to give a "national" perspective to an era where Singapore was not a nation and not thought of as a nation, and to create Singaporean citizens and subjects where none actually existed.

It is Wong and his research which attest that history in Singapore, as elsewhere, involves constant, if not periodic revision and often by state actors as a political process of rehabilitation, exclusion, and boundary maintenance. He and Thum should have answered the existential question of 'revisionist history' in Myths I more directly.

Time to ditch the NDP

First ever parade at the Padang Red Square

We bring to your attention Channelnewsasia's report on the 2013 Singapore National Day Parade, and its figure of 27,000 celebrants.

Figures on attendance and participation in previous years' NDPs have not been officially collated; nonetheless a rough gauge can be gleaned from the headlines and reports from The Straits Times. In 1966, the participant figure was 23,000. In 1969, 30,000. In 1986, it swelled to 70,000 at the National Stadium. In 1997, ST decided to report only on the spectators (as opposed to everyone at the NDP, including the contingent and performers), which they pegged at 60,000.

From these numbers, a few statistical observations emerge.

Singapore's population has increased from 1.65 million in 1966 to over 5 million in 2012. Yet the attendance at its National Day Parade appears to have plateaued on the eve of the Asian Financial Crisis and declined steadily since, and shrinking to early independence era numbers. As a percentage of total population, attendance figures haven't just returned to early independence era figures; they have plummeted far below that.

Despite the NDP being telecast on every free-to-air channel ever since its inception, the Media Development Authority and its predecessors do not publish viewership figures. We only have anecdotal reports that people have been tuning in to the NDP far less these days.

Since 2002, the cost of putting up the National Day Parade has increased almost every year. We're not certain if the punchline ought to be this: As fewer people (both absolute and as a percentage of total population) turn up each year to watch the NDP, the cost of the NDP has been going up (both absolute and per audience).

Ditch the NDP now, I say!

Why watch the NDP anyway?

People need to question why NDP has so much military hardware porn

 
"No need lah. It's the same every year." - anonymous

"My preoccupation wasn't the audience at the parade. They were the converted... It's actually the rest of the Singaporeans who are thinking, 'Ah, another propaganda event.'" - MP Chan Chun Sing

I have neglected to say that lower audience numbers may be due to declining interest -- or they could be the direct result of venue capacity, or due to an interaction between the two.

But to read MP Chan Chun Sing's thoughts on his 2009 parade, one might come to the idea that the SAF possesses statistics which show a steady tapering off in the numbers of "the converted" which predates the New Normal. But why?

It can't be because the NDP is the same every year. The NDP has to be the same every year. You'll agree too if you see it as a secular ritual commemorating nothing less than the State itself. The ritual serves to recreate the social and political order in mystical and symbolic terms, to reify the official narrative(s) (Singapore: from fishing village to cosmopolis and nation, for example) as a spectacle, an assault on the senses, ready to be consumed by awed and numbed citizen-units whose sole contribution is to stand up to sing the year's NDP song (which fails as a patriotic song if it can't be sung in unison by a crowd).

The sequence of each National Day parade follows the logic of military
protocol: a school choir sings; hundreds of provost guards march; ministers
arrive; spectators stand as the prime minister appears; guards salute as the
president arrives with a fanfare; the national anthem is played; the president
inspects the guards; the show begins with gun salutes, military stunts, fly-past, drive-past, and march-past.
- Leong Wai Teng, "Consuming the nation: National Day Parades in Singapore", New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 3, 2 (December, 2001): 5-16.

Well-travelled observers will no doubt seize on the striking similarities between the military pornography, authoritarian fetish, and spectacle addiction of Singapore's NDP to similar displays in Soviet Russia, the DPRK, and other post-communist relics of the world.

If there is a gradual but terminal decline in interest in Singapore's NDP, it can only be a symptom of a far greater malaise; it could very well be that Singapore has come of age, that top-down secular rituals, mass displays, the performance of grand national narratives are no longer effective means of directing a people towards a shared national consciousness. Perhaps, if the NDP planning committee were sharp and farsighted enough, they'd be asking what kind of national consciousness we'd get if they applied a bottom-up approach instead.

I still won't watch an NDP but I'd watch this

Oh look, even the Russians do reenactment spectacles these days

If the priestess of Ise were in charge of the NDP planning committee, I'd scrap the NDP entirely. Its time has come and gone.

Instead, I will give you a non-NDP, an anti-NDP. Imagine from dawn till dusk, several roving camera teams tasked to find out how people are spending their 9 August. As you tune in over the day, you'll see actual people, actual events actually happening right now on national day...

In Singapore, with Singaporeans working (or having a rest), celebrating (or refusing to, or celebrating something else entirely), taking a break from life or having to deal with life. Singaporean citizens and PRs, FTs and tourists. We'd watch Gilbert Goh's Hong Lim Park celebration, fly to the Botanic Gardens for the Pink Picnic...

Outside Singapore: emigres, expats, exiles. Former guest workers now back in their home countries or working elsewhere.

We'll see the aged grandmother who still needs to sell tissue on National Day, the foreign maid who used to work in Singapore on a pittance, a group of ah bengs hanging out at AMK Central spoiling for a fight, a fever-wracked middle class, middle age man desperate to find a clinic open on National Day. We'll hear from the ra-ra patriots, and maybe say hi to Francis Seow and Tan Wah Piow after all these years.

Imagine all this, in 5 minute segments. It'll be quite literally one Singapore, many stories. And it will be truth in advertising. And I'd watch that.

Meet Cherian George, Singapore's apostle for High Broderism

We have never been fans of Mr Cherian George. When we have actually deigned to speak about him, we have not been kind. He has never given us reason to be kind even today and we will tell you why. But you'll need to read his latest essay first.

Cherian George is Singapore's pale imitation of David S Broder and the apostle for High Broderism in the archdiocese of Singapore. For those unfamiliar with American political culture the late Broder was an American journalist who, for want of a better word, was an extremist centrist who made a career and pedestal for himself out of denouncing extremists on both ends of the political aisle.

What needs to be pointed out is that the absolute mid point between two extreme political positions is not necessarily the correct position to take, that the truth can lie closer to the left than it is to the right. Sometimes the truth has a liberal bias. And yet the Overton Window of 'acceptable opinion' has easily been gamed by arch-conservatives shifting their positions further right, with useful fools like Broder advocating a shift to the new centre while denouncing... the extremist leftists!

Now read Cherian George's article again, with the recognition of his unstated High Broderist agenda of advocating a centrist position when reality and logic does not warrant it.

Note for example how Cherian Broder complains of the rabidly anti-government to moderately anti-government stance of online chatter and blogs. He forgets that PM Lee's cabinet has committed several public policy failures over the past 5 years. We would question why Cherian expects the "right mood" for the blogosphere to be more centrist. We'd assume that even wonkish bloggers, say Mr Tan Kin Lian at theonlinecitizen, would see no choice but to critique PAP public policy. Reality does have an anti-PAP bias, people.

Note how cleverly he builds up his High Broderism to present us with a false dilemma which is as intellectually dishonest as it is an advertisement for his centrist at all cost ideology: "it is a mistake to put all our eggs in the government basket, it is surely also a mistake to put all eggs in the opposition or non-government basket."

There are so many things wrong with that statement. I'm happy to point out just two.

1. For an academic, George is surprisingly politically illiterate, conflating the PAP with the government and conflating the opposition with non-government. He forgets that the government includes the civil service talent which advised and implemented the public policy failures of the Minilee government over the years, that non-government talent extends far beyond the political opposition to the much wider civil society.

2. He conflates the singular PAP ideology and talent base with the multiplicity of that of the opposition. Putting all your eggs in a singular solution means you lose all your eggs if that solution proves wrong. Putting all your eggs in multiplicity of solutions doesn't mean you lose all your eggs... But clearly, Cherian George would love to mislead us with his imagery. Just saying.

Make no mistake about it: like the late David S Broder, Cherian George is putting himself up as the arbiter of moderate political discourse, a wise man who can put down any idea and position too radical in his eyes; even if reality, truth, and logic have a certain bias.

General Elections 2011: Retrocognition & recognition

2011 will be a watershed year for Singapore politics. For the first time in its post-independence history, the opposition manifesto consists of bread and butter issues, its issues resonating with the common man in the street: jobs, wages, cost of living, the property bubble. For the first time in Singapore's post-independence history, the PAP argues on ideological terms, stating a belief in the unproven, unproveable goodness of immaterial concepts and slogans: leadership renewal, foreign talent, securing the future.

The PAP manifesto and platform for this year will cut no ground with the electorate - as other airy-fairy concepts from campaigns of yesteryear have failed with the electorate. The Singaporean voter was never swayed by an appeal to intrinsic goods like "democracy", "checks and balances", so what makes the PAP clown show think the same voter can be swayed by an appeal to how having "leadership renewal" or bringing in foreign talent will make things automatically better for his lot?

The opposition manifesto and platform for this year has already been written for them, out of pure necessity. Hard statistics tell hard truths; Singapore's mandarins may expend millions on international PR campaigns on its 'success story' but this comes with increased scrutiny from statisticians around the world - whose recent reports put in hard numbers the hardship that the average Singaporean has had to endure for the past 15 years of a failed expansionary economic policy by the PAP.

The profile of the Singaporean voter points towards an interest in hard numbers and the tangibles. For the first time in Singapore's post-independence history, the PAP is the party of highfalutin ideas nobody has the time for, and the opposition is the party of bread and butter issues.

This election is the PAP's to lose.

From civil service to political service

If the leaders of the People's Action Party have been more than truthful, their star recruits for the next election will feature senior civil servants such as the former chief of the army and other permanent secretaries, directors, and assistant directors from various ministries.

Prepare for their bundling into strong Group Representative Constituencies, where their ascension from civil service to political service political mastery will be accomplished on the coattails of popular ministers and senior ministers of state.

Prepare for the attempts to convince that these senior civil servants have earned their right to take charge of public policy, that they have exhibited the skills to lead Singapore as the fourth generation of PAP's leaders.

If you have read my previous post, you'll understand that like Wall Street and its increasingly well-educated financiers and their complicated toxic instruments, the Singapore civil service produces increasingly well-educated bureaucrats who have honed to an art the skill of producing improbable KPIs.

In the Singapore civil service, success is measured through how creatively its bureaucrats can create creatively skewed KPIs. The more educated and scholarly the civil servant, the darker his arts of creating such toxic instruments. This trend will continue as long as Singapore's bureaucracy continues employing expensive, highly educated scholars for fast track promotions.

To allow the continued ascension into heaven parliament of Singapore's senior civil servants is to reward their innovation of inventing KPIs and statistics that have less and less correlation to the base reality. In time (if not now), the map will bear no relation to the territory, the statistics will bear no relation to what they measure, the representation of Singapore will bear no relation to anything existing in Singapore.

Senior civil servants are a dead-end product of Singapore's meritocratic system. Do not expect solutions or initiatives from them. I strongly urge the electors to strongly reject PAP GRC slates that include recent senior civil servants.

Eye on Christianity

Groundwork to Rethinking Secularism II

What does it mean to talk about the radicalisation and self-radicalisation of Christians in Singapore?

If we are to examine if the impression holds true, what sort of data should we be looking at? Who or what do we need to focus on?

Radicalisation and Self-radicalisation: a production of culture approach

The two terms were used in the immediate post-911 years to explain the rise of homegrown, DIY terror cells in Southeast Asia. University educated, white collar adults with rational, scientific training and professions became more religious and adopted fundamentalist or extremist strains of their nominal religion - becoming religious radicals. Allegedly, they took their initial leaps into radicalisation not through peer influence, but from their own research on the internet.

Yet the website does not exist in and of itself. Where does its credibility come from but trusted intermediaries (like art critics appraising and promoting an exhibition or artist) who confer credibility, trust and legitimacy to the website and its message. The trusted intermediaries do not exist in and of themselves, but exist in relation to a framework of interrelated complementary and competing groupings: a discursive universe with real life funding, institutional backing and even state backing. Tthe spread of Wahhabi Islam in Southeast Asia is instrumental to understanding this point of view.

The self-radicalisation thesis is charming and captures imaginations easily. It is also a piece of pop psychology, an easily sensationalised, dumbed-down interpretation of complex processes documented elsewhere, i.e. not true.

For one thing, the thesis relies on a foundation of the discredited Secularisation Theory of 'societal development' - it assumes wrongly that modernity and spirituality are exclusive modes of human existence, and on an inevitability, an irreversible arrow of time: where modernity gains, religion and spirituality must decline.

Radicalisation, taken as a set of attitudes, beliefs, worldviews that induce a propensity towards certain actions and speech, is a form of culture that not so much arises willy-nilly from a tabula rasa slate of mind (read: a secular mind within a modern society), but a form of culture that is produced. There necessarily has to be organisations, institutions, intermediaries, activists and theorists that create, define, promote and police their brand of radical culture.

Eye on Singapore Christianity: gathering evidence for a radicalisation thesis

The government and media of Singapore have been loathe to describe, in the aftermath of the Aware takeover, Christianity and Christians in Singapore as becoming radical and self-radicalised, despite the unprecedented and outrageous actions taken by the crew lead by Feminist Mentor Thio Su-mien and the Anglican Archbishop's support of their actions, the blatant case of Chick tractarian 'evangelism', a screening of a pseudo-scientific anti-Darwin, anti-evolution 'documentary' at the Anglican Saint Andrew's Cathedral, and so on.

But if we are to talk credibly about radicalisation, we need to collate an repository of undisputed facts of not just the recent past but going back a few decades, of Christian clergy and congregations, inter-denominational and pan-denominational organisations, theological colleges, their links with the wider global movement, and their actions, activities, and speeches.

The repository will comprise:
First-hand material reporting on these (publications, pamphlets, articles)
Second-hand reports
Other analyses on Christianity in Singapore

This is the Eye on Christianity project.

Brain surgery - what's inside the heads of homophobes?

Part of Singapore's month-long gay pride celebration Indignation 2008, the eponymous talk attracted the attention and interest of Agagooga and myself. [Yes, we attended the talk together and I typed the notes on his laptop - happy picture of us live-blogging (or note-taking, as it turned out that 72-13 had no wireless@sg network) at event to come, courtesy of the official photographers from Sayoni].

Brain surgery - what’s inside the heads of homophobes? AnJ Ho will take you inside homophobia, to find out from the perspective of research: What constitutes homophobia? What’s the profile of a typical homophobe like, and what might make a difference?

There are several possibilities that suggest themselves from a title like this: as Agagooga points out in his blog post, it is highly provocative:

try turning it around: "Brain surgery - what's inside the heads of homosexuals". Surely, such an event would be labelled homophobic sooner than you could say "rim me now". Given that the theme of the festival is "Building Bridges: Indignation 2008", the title was especially puzzling.

To me, the title raised the possibility that the talk would about giving people who have negative attitudes towards homosexuality a bad name, and/or possibly raising up strawmen arguments of people unaccepting of homosexual (the aforesaid "homophobes").

As Agagooga points out, thanks to the saner heads of Sayoni and its event speaker AnJ, the worst of our fears did not come to pass. This is my report on the talk.

1. The psychological construction of homophobia

We were relieved that the talk consisted of a literature review of homophobia from the psychological perspective, and AnJ was more than qualified and trained to conduct this talk.

That said, being scientific wasn't really a guarantee against the potential pitfalls of the title of the talk: the study of homophobia by psychologists is apparently a new field, and a working definition of 'homophobia' (currently defined as a score in the Wright, Adams, and Bernat Homophobia Scale), hasn't been agreed on by the experts in the field - who are still in the process of fine-tuning their methodology.

Second warning sign: other researchers in this field have acknowledged that homophobia isn't even a real (clinical) 'phobia'. For simplicity's sake, we know that personal and public acceptance of homosexuality runs along a scale, but 'homophobe studies' makes the leap into turning a emotion-leaden phrase (homophobe) into... a subject of study.

Third warning sign: Sociologists of medicine and those familiar with Michel Foucault's Birth of the Clinic will recognise with discomfort from AnJ's overview of current Abnormal Psych research, the all too familiar strategy of grand medical science: the creation of a clinical scale for a brand new phenomena (homophobia); of a field of knowledge, with objects of knowledge, subjected to a medical gaze that asks: What are the answers a good (nonhomophobic) person should conform to and report?

Presumably anyone who disapproves of homosexuality in any way could be labelled as a diseased and unnatural "homophobe".

Of course this is highly problematic: More than a century ago, the psychological profession used a set of methods, strategy, and rhetoric to classify homosexuality as a condition; today, the psychological profession uses the same methods etc. to create new 'abnormalities of human psychology' to include "internet addiction" and now... homophobia.

I have no doubts that the researchers cited by AnJ were acting in the purest of motives - yet the studies cited are extremely troubling, and Agagooga raises doubts of the assumptions and methodology of the experiments carried out in "Homophobia and physical aggression toward homosexual and heterosexual individuals", as well as the validity of the questions used in the WAB scale, which I do not have anything new to add.

An interesting note about the alternate "functional theory" of homophobia - more time should have been spent to explain what's a functional theory and how this one differs from the rest of the night's offerings. My personal analysis of the slide: functional theory approach may explain 'homophobia' as a manifestation of boundary maintenance behaviour, but does not explain why it takes the form of homophobia specifically - this may mean homophobia is not a special condition and homosexuals aren't all that special - they're just being discriminated against like any other minority and out-group.

2. Profiling the homophobe

While other social scientists (notably Ronald Inglehart and his World Values Survey) have confirmed the correlation between lower acceptance of homosexuality with religion, age and education, I fail to see the wisdom in launching from this fact into a hatchet job on "conservatism", which the speaker blamed for the ills of racism, classicism, sexism, intolerance, inequality and authoritarianism.

Here's your history lesson of the day: the suffragette movement only gained traction when Susan B Anthony got the conservatives on board; the abolition movement was very much the effort of very religious people; the "solid (racist) South" used to be the province of liberal Democrats before they crossed party lines to join the Republicans. Last I heard, authoritarianism isn't the sole province of the conservative right.

This particular section of the talk was thankfully short, taking only paltry 3 slides of a total of about 20, and being the 3 of the slightest slides of the presentation. That the speaker got sufficiently carried away to raise the hatchet on conservatism or blame homophobia (note: not the same as 'low acceptance of homosexuality') on people being older, less educated, and therefore unenlightened... tsk.

3. Breaking news: Everyone's a little bit racist (should we pathologise them too?)

Lest readers think I'm being unfair to the speaker, allow me to report some of the Q&A responses from the floor: Several audience members told several anecdotes highlighting the point that LGBTs themselves make disparaging remarks about each other that straight people would be labelled homophobes if caught using.

A member of the audience also pointed out/weakly objected to the apparent rush to medicalise/pathologise homophobia as a condition.

I'm not sure if the speaker got the import of what these audience members were hinting. The dialogue that would have resulted would have served to clear up questions about the assumptions of homophobia studies for everyone, including Agagooga and myself.

4. Conclusion: Eye for an eye makes the world go blind: How not to build bridges

If the psychological profession used to create a homosexual subject, criminalise and pathologise 'homosexuality', it appears that the same profession is now being used to create a homophobic subject, to criminalise and pathologise 'homophobia'.

I'm flabbergasted. I don't get it. According to the banner on Sayoni, Indignation 2008 is dedicated to "Building Bridges". I don't get how this talk builds bridges, and who it will build any bridges with, given it ultimately did end up being about giving people who have negative attitudes towards homosexuality a bad name.

As a talk, it has succeeded in giving a fair overview of current research in the field of abnormal psychology, as well as avoid creating strawmen arguments for the opposition, but failed in the sense that:

99.9% of the audience already know how the opposition behaves, what they tend to say about the acceptance of homosexuality, and how to spot the opposition a mile off.

While interesting to know what motivates opponents of homosexual acceptance, the talk failed to develop strategies of building bridges and civil engagement with them.

While glib and entertaining, the stereotyping of 'homophobes' failed to suggest a way to divide and conquer, or to handle them.

If the speaker had prepared by searching for studies about acceptance/non-acceptance of homosexuality instead of homophobia (thanks, Alex Au, for sabotaging AnJ with just one line of advice!), and taken a far wider interdisciplinary perspective, it could have been a truly well-researched and informative talk.

Instead of building bridges, the talk ultimately did to 'homophobes' what had been done upon to LGBT; and embraced the eye for an eye logic of its title. That Alex Au persuaded AnJ to change the title of her talk to this is proof enough of its disturbing, incendiary logic.

Evidently several audience members got the dog-whistle too, and were infected with it: possessing a laptop on which we used to type notes during the talk, an audience member was jittery enough to mistake us for Christian fundies out to sabotage/picket the talk, and pointedly asked if "the two gentlemen in the corner [that is, myself and Agagooga] are from a religious organisation". I suppose that when you give your talk a name like that, people from the religious organisations will want to crash and picket your talk. Ergo: How does this build bridges?

Never mind that Agagooga and myself are natural allies of the LGBT community - Agagooga having been flamed and threatened by Christian fundies, while I have declared my opposition to the National Council of Christian Ayatollahs Singapore - if the two gentlemen had been any other blogger (aka "potential liberal ally") than Agagooga and myself, that one statement from the audience member would have cost the community our support, right there and then.

Again: By giving this talk such a name that somehow signals to audience members of possible 'enemy participants' and heightening their paranoia, how does this build bridges?

I'd disagree vehemently and gladly debate with anyone subscribing to stupid conceptions of homosexuality, but I'd defend their right to believe in such nonsense - rather than try to get them institutionalised, pathologised, marginalised out of the conversation and labelled as 'abnormal'.

Unlike Agagooga, I intend to attend more Indignation events, namely Queer Women within Feminist Singapore, on Saturday.

Architectures of Control

From the introduction to Architectures of Control:

Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments.

I usually add to my blogroll without much fanfare, but here's a site that I would make some noise about. And I'm sure Singaporean readers would find this fascinating - architectures of control exist everywhere in the world, and it's time we start recognising in our own landscape, geography, and urban design as well.

Need proof of this blog's mandatory reading status? You might want to begin with:

Casino design and slot machine winning chances
Why your third-party battery lasts shorter on a Nokia
The default choice in OSes, programmes, and Starbucks
How airports keep people moving

Nazi board games

Excerpts from the BBC:

Nazi board games under the hammer

A collection of Nazi era board games - including one where players are given points for bombing British cities - are being auctioned in the UK...

The rare trove of wartime board games also includes a version of Snakes and Ladders based on the exploits of U-boat captain Gunther Prien.

"They say a lot about the Nazis, and about the German regime. Our kids were still playing trains and Meccano and hopscotch and things like that. These show how the Nazis were determined that children as young as four or five needed to get into the swing of things."

The two word that come to my mind, though, are National Education.

Think about it, few other countries in the world incorporate national goals, ideology, and the official slant on current affairs into child education and childplay as much as Singapore.

One imagines the family of National Education learning tools that inhabit the same social space as the Nazi boardgames: The Fall of Malaya board game, Command and Conquer, SAF edition...

And for the wired generation, The Fall of Malaya/Japanese Occupation MMORPG!
Play as 3 factions! The Japanese 25th Army , the Malaya Command (i.e. Percival and his Australian and Indian minions), and the Communist irregulars!

Each faction has its unique strengths! Play as the Japanese with their Mobility doctrine, Malaya Command with its Manpower doctrine (easy recruitment from the Commonwealth), and the Communist irregulars with their Progaganda doctrine!

And of course, the moral of the game is: We must ourselves defend Singapore! Woohoo...

From the mouth of a scholar

You just can't write these stuff up.

The Straits Times
Aug 17, 2007

President's Scholar follows in dad's footsteps

The money quote that appeared below the headline: 'I think the President's Scholarship is, more than anything else, responsibility. It tells you you can't slack off, but have to try to enrich yourself in as many ways as possible.' - Stephanie Koh 18, on what it means to be a President's Scholar.

Seriously. Scholars in Singapore now think their duty is to enrich themselves in as many ways as possible.

My friend the Samurai Blogger points out that not all President's Scholars end up in plum positions within the state bureaucracy, as it's not a bonded scholarship and recipients aren't ushered into academic paths by the scholarship. It's an unfair stereotype, he claims, that all scholars have silky smooth ride even if they are good.

Even so, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with some friends on National Day, shortly after watching the NDP, where my opposite number put forth the view that it is natural and expected that scholars are promoted to positions in the bureaucracy where they can prove and exercise their leadership qualities. That's another unfair stereotype for you.

And Straits Times coverage of "where are these scholars now?" basically conflates and celebrates these 2 stereotypes together: the worthy scholar who will one day lead us into the great future, the worthy scholar whose bond is surety of leadership and success, the scholar whose sole duty to the state, once they have received the scholarship, is to enrich themselves in as many ways as possible.

Napola

My recent posts have attracted some email feedback from readers.

I'll say this just once: I'm not a school superintendent in charge of a certain western cluster in Singapore. In fact, I'm not even employed by the Ministry Of Education. There may be a low-level witch hunt going on to find out the identity of the snitcher who's posting all the embarrassing photos of schools in Singapore, and it's fair to pre-empt the loss of innocent livelihoods and career advancements by making this statement.

That said, this will be my final school story for some time to come.

We were at another primary "super school" in the west of Singapore. Yes, there are super schools even at primary level, and even the Ministry uses such language in everyday conversations. It wasn't too long before all of us noticed a most unique thing about the students - a few of them had uniforms decked with more badges than an active scout.

We counted: these students had 6 to 8 badges, some shaped like name-tags, some like circular military badges. And we took a close look. The badges were:

Monitor
Prefect
Star Pupil
Group Leader
Science Monitor
Maths Monitor
Arts Monitor
Energy Savings Monitor

When we raised the issue, the teachers explained that:
1. Good pupils tend to be given positions of authority
2. Those who lead in one area can obviously lead in other areas
3. Therefore, there are a few students in each class who wear badges, and when they do, they wear many badges.

Yes. I can see why we must start them young, so that the students can be groomed into future leaders of Singapore, who are dedicated to the concepts of meritocracy and incorruptibility.

This is Napola. These are Minilee's Elites.