To the Men-in-White (Heroes in the 60s)

Followthefacts

6 May 11, 00:54

To the Men-in-White

Sunday, 24 April 2011 at 22:14

You guys were once my heroes. When I was young, I was so proud that I had a government that was indeed one of the world's best, if not, THE BEST. Although LKY was (and still is) portrayed as a fearsome, if ruthless leader, he was much respected. When he appeared as our PM on the world stage, my heart never failed to swell with pride because it was obvious that he was also someone other world leaders respected.

But not now. The problem is, you are victims of your own success. And the world has changed, yet you remain stuck in the 1960s. This is why your once-fantastic branding is being eroded, why I find it hard to support you like before.

1) You were too successful
First, there was LKY and he was a great leader. He was like a god and still being treated like one. He "miraculously" transformed a small, poor, resource-less little island into a country that now has one of the highest GDPs in the world, where other countries are now trying to learn from. No one can take that achievement away from the first PAP team and indeed, I would guess that this is also the main reason why many in the older generation are still your loyal fans. I may not agree to all the strategies you've used then (and some were downright questionable) but I can't deny that you had some very good reasons to do so. But unfortunately, when you've set the standard of governance so high, every other subsequent PAP team that comes along can only look worse and worse. And it doesn't help that you constantly try too hard to be perfect. The higher the bar is set, the more difficult it is for the PAP teams that come after to match it. In a way, I think LKY only does his own team a great disservice by publishing so many personal memoirs, recounting again and again how good he was. Because the more god-like he is, the more voters like me will wonder, how can we ever have another "god" like him to lead us? And the answers you propose will always be a disappointment. Because, against a god, everyone will look like a mere mortal. Didn't anyone tell you that you can't replicate a god using your same old cookie-cutter?!! Great leaders are first of all rebels, don't you know (and LKY was one too!)?

2) You were too smart for your own good
No one can or has been able to rival you in terms of your (mostly) rational and well-thought through, sound policies. Especially in terms of our economic policies. You're so darn good with your cost-benefit analyses, your economic forecasts, your financial planning. Every policy you rolled out is justified using very rational arguments that the opposition and the public find hard to counter argue. You are top-notch, because you have a very brainy team, all with impeccable qualifications from world renowned universities. Unfortunately, this made you assume that only you have the brains and everyone else is just an idiot who needs only to listen and obey. The game of politics cannot be played by cold logic alone. And it certainly can't be won by treating your voters as morons.

An example of this would be the issue of bringing in the IRs. Yes, your cold, rational argument makes very good economic reasons for having casinos in Singapore. No one can argue against that. But not everything can or should be measured by dollars and cents or by the amount of GDP it will generate for Sg. We're no longer the generation in the 1960s that constantly had to worry about money or material matters. We've moved up the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In fact, most Singaporeans work ridiculously long hours, are constantly too stressed to even go on dates or have sex (hence the low marriage and fertility rate) that we're all very very disillusioned with the constant drive for wealth. Increasingly, we want to slow down, have time to smell the flowers and be with our families. And having casinos that will bring in more crime (organised ones too), encourage more addictive behaviour and increase broken families will not sit well with a population who now values quality of life rather than personal wealth. Yet, you bull-dosed these concerns and won yet again with your cold, rational, economic arguments because there wasn't enough opposition in the parliament to stop you.

While people may buy into the cold logic of your policies now, your lack of empathy and human touch are slowly alienating voters. The breaking point may not be now, but you can be sure that the disconnection is getting wider by the day. It's a time-bomb that will go off at some point.

3) You forgot evolutionary laws, history and your own past
While you're very brainy, you're mostly all technocrats and specialists. You've scorned the social sciences and the humanities, you think these are only for sissy people whose A Levels don't qualify them for specialist degrees. Yet, if you had been more well-informed in these areas, you might have learnt some valuable lessons about power. History, for example, is the best teacher that could have taught you that power never ever ever ever lasts forever. Indeed, the more you try to hang on to it, the more it will invite adversity. History would also have taught you that every regime was once in opposition. As Marx could have told you, the history of mankind is all about class (or power) struggles. You may be in power now, but one day you'll be overthrown. However, you have hope of leaving your great legacy behind if you take a leaf from the pages of human evolution, which would have taught you that it's human diversity that has helped the human race to overcome the odds, to survive this long. But instead of embracing diversity, you tried your hardest to kill off any form of alternative views, whether these come from within your party or externally. You only wanted to hear your own voice or voices that are exactly the same as yours. This inbreeding will eventually be your demise. Most of all, you forgot your own roots, where you were once an opposition party too. You focused so much on hanging on to your power, you forgot your original vision, you forgot your voters and you forgot why you are governing Singapore.

4) Power breeds fear and paranoia
In the beginning, you used power in order to stabilise the political situation so that you can give the masses homes, food, clean water and their livelihoods. That seemed a justifiable use of power even though it involved some ruthless and ugly tactics. But over the years, you started to crave power for itself. Again, you forgot the story of Macbeth (see, I told you the humanities are important!!) - where an originally good leader was so obsessed with his new power that he saw everything as a threat towards it. He became so paranoid that he even killed his best friend whom he thought was after his throne. He only heard what he wanted to hear from dubious soothsayers (which turned out to be half-truths). Needless to say, Macbeth eventually had a tragic end. Like Macbeth, you've become so obsessed with winning overwhelmingly in every GE that you use every weapon you have, every trick up your sleeves to clobber the opposition to smithereens. Smear campaigns, legal suits, changing electoral boundaries, raising the cost of candidature, forming GRCs, threatening the electorate with upgrading...it's like watching the Brazilian football team beat the Singapore team by 82-2, except in football the rules are fairer and the referee neutral. Why do you need to resort to such gangster-like ways? You could have won overwhelmingly anyway with all the talent you have! I'm not sure how long this bullying strategy can go on but sooner or later you'll become the thug that the electorate can't wait to get rid of.

5) Power corrupts absolutely
Power is not power without money. And in this aspect you've outdone yourselves by pegging your salaries to the private sector. You're the highest paid politicians in the world and your income is >40 times that of the median income of the general population (only less than Kenya). Of course, you justify it with yet another one of your cold, rational arguments of attracting and retaining the best talents in the government. But seriously, how can you compare public sector salaries to the private sector? In fact, many of your candidates have never worked in the private sector before and one wonders if they'll survive even for a day in a private company. Yet, they are paid private sector salaries, paid not from profits but from taxpayers' money. And though I fully agree that politicians must be paid their worth, don't you think getting 40x the median income is crossing into the lines of corruption? Ok, even if all our Ministers and PM are worth every cent of their $4m annual salary, it also means that they have to perform much much much better than any other government in the world. Again, you have set the standards and expectations so high, you only have yourselves to blame when you cannot meet those expectations from the ground. And the more you fail to meet their expectations, the more the electorate will think you're not worth your astronomical salaries. It's a vicious cycle that you've started and it's going to be very hard to stop now.

You talk about the so-called "crutch-mentality" of the poor, yet this same mentality can be applied on yourselves. When you've used money as the main means to attract people into your party, you've basically recruited people who value money above serving the country in the people's interest. These politicians who are in it for the money will not have the incentive to think independently or to represent the people's interests because they've got millions to lose if they don't toe party lines. Because they're paid millions, what incentives do they have to empathize with someone struggling with 2 jobs to make ends meet? Very soon, the voters will feel that you're just a bunch of corrupt officials, no different from those in many 3rd-world countries.

The way I see it, you only have yourselves to blame for this situation you're in. The only way you can somehow reverse these trends is to learn from Madonna (see, you never thought popular culture could teach you anything right?). She keeps herself relevant not by sticking to the same old formula again and again. That would have killed her career long ago as it did to countless of other pop stars. Rather, she keeps re-inventing herself and her image to keep them relevant to the current times. And she pushes the boundaries. She's always ahead of her time and like a true leader, she sets the trends not follow them. She's a rebel. Yet, all you have done is to remain exactly the same as you were in 1960s. The electorate is increasingly tired of your same old scare tactics using HDB upgrading as a stick, tired of you saying that Singapore will go to ruins if the opposition wins, tired of you always using smear campaigns against opposition candidates, tired of your arrogance and lack of empathy, tired of you giving out inconsequential hongbaos before elections only to increase your own salaries by millions after.

You keep encouraging us to think out-of-the-box, yet you're perpetually stuck in the same adversarial mindset towards the opposition. If you can only start to think of your relationship with the opposition as a mutual symbiosis - you share a portion of power with them in return for your longevity and credibility. Power is always temporary, but your legacy needn't be. Just look at the current Conservative Party of UK which traces its roots back to the Tory Party in 1678. Do you think they could have survived this long without any meaningful opposition, no defeats, no radical internal reforms? Are you so politically shortsighted that you can only see your future in the next 10, 20 or 50 years? C'mon, think further!! And didn't anyone tell you that in other to be the best, you need to have competition? Otherwise, how can the electorate be sure that you're indeed the best, if they can't compare you to any other party?

I'm no military strategist, but I do think that sometimes, you need to lose some battles first in order to win bigger battles later. It will not be a bad thing for you to lose a few GRCs in this GE. In fact, if I were you, I will be celebrating. Because nothing gets people going like failure. Rather lose some small battles now than to wait for the big bomb to explode later. By then, not only will you disappear into the dust heap of history, so too will Singapore. That will be your ultimate betrayal to this country that you so painstakingly and successfully created out of a little red dot on the map.

Barisan's rallies before the 1963 General Election attracted large crowds. -- ST FILE PHOTOS

Out the 13 Barisan Sosialis Members of Parliament elected in the 1963 Elections ( held after Operation Coldstore), five of whom were arrested under the ISA, two are in exiled, and another sued for bankruptcy by a PAP leader.

Two of those arrested are Dr Chia Thye Poh and Mr Lee Tee Tong (or Lee Tse Tong). Dr Chia's detention of almost 32 years is shortened by 6 years in the report below. Mr Lee was detained for almost 18 years.

Read and watch everything in this link to understand Singapore's legacy of adversarial politics.

What happened to the Barisan 13?
Straits Times, 1 Apr 2011

Until 10 days ago when he was introduced as a PAP candidate for the coming general election, very few people knew that labour leader Ong Ye Kung was the son of one of the 13 Barisan Sosialis MPs elected in the 1963 General Election. Where are they now and what happened to the most powerful opposition party in Singapore's history?

By Leong Weng Kam, Senior Writer

Barisan Sosialis MPs posing outside Parliament House with a banner proclaiming the death of democracy, after resigning their seats on Oct 8, 1966. They are (from left) Mr Koo Young, Mr Ong Lian Teng, Mr Tan Cheng Tong, Mr Chia Thye Poh and Mr Poh Ber Liak. -- ST FILE PHOTOS

WHEN National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) assistant secretary-general Ong Ye Kung, 41, was unveiled as a People's Action Party (PAP) candidate for the coming polls, Singaporeans were astonished to learn that his father was one of the Barisan Sosialis MPs who sought to overthrow the PAP Government in the 1960s.

Mr Ong Lian Teng, who died in 2009 aged 74, was once a firebrand leftist politician and one of the 13 Barisan Sosialis representatives elected in the crucial 1963 General Election.

He was among the group of Barisan MPs who took their party's struggle to the streets. They marched to Parliament House with their supporters to hand in their resignation letters on Oct 8, 1966.

As the picture above shows, they posed behind a black banner with the seven Chinese characters - guo hui min zhu yi si wang, meaning 'parliamentary democracy is dead' - outside the chamber's building before riot policemen dispersed them.

The elder Ong was an active Chinese community leader in rural Singapore in 1961 when he joined Barisan, a breakaway faction of the PAP which came into power three years earlier.

The camp led by leftist trade unionist Lim Chin Siong was opposed to the PAP's founding secretary-general Lee Kuan Yew and company over Singapore's merger with Malaysia and other ideological issues.

Mr Ong was one of the few remaining Barisan MPs who boycotted Singapore's first Parliament session after its independence in August 1965 to resign his seat, claiming that parliamentary democracy was dead after a series of government arrests just before and after the 1963 elections.

The crackdown included Operation Cold Store in February, which imprisoned more than 110 activists, and Operation Pechah in October, which rounded up another 190.

Three of the 13 Barisan MPs - trade unionists S.T. Bani, Lee Tee Tong and Loh Miaw Gong - were among those arrested in Operation Pechah on the eve of an industrial strike planned by the then left-wing Singapore Association of Trade Unions (Satu).

Mr Bani, who was Satu's president, resigned from Barisan and his seat in Parliament on his release, following a public confession on Jan 9, 1966. Both Madam Loh and Mr Lee resigned from Parliament later in 1966 while they were still in prison.

Three other elected members, Mr Chan Sun Wing, Mr Wong Soon Fong and Mr Tan Cheng Tong, were among the original 13 leftist PAP legislative assemblymen who broke away from the PAP to form Barisan in 1961. After escaping arrest in Operation Pechah, Mr Chan and Mr Wong vacated their parliamentary seats. They now live in exile in Southern Thailand.

Mr Lim Huan Boon, a chemistry graduate from the former Nanyang University (Nantah) was the first to quit in December 1965, four months after Singapore's independence. He resigned from Barisan and his seat in Parliament because he disagreed with party chairman Dr Lee Siew Choh's decision to opt for 'extra-parliamentary struggle', claiming Singapore's independence was phoney and there was no parliamentary democracy.

Now 82, Mr Lim, who is better known as a Malay language scholar today, had said that Barisan should not have boycotted Parliament.

Explaining his decision to retire from politics for good, he had said: 'I joined Barisan because I was against merger with Malaysia. With Singapore's independence, there is nothing for me to fight for.'

His departure was followed in January 1966 by that of Mr Chio Cheng Thun and Mr Kow Kee Seng, who were also at loggerheads with Dr Lee.

With the opposition bench empty, the PAP held and won all the by-elections to fill the seats, resulting in its total dominance of Parliament until 1981 when Anson was captured by then Workers' Party secretary-general J.B. Jeyaretnam in a by-election.

So why did the most powerful opposition party in the history of Singapore boycott Parliament, thus handing it to the PAP on a silver platter? This is one question that has long intrigued historians and political pundits.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, in the book Men In White, published by Singapore Press Holdings in 2009, called it 'a stroke of destiny' because Barisan's action led to the absence of opposition in Parliament, allowing the ruling party to focus on economic and social development unhindered and undistracted by politicking.

In the book, which featured the voices of many leftists, Barisan chairman Dr Lee defended his decision, saying the 1965 parliamentary walkout was the right move as it drew people's attention to the 'undemocratic practices' of the PAP.

For example, he said, after the September 1962 referendum on merger, Barisan MPs had been pressing the Government for an open meeting on merger, but they were always ignored.

He added: 'For quite a number of months, there was hardly any meeting in Parliament. And while we were waiting, Singapore's independence was declared!'

Instead of holding any Parliament sitting, he charged, 'there were only arrests, arrests and arrests of our people'.

On reflection, Mr Lee Tee Tong, now 79, tells Insight this week that he agreed with Dr Lee. He notes that Operation Cold Store in February 1963 had already nabbed Barisan's top leaders before the general election in September.

They included Mr Lim Chin Siong, Mr Fong Swee Suan, Dr Lim Hock Siew, Dr Poh Soo Kai, Mr S. Woodhull and Mr Dominic Puthucheary.

The son of Mr Puthucheary, Dr Janil Puthucheary, a 38-year-old paediatrician in Singapore, was also introduced as a PAP candidate last week.

Mr Lee says: 'After the general election, a second wave of arrests put more of our leaders, including myself and two other elected Barisan members, behind bars. Many others who contested unsuccessfully were also not spared.

'I don't think Barisan lost in the 1963 election for lack of good people or a better party ideology, but because of the wave after wave of arrests of our leaders.'

Another former Barisan MP, Mr Tan Cheng Tong, now 80, says he was in a fix and had no choice but to resign his Jalan Kayu seat because it was the party's position.

'Looking back, it was an extreme position that we had taken, but the actions against us then were really undemocratic,' he adds.

Former Barisan activist C.C. Chin, 70, now an independent scholar on leftist history, however, takes the view that Barisan's boycott of Parliament was political suicide.

'The party should have continued to fight the PAP constitutionally in spite of the arrests and I am sure today it will still be a political force the ruling party would have to contend with,' he argues.

He believes that the party, having taken the fight to the streets by boycotting Parliament, had lost the support and trust of the people almost completely.

He points out that when Dr Lee merged Barisan with the Workers' Party in 1988 and fielded a unified team for Eunos GRC in the general election held that year, it lost, albeit narrowly, to the PAP. Barisan was a spent force, he says.

In the view of National University of Singapore history lecturer Huang Jianli, every current situation would be contingent upon the past and no one could tell what the outcome would have been if all 13 elected Barisan MPs did not resign their seats between 1965 and 1966.

'Hypothetically speaking, there can be a broad range of possibilities. At the optimistic end of the spectrum is the possibility of greater political pluralism with a much less dominating PAP Government. At the pessimistic end is having more or less the same as today.

'This is because, given the overall authoritarian tendency of the PAP leadership, it would still probably have used other avenues and summoned other means to clamp down on alternative voices,' he says.

Dr Cheng Yinghong, an associate professor in history at Delaware State University in the United States, believes that Barisan in the 1960s was greatly influenced by the Cultural Revolution in China. Whether its elected members remained in Parliament after the 1963 General Election or not, he was pessimistic of the party's prospects.

'The Barisan was a Maoist party by the mid- and the second half of the 1960s. Globally, Maoist influence was disastrous not just in terms of its destructive impact on societies but also to leftist movements themselves.

'When I read those ferocious verbal attacks on their own comrades published in Barisan newspapers, I believed that it was fortunate that such a party failed in its struggle for state power,' he says.

-----------------------------------------

WHY BARISAN LOST
'I don't think Barisan lost in the 1963 election for lack of good people or a better party ideology, but because of the wave after wave of arrests of our leaders.'
Mr Lee Tee Tong
-- ST PHOTO: LEONG WENG KAM

Barisan's rallies before the 1963 General Election attracted large crowds. -- ST FILE PHOTOS

Of the 13 former Barisan Sosialis MPs, six are in Singapore, two live in exile in Thailand, four have passed away, and the whereabouts of one is unknown. Here's an update.

Photos from Singapore Notes

MR LEE TEE TONG
Bukit Timah, 79
Former treasurer of the defunct Singapore Bus Workers' Union.
Detained under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for alleged pro-communist activities for 17 years from October 1963 to February 1981.
After his release, he married a nurse and worked as an electrician until his retirement in the early 1990s.

MR TAN CHENG TONG
Jalan Kayu, 80
One of the original 13 leftist PAP assemblymen who broke away from the ruling party to form Barisan in 1961.
After quitting Parliament and retiring from politics in 1966, he took up chicken and pig farming in Punggol before moving to other businesses.

MR KOW KEE SENG
Paya Lebar
Former secretary of the Singapore Bus Workers' Union. In the 1972 election, he contested in Paya Lebar as an independent, losing to PAP's Tay Boon Too.
In 1974, he was made a bankrupt after a libel suit against him by then Singapore Ambassador to Indonesia, Mr Lee Khoon Choy. He died several years ago.

MR ONG LIAN TENG
Bukit Panjang
Former treasurer and assistant general affairs secretary of the defunct Singapore Rural Dwellers' Association.
The tropical fish farm owner died in 2009, aged 74. The older of his two sons, Mr Ong Ye Kung, 41, has been named a PAP candidate for the coming polls.

MADAM LOH MIAW GONG
Havelock, 75
Former branch vice-chairman of the Singapore General Employees Union.
Detained under ISA for seven years between 1963 and 1970.
She worked for the former Shanghai Book Company for many years before retiring, and now looks after her grandchildren.

MR CHIA THYE POH
Jurong, 70
Former university lecturer and Nantah graduate.
Detained under ISA for 26 years between 1966 and 1992.
After his release, he has spent most of his time in Europe.

MR KOO YOUNG
Thomson
Former Chinese primary school teacher.
Detained under ISA for seven months between June 1967 and January 1968.
After his release, he worked as a private tutor. People who knew him said he died from a heart attack many years ago.

MR WONG SOON FONG
Toa Payoh, 76
Former Works Brigade commander.
He was a founding member of Barisan Sosialis in 1961. After the 1963 elections, he fled to Indonesia to escape arrest. He joined MCP and was an armed guerilla along the Thai-Malaysian border until 1989. He lives in Hat Yai today.
In 2007, he published his memoirs in Chinese.

MR CHAN SUN WING
Nee Soon, 77
Parliamentary secretary to then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew after PAP came to power in 1959. One of the 13 leftist assemblymen who broke away from PAP to form Barisan in 1961.
After the 1963 polls, he fled to Indonesia. He joined the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) and was an armed guerilla until 1989. He now resides in Hat Yai.

MR S.T. BANI
Crawford
Former president of the defunct Singapore Association of Trade Unions.
Detained under ISA between October 1963 and January 1966.
After his release, he joined the People's Association and became principal of the National Youth Leadershp Training Institute. Later, he went into personnel management. He died in 1985, aged 51.

MR POH BER LIAK
Tampines, 74
The Nanyang University (Nantah) history graduate has been running his publishing firm, Intellectual Publishing Company, since 1970. It publishes mainly Chinese-language books and magazines.

MR CHIO CHENG THUN
Chua Chu Kang
Former rural community activist and trade unionist.
After resigning from Barisan and Parliament in 1966, he joined the People's Association. In 1980, he was an industrial relations officer with the then Singapore Industrial Labour Organisation.
His whereabouts are unknown. He would be 70 if he is still alive.

MR LIM HUAN BOON
Bukit Merah, 82
The Nantah chemistry graduate is better known as a Malay language scholar after retiring from politics. Two years ago, he published a compilation of Malay phrases with Chinese translations.