'PAP v PAP'

Had to buy Cherian George & Donald Low's 'PAP v PAP: The Party’s struggle to adapt to a changing Singapore' (2020). Reading it is slightly more challenging. It isn't a difficult read, and I didn't want to sit on it for too long, but it's not a book that I wanted to finish fast.

I'm not unfamiliar with the writers' formal academic opinions on matters of Singapore's social and economic policies. It's just nicer to see them presented in a book that takes into account the campaigning and results of the General Election we have in the pandemic year of 2020. However, it's also a book that I don't particularly want to delve deep into because these two writers can ramble on damn lengthy when they're trying to be tactful but somewhat frank and forward in their political opinions and criticisms. They did a thing online last week and talked more about it. 

The irony isn't lost on me. Two Singaporean professors living in Hong Kong and lecturing in its universities got together to co-author a book on Singapore politics. While it's great they get to live overseas and develop their career and perspectives, it's a little telling how Singapore closed her doors to their careers. (Google will tell you all that you need to know about that.) They now live in a city where freedom of speech might have once been deemed vibrant but now, the new national security law has extensive reach over social media, journalists, and citizens' right of expression, especially within academic campuses. 

I liked the results of our General Elections 2020. It indicates hope. And when going up against such a polished machinery, hope is all we need. A fair voice and representation is all I ask for. I confess I'm not keen to hear all about the old guard and such. I'm really not interested to listen to the going-ons of say, pre-2000. I get Operation Coldstore, but I don't know what else we can do about besides to keep its story alive, to remember the whys and the hows, and to always question. The government of the day is never always right. The government has exerted its force and legal reach over the said names arrested and detained without trial. They have fought, some have survived. We know it's hard to go up against the incumbent government. Most people die doing that. In Singapore, you get whole lives destroyed and ostracized. 

The book's content doesn't offer solutions. It offers a look at the methods of governance and how the citizenry believes the government's words as we move from General Election to General Election. Opinions and the political climate change from generation to generation, and the greatest enabler of everything is, education. Ah well. I'm paid to write, that's my bread and butter. Hahaha. So I won't bother to dissect the book here in that much detail as I do when doing analytical essays for work. Political opinions differ from people to people. I'll just type out an extract here from its closing portion themed 'Parting thoughts'. The single chapter is titled 'Riding the populist tiger', 

Today's PAP has a split personality. The elite technocrat within the party's psyche wrestles with a new populist alter ego. Perhaps some PAP politicians assume that populist tactics — like other illiberal methods described in this book — are compatible with the party's core values and positions. They may sincerely believe that this is a time to rally around the flag with nationalist rhetoric. But there is a big difference between an inclusive patriotism — a love for country that is also open-minded and open-hearted  and an exclusive, 'us-versus-them' nationalism. The former can rally all who call Singapore home to rise above their individual interests and embrace their responsibilities to one another. The latter is unhelpful, even dangerous: it tells dissonant and dissenting voices that you show your loyalty by keeping doubts to yourself.

That shouldn't be the way to deal with a crisis or to solve complex problems. It also promotes the frankly seditious notion that the flag we're supposed to rally around is a symbol of the ruling party, rather than of our shared values of democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality — as represented by its five stars.

By releasing the populist genie against liberals, civil society activists and other opponents, PAP politicians are abetting a broad assault against reason and diversity, risking both its own elite-governance model and Singapore's multi-cultural foundations. The current crisis makes this an even more dangerous gamble. Economic stagnation generates frustrations that are exploited by populist demagogues who pander to majoritarian sentiments at the expense of minorities and immigrants. Economists say the coronavirus fallout could be as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s — a crash followed by a world war and the deadliest genocide in history.