RULES OF POLITICS ARE CREATED, NOT INHERENT

24 Mar 1996

        Senior Minister Lee's recent speech to 
university students has a disturbing 
implication. If, as SM Lee says, using public 
funds to obtain votes is the essence of 
politics, then the converse must be true as 
well. That is, using votes to obtain public 
funds is also the essence of politics. Neither 
can be true alone. Yet, the latter is exactly 
the 'irresponsible' voting behaviour against 
which we are continually warned.

        One who asserts that 'X-is-the-essence-of-
Y' seeks to persuade listeners that Y makes X 
inevitable, and to put X beyond question. But, 
what is, is not necessarily what always will be, 
much less what ought to be.

        Nothing remains unchanged forever, and the 
same is true of politics. Slavery was part of 
the essence of race relations for centuries. It 
was accepted that 'superior' races enslaved 
'inferior' ones. Only two generations ago, 
colonialism was the essence of international 
relations between the West and much of the rest 
of the world. Fortunately, all those supposedly 
immutable structures have been swept away by 
changing norms and ideas.

        It is important to remember that the 
essence of any social or political structure was 
once invented: rules were made, myths 
manufactured, and customs laid down. This means 
that such structures are changeable. It also 
means that we have the power to choose the rules 
for any game, including politics.

        To come back to the original point, 
Singapore has successfully avoided the worst 
forms of patronage politics that plague many 
political systems. This was due in large part to 
the belief that public funds should be spent on 
public goods regardless of the distribution of 
votes among the constituencies. That old essence 
of politics now seems to be making way for the 
new essence, which consists in using public 
funds to obtain votes for the party in 
government. If so, we can expect voters to begin 
using their votes to obtain public funds. The 
consequences hardly need stating. Do we really 
want to go down this road?