Just a few thoughts on the idea that the Asian economic crisis was 'a failure of Asian values and heralded a need to embrace Western-style human rights and democratic norms' as voiced by Nominated MP Simon Tay, "Crisis exposes nepotism as 'bane' of East Asia" The Sunday Times, February 22, 1998.
Tay's comment was similar to Prof. Francis Fukuyama - of "The End of History" fame - who in the February 1998 issue of Commentary predicted that the economic shocks in Asia will hasten political change in the region and that the current crisis will 'puncture the idea of Asian exceptionalism' in that Asian values were an exception to inevitable increased liberal democratization.
Asian values' proponents like Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia have offered a passionate, at times belligerent, cultural warfare explanation for the modern Shangrila in the East: achieving high economic growth sans rising crime, fractured family units and social tensions or upheavals - pandemic in the West. Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore diplomat, grimly warned of the "social decay" where American minds had become "ossified" by their worship of "democracy, human rights, freedom, equality, justice - to name a few." Asia's authoritarian tendencies were tossed up as a better model to the Western notion that free markets and political liberalism are inextricably linked, self-reinforcing trends.
But the subtext of this Asian values wayang kulit may be evolving in view of Lee's comments at the Europe Asia Forum, "Crisis exposes nepotism as 'bane' of East Asia" ST, February 22, 1998. He opined that the 'live' issue was not one of 'democracy versus dictatorship or authoritarianism, Western versus Asian values,' but rather that if the ailing Asian economies had a Western 'strict legal system' with transparency and rigorous supervision like Singapore, the current Asian economic situation would not be so dire.
One fact that is overlooked is that before any legal system, western or otherwise, can enforce transparency and rigorous supervision on the regulation of the economy, there has be the political will and determination behind such legal enforcement. There has to be rule of law and respect for such rule of law before national economic regulators can pursue corruption to its deepest troughs and let the chips fall where they may.
Countries like Japan, Korea, Malaysia and even Indonesia all have some existing anti-bribery laws but there is neither the motivation nor the political will to enforce a sufficiently transparent legal system. Corruption, cronysim, graft are the consequent progeny of 'guanxi' or connections. Although 'guanxi' could be effective in closing the deal, it is a different can of worms whether 'guanxi' can enforce a deal or repair an economy in times of necessity or when it hurts - experience and history has shown that 'guanxi' is a pathetic and poor substitute for the rule of law in the regulation of economic affairs.
In the throes of the Asian economic disaster, a new construct of Asian values may be formulated - a symbiotic marriage of the fearless, western-style transparent legal system and reliance on the Chinese practice of guanxi. But these two means are mutually exclusive and can never be reconciled as a transparent justice or regulatory system demands impartiality and is free from any undue influence whereas for 'guanxi' - one relies on familial or clan ties to get the job done or undone or have nothing done. But Lee's pointing out that the Asian tradition of Confucianism had "weaknesses" like 'nepotism' is not the full picture. Nepotism and crony capitalism was only one side of the coin in the economic mess in Asia but the other side was an authoritarian and unaccountable political system that encouraged nepotism to thrive and shielded it from being exposed and eliminated.
However, there may still be hope for a Confucian inspired western style legal system of accountability. According to Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge University, "Confucius did not recommend blind allegiance to the state." In a lecture last year at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, Sen observed that "When Zilu asks him how to serve a prince, Confucius replies, 'Tell him the truth, even if it offends him.' This almost sounds like some upstart liberal norm but it is not. Therefore, it is possible that Confucianism, practiced properly, has the theoretical basis to avoid the pitfalls tempted by nepotism and cronyism. But this sort of courageous Confucianism needs the milk of political will to nourish and thrive but sadly, many will find that the spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak.
It should be noted that Tay's proposition of the failure of Asian values & the Asian economic contagion could be traced to romantic lore that Asian economic development will produce a politically restless urban Asian middle class, e.g., professionals, entrepreneurs, managers where eventually this middle class would realize that they needed to push for democracy to secure access to a fair share of an ever-increasing economic pie. Therefore, it was merely a matter of time before liberal democracy would blossom in Asian countries, including Singapore.
However, Singapore's middle class, like most of the other Asian middle classes, was the first to suffer the ignoble sting of currency meltdowns and stock-market traumas. Parliament and civil service salaries were frozen, Jurong & Woodlands industrial workers retrenched, Raffles Place executives laid off, recruitment of entry-level university graduates scaled back, family vacation destinations were cheaper and shorter, private property and HDB prices plunged. People tightened their belts. The recently impoverished Singapore middle class, in short, sure looks like they have a few other things to worry about besides freedom and democracy.
Now one central issue is whether the Singapore middle class, the HDB heartlanders, was actually worried about things like freedom and democracy in the first place. There was a basic social contract: Entrenched political and business leaders called all the shots, unchallenged by a public generally contented with rapid economic growth. The more dramatic and visible rights of democracy were bypassed; business boomed. It appeared that this contract was recently renewed from the 1997 Singapore General Election but this was before the current economic morass.
According to the PAP's appraisal of the 1997 General Election, Singaporeans have rejected such abstract notions of Western style democracy and are rightly grounded on where the buck stops, who will get our bread buttered and our HDB estates will be upgraded. Past promises and deliveries of economic goodies have coaxed the Singapore middle class to endorse the PAP's enlightened authoritarian rule over the past three decades that was aided by a healthy pinch of ruthless brass knuckled elimination of political dissent, imagined or real. This is hardly surprising because the HDB heartlanders were the primary recipients of state economic paternalism - subsidized public housing, subsidized HDB upgrading, readily available jobs from MNCs attracted by short-term domestic industrial policy - all of which gave the Singapore middle class a strong stake in the preservation of the PAP status quo.
Singapore's middle class had to be politically passive in times of economic boom because of the solicitous distribution of the largesse of economic development. Naturally, the effects of an education system drunk on rote learning, obsessed with cramming for examinations and model answers, and a national discourse indoctrinated by a campaign of unrelenting proselytization of a superior, illiberal, i.e., Asian, cultural value system such as acquiescence to ruling elites, consultation instead of confrontation and narrow, municipal-driven feedback sessions may also have played some stirring supporting roles.
Also having Nominated Members of Parliament benignly compartmentalizes alternative opinion that can be politely considered but ignored with impunity by the ruling elite. Political commentary by non-politicians, like the whole intelligentsia, has been vigorously ridiculed and challenged, compliant and emasculated trade unions ceremoniously grafted onto the ruling party's machinery and treated as a tokenism of workers' rights being represented in the national discourse. Finally Singapore academics are co-opted into the ruling polity or tethered to a Faustian deal of silent but well rewarded loyalty. Given the Singaporean middle class's current economic anxieties, Tay's question should be framed as to whether Singapore's recently troubled middle class may now be motivated to question the primeval PAP ways and become instruments of political liberalization.
This assumes that the Singapore middle class will hold the PAP Government responsible for Singapore's current economic predicament and that there is a better alternative in sight. This exposes Tay's quixotic flaw of his diagnosis of the innards of this wounded Asian economic tiger we call home and his premature Delphic pronouncements that democracy and freedom may succor us. In fact, it is my firm belief that this current economic quandary might be the scary harbinger of a greater reluctance to embrace Western-style human rights and democratic norms.
We should remember that in the heady daze of double digit economic growth and swinging Singaporean prosperity, most citizens have voted with their pockets, and will probably do so to get back to Singapore's glory days. Even some PAP critics have recognized that the government has done a relatively decent job in managing the economy, so the PAP would be an odds-on favorite to get Singapore back on the right track.
The PAP authorities were quick to blame the current mess on Singapore's unsophisticated neighbors who made unchecked, untrammeled and unwise investments; mucking up with questionable economic machinations and policies that reduced a once high rolling Thai condominium developer to a humble Bangkok roadside sandwich hawker or a country that has dubious distinction of having the world's tallest building and simultaneously calling on its citizens to grow cauliflower in their gardens so they would not need to import the vegetable from abroad.
What is telling from Lee's response to Tay's question is that while blame is squared on the 'nepotic tendencies to award favors to family members or friends,' but there is a failure to acknowledge that these tendencies did not emerge hydra-like overnight. The Singapore government is a silent witness to manifestations of these tendencies. Most of our neighbors' economic activities were courted, encouraged and even promoted, at arms' length, by the various instruments of government in regional business dealings. Now the PAP waxes lyrically of the fine stewardship that has helped Singapore avoid the mess but there is a disingenuous silence as to its culpability in omissions and failure to demand and obtain more rigorous and transparent supervision of the respective regional economic and financial institutions when they were encouraging Singaporean investors to build up investment stakes in these regional economies.
I certainly hope that this is not repeated with investments in other Asian countries like Myanmar and especially in the PRC since it is public knowledge that the 'gaunxi' style of doing business was not only known but bandied as a talismanic secret of success. Sadly, I am not too confident that Singaporeans and the PAP government who have invested in the PRC will not be stricken with the same grief as from our regional neighbors.
Notwithstanding this, it would seem unlikely that the Singapore middle class will blame the PAP for the current bad times. Reinforcing this passivity is the lack of a credible opposition capable of challenging the ruling party, since several opposition figures have routinely been hounded into exile through various tactics in the government's indomitable armada of immunity from scrutiny e.g., arrest and interrogation under the Internal Security Act, libel suits for defamation, harassment by taxation authorities, and so on.
Therefore, if the economic situation worsens, it is likely that the PAP will pump up the volume for the need to rally round the flag - preaching discipline, sacrifice and abstinence from sclerotic distractions like greater liberalization and democracy. This is already evident in several glowing local media reports and cheery Rocky Balboa comeback op-eds and columns that Singaporeans are taking the economic crisis in its stride and accepting the trade-off of a little less democracy in return for prosperity and security and maybe even making greater sacrifices in the future.
A recent Los Angeles Times article, faithfully reprinted by the Straits Times, SINGAPORE SEES EFFICIENCY AS KEY TO ITS SUCCESS, contained a Singaporean's observation that while the Indian national has more democracy; the Singaporean citizen has a better life. With such quintessential kiasu wisdom, it will be a cakewalk for our PAP leaders to push all the right Singaporean buttons & somberly warn that Singapore's material well-being is being threatened, our assets inextricably locked in an everlasting embrace with Singapore Telecom shares are at peril and affordable public housing is jeopardized; so there is no time to tarry with such luxuries, like Western-style human rights and democratic norms.
The PAP's immutable formula for three decades of rule makes it is timely to recall the wisdom of Alexis de Tocqueville: "Love of gain, a fondness for business careers, the desire to get rich at all costs, a craving for material comfort and easy living quickly become ruling passions under a despotic government.... It is in the nature of despotism that it should foster such desires and propagate their havoc. Lowering as they do the national morale, they are despotism's safeguard since they divert men's attention from public affairs."
Therefore, despotic rulers actually have an interest in encouraging the blind pursuit of material interests and the possible raising of the colors, to protect our material interests will serve to divert our interests in public affairs hence leading to less democracy. Diverting our attention from public affairs has led to apathy and atrophied the fire in the belly to stomach the pain associated with change. We may believe or be in denial that we are apathetic, materialistic, and maybe even alienated. While political apathy may not be a serious problem in economic boom times, such a condition may be quite harmful if the PAP government is no longer able to bring home the bacon. This will result in Singaporeans either reposing their trust with a different set of butchers or switching farms by leaving for greener pastures.
Switching governments is a non-option in view of the lack of a credible opposition. However, the brain drain is more worrying there was a long running brain drain in Singapore during the good times and it could be reasonably expected that this brain drain may worsen during the next couple years since the profile (as recently learnt in the 1997 The Good Life Survey conducted by Singapore Press Holdings Research & Information Department) of the potential emigrant is 'better educated, those with high incomes, those educated in the English stream, and the politically alienated' - the features of a typical globally mobile professional.
The Singaporean government is trying to deal with this problem by recruiting more foreign talent but this strategy is risky because in view of the current economic slowdown, there may be too many people chasing too few Singapore jobs and there are political ramifications if the government encourages the hiring of an unemployed foreigner over an unemployed Singapore citizen. The solution? Perhaps, one may emerge if the PAP stops stooping to conquer by appealing to the baser Singaporean instincts and appeal to our better angels and not divert the majority's 'attention from public affairs.'
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