I have some dire warnings to make: first a quick one: USA is destined for trouble in November: if Trump wins re-election, the next four years will be worse than the past four; if he loses, his fans will march with guns;
assuming they do no more than marching and shouting slogans, then fine; trump might say he does not accept the result, that Democrats cheated, that China/ Russia caused his loss, that ... but this by itself is not a problem - most people in america/ world are now used to not
taking trump seriously; however if he incites followers to violence, there is no telling how it would end; for example, if he says while inciting his people that his loss was China's fault, would his fans actually start shooting asian looking people in the street? or they might just march to local Democratic Party campaign headquarters and shoot people celebrating their victory? we simply dont know
now my dire warning about Singapore:
I have said before that PAP campaigns badly: see old comment
PAP has been winning elections for many decades, so people might find my comment rather hard to believe; be as that may, its loss of Sengkang in the 2020 election was due to its very poor handling of two events involving workers party candidates in that particular constituency: Jamus Lim's much praised "we dont want to deny PAP a mandate, just not give it a blank cheque", and the much more damaging Raeesah Khan 2018 social media comments.
The first one is relatively easy to deal with: PAP should have said it has never sought a blank cheque, but always exercised power with restraint and prudence, yada yada yada ... The second one is more subtle; first, one need to note that most voters have not carefully read what she wrote. It is necessary to repeat them and explain why these were wrong; for example, the City Harvest Church officials did not steal 50M and got off scot free: 6 of them went to jail, for varying periods of time, and the money they misdirected was restituted, so they did not "steal" the money in the sense of making it their own; second, once she apologized, PAP should have stopped dwelling on it; in fact, Ng Chee Meng might have helped himself greatly if he said to reporters "we should move on; she is young and inexperienced; let's talk about what I will do for Sengkang; I have this that experience ..." By harping on the matter like 2006 James Gomez case and 2012 Yaw Shing Leong case, PAP showed itself to be not learning from experience, and more generally, not knowing its own campaigning shortcomings; it gave the appearance of being too harsh and too keen to extract its pound of flesh, instead of being generous and magnanimous; do remember that a voter would have in the back of his mind "one day if I get into trouble, I hope to be treated leniently".
Gazing into the crystal ball, the 2020 election result is actually even worse than the numbers indicate, for the trends it sets into motion: Raeesah, instead of suffering loss for her inappropriate comments (for which she apologized so this was her own evaluation), actually benefitted by getting elected, in fact she had the effect of dragging the other three team members across the finish line; she is now the golden girl of Workers Party, and certain patterns of behaviour have been validated and so will be followed in the future.
More ominous is this: the western minded liberals have attracted various minority rights advocates, and their coming together will in due course create the major player of singapore opposition politics; for 20 years gay activists have been the strike team of western liberals, identifying their issue as the litmus test of openness, so that the failure to repeal section 377A of criminal code is seen as the most obvious evidence of continuing intolerance. Now there are other issues of minority rights, e.g., not permitting the wearing of hijab for students and uniformed public employees, and Heng Swee Keat's statement that some older voters are not yet ready to accept a non-Chinese prime minster.
You might think that western liberals and ethnic radicals make an odd combination; yet, among the Chinese western liberals it is now political orthodoxy to say singapore chinese have majority privilege, for which they feel suitably guilty; in consequence, they see the need to bend over backwards to redress the social shortcoming
western liberals and minority rights advocates standing together to fight authoritariansm is not just logical, but intoxicatingly liberating, with special appeal to the young, who are much more liable to adopt beliefs without being bothered by their inconsistencies; if you look at Hongkong, you see huge hordes of youths destroying property and acting threateningly, sometimes violently, towards mainlanders, at the same time shouting slogans of democracy, people's rights, openness, freedom, humanity ... It is not hard to envisage the same contradictory thinking catching the young people in Singapore
harmlessly frolicking girls (presumably lesbian) at Pink Dot; you might have seen equally innocent looking ones in Hongkong
now try the picture below: one can turn into the other a lot easier than you think
Even more ominously, the formation of such a "liberal" coalition with its various elements will draw into play movements to oppose them: I foresee the reactivation of chinese chauvinists, and they are likely to be joined by church people to form the "conservative" faction; so on both sides there will be the same kind of somewhat contradictory yet entirely logical combination, similar to American church people joining Trump despite their distaste. Both sides will have passionate adherents, leaving the PAP rationalist camp holding the fort in between.
It will be a delicate balance, which PAP has not been familiar with, and how well it learns the skills will be the crucial question of the coming decade.
added on 19/7/2020 Professor Chan Heng Chee, former ambassador to UN/US, who used to work in NUS like me but is now with SUTD, gave a comforting comment about election result at a seminar and in straits times, that 2020 will be followed by nicer, gentler politics; I completely disagree; I expect the next decades to be very nasty, with both liberals and conservatives acting like Hongkong youth: ignorant, ill-disciplined, yet completely sure of their own moral superiority: all the different components: gay activists, ethnic radicals, church fundamentalists, chinese chauvinists .. have their own systems of beliefs that are self-validating; they cannot be persuaded to see other people's point of view that requires alternative frameworks of reference
a precursor of the struggle to come was Thio Li Ann versus gays: she was a nominated member of parliament and law professor, and gave a long speech about homosexuality reflecting the view of a segment of christians; (her mother thio su mien caused considerable controversy trying to change AWARE, a feminist organization, out of similar motivation); the noisy events that arose from her campaign have largely been forgotten; what need to be remembered is the mutual incomprehension displayed by the two sides, and I expect this to be reflected many times over in the future
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in Sacred Cows - A Study of Asian Values, available from Amazon Kindle for US$1
我看六四
民主,平等这些理想当然是好的,抗议,甚至造反也可以是有理的,不过六四那些领导人员离理想太远了。他们生长在不民主的环境里,学到的只是海瑞罢官,买好棺材向皇帝抗议这类本质是封建的手法,这倒也难怪他们,问题是他们连这种中国传统精神也无法贯彻 中央决定镇压那天赵紫阳亲自去天安门,流着泪劝说他们离开以免受伤害,过后柴玲吾尔开西等主要人物就决定逃走,但并没有叫跟从的群众也撤退逃命,反而鼓励他们留驻继续斗争,结果有不少那晚伤亡或被捕;这是领袖人物应有的作风吗? 如果那晚他们叫群众散开自己留下,等着被捕受审,在法庭上继续宣扬民主,冒的风险并不多,因为他们有很多党内支持者包括赵紫阳,事件过后那些开放派也受到牵连,至少有”处事软弱不及时解决让问题闹大”的罪名.如果那天民运领导拿出令人尊敬的英雄气概,让事件和平解决,不但对开放派有利,以后中国真的开放的时候他们会成为风云人物,甚至可能得到招安成为高级官员. 他们的懦弱,和部分人物到了美国后的虚荣表现,不但令他们失去领导作用,使民主运动无力振作,也引起更坏的后果:两方面都失去理想,所以中国开放只引进了最粗糙的商业化,令当代政党和各方面文化包括教育,科研,影视,文学,都趋向腐败. 64 领导人物那天离开时,还每人分了一批手中的现金;这些主要是香港台湾支持者的捐款,但里面有一部分似乎来自美国,台湾情报机构设立的一些所谓基金会研究机构.64事件引起中国政府对海外影响的高度不信任,使台湾香港都失去帮助中国民主化的机会,北京对两地的方针也趋向强硬,台湾当局的失望间接造成这几年来,部分民众盲目跟随独派,小人当权,当地政治每下愈况,而香港则完全失去了原有的个性,(一部分原因是97年亚洲经济风暴后失去自信,也需要中央批准各种经济支持)这些对中国的发展都是某种损失 所以我认为,不懂民主的民运人物,对民主路程功少过多,不一定能得到历史认可
My view of June 4
Democracy, equality etc are excellent ideas; protest, even rebellion, could be justified, but the leaders of June 4 movement was far distant from these ideals. Growing up in an undemocratic environment, what they knew was just essentially feudal methods ala Hai Rui buying a coffin before sending his critical petition to the emperor; further, they failed even to live up to that spirit: that day Zhao Ziyang went to Tiananmen Square personally, asking, in tears, them to leave and avoid getting hurt, then Chai Ling, Wuer Kaixi and other leaders decided to run, but they did not ask their followers to also withdraw, encouraging them to remain to continue the struggle, and many were hurt or arrested that night. Is that the way leaders ought to behave? If that night, they asked the crowd to leave but themselves waited to be arrested and tried, continuing to speak out for democracy in court, the risk they took would not be high, since they had many sympathizers including Zhao. As things went, the "open" faction was dragged down by association, at least guilty of poor handling not nipping trouble in the bud. Had the student leaders showed respectably heroic spirit and allowed the matter to be settled without violence, it would have helped the "open" faction, and when China actually opened, they would have been at the forefront of the move, and could very well end up as important officials Their cowardice, and their vain behaviour after reaching USA, not only cost them their leadership roles and left the democracy movement impotent, but has other, more serious consequences: both sides of the fight lost their ideals, and when China actually opened, what was introduced was just crude commercialization, with corrupting tendencies in all spheres including party politics and cultural areas including education, research, entertainment, literature, etc. When the June 4 leaders left Tiananmen, they also divided up some cash they held; these mainly came from donors in Hongkong and Taiwan, but some appears to have been from so called research foundations set up by US and Taiwan intelligence orgnizations. June 4 led to a high degree of distrust by Chinese authorities towards foreign influence, costing Taiwan and HK the chance to help China democratize, and Beijing's polices towards the two places turned more hardline. Taiwanese disappointment indirectly ensured a kneejerk anti mainland attitude spreading and failure to formulate meaningful mainland policies by some political parties that simply opposed everything related to China, whereas HK lost its former confidence in its unique character (partly due to economic problems causing it to depend on mainland assistance). All these were losses for the good development of China. Consequently, I feel the democracy movement has cost democracy more than it contributed; its leaders would not be credited by history positively.
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