"...This Act will put the MP in charge of his constituency town council. The honesty and competence of your MP will then directly affect you because he will be directly in charge of the administration and maintenance of your housing estate instead of the HDB... If your MP is not honest, or not competent, you will know it soon enough. And if your estate is poorly run, repairs slow, and lift maintenance poor, you will be inconvenienced or worse, the re-sale value of your flat will be affected. So you had better take a careful look at the person or the three persons in a GRC who seek to represent you. Your personal well-being will be at stake when you choose your MP. This change will make for careful and better selection of MPs by you and political parties, and will be good for Singapore."

The above paragraph and the recent statements by PAP leaders are vivid illustrations of Prof Chua's characterisation of how "the PAP government is both thoroughly sceptical regarding the rationality of the ordinary citizen and unapologetically anti-liberal." (Communitarian Ideology and Democracy in Singapore, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 184-5.)

Political Party Saves Irrational Electorate From Itself

Linking estate management and upgrading with voter's choice is intended to inculcate cost-benefit rational analysis in voters, reducing the chances of ordinary people being carried away by the demagoguery and sophistry of unproven opposition politicians. What matters more is delivering the goods (performance legitimacy) rather than more abstract notions of procedural legitimacy (though the form and ritual process of elections are retained and evoked) - thus single party rule is good for Singapore because it has delivered the goods. And unlike unit trusts, past performance should be taken a good indication of future performance. And the recruitment of new talent is important for the PAP's (and thus Singapore's) future, GRCs are necessary to reduce the risk of even ministerial-potential talent being rejected by the feckless and irrational electorate e.g. Chiam See Tong's defeat of Mah Bow Tan in 1984.

The way that the PAP and its critics often talk past each other has also been a constant feature of Singaporean politics that this author has found to be frustrating, comic, tragic or even all of the above. This failure to engage and communicate is rooted in how the PAP's illiberal values are worlds apart from those of its liberal critics. But as both sides take their own values to be the proper starting point of any meaningful debate, it predictably results in the lack of such. Prof Chua (pp.185-9) shows how these very different assumptions lie at the heart of their varying interpretations about the relationship between the state and society, the basis of political legitimacy and how representative democracy should work.

State/Society, Legitimacy and Democracy

Classical liberalism assumes the state is a neutral umpire of transaction in society and a neutral provider of public goods to members of society. However illiberal communitarian thought tends to conflate state and society through the concepts of community or national interest. The vanguard/single party, in charge of the state, defines the community's interests and uses the state to intervene in society accordingly and for the party's political advantage if this facilitates the performance of its work for the community or national interest (which it defined itself in the first place). Ergo what's good for the PAP is good for Singapore and Singaporeans. To a certain extent, this has become a self-fulfilling prophecy - the overnight destruction of the PAP leadership might leave a vacuum that could be extremely detrimental to the overall health and wealth of our island republic.

In terms of political legitimacy, delivering on substantive economic rights has precedence over abstract civil and political rights. Liberal critics have argued that relying so heavily on performance legitimacy and undervaluing representive and procedural legitimacy could fatally undermine the political fabric of the entire Singaporean polity if we encounter serious and sustained economic collapse or malaise.

However the PAP has been fairly successful in convincing Singaporeans in this respect, with many of us buying into survivalism (no one owns us a living) and pragmatism (the trade-off between civil liberty and economic development is a good and fair one). Even in difficult economic situations, the PAP has become increasingly skilled in harnessing the globalization discourse for its own purposes. It can push through unpopular policies, such as foreign talent, by pointing to the pressures of globalization. On the other hand, it can blame economic problems on external forces that are beyond its control (and so cannot be blamed for but which they are doing a good job of ameliorating anyway). While there is no free lunch for Singaporeans, the PAP has managed to have its cake and eat it 4TW.

The Western model assumes that "the elected see themselves as the voice of the represented and diligently seek their opinions on different issues. The result is often a slow process of opinion-gathering and consultation before taking a decision, which will hopefully satisfy most of the represented." (p.189) PM Lee has criticized Western liberal democracies for being inefficient as a result and that this concentrates on scoring political points in debates rather than getting things done. Certainly, this process has not saved liberal democracies from becoming extremely polarized over issues like flag-burning, abortion, school prayer or immigration. To the PAP, the procedural form is secondary to the substantive issue of "what's good for Singapore" which surprise surprise is a ringing endorsement for the PAP, stability, economic growth and all the wonderful things they have done for us,

Clearly the PAP will have no truck with namby pamby liberal government by opinion poll or by the media. It sees its electoral mandate as an absolute delegation of popular sovereignty into its hand - thus it has been entrusted and is free to define and pursue the community's interest. As Xenoboy has pointed out, Singaporeans only have that sovereignty returned to them in the interregnum between the dissolution of Parliament and the close of elections. For the PAP, elections are also a test of the electorate's rationality. Seen from this light, the residents of Potong Pasir were irrational when they re-elected Mr Chiam by an increased majority - if one does not consider other values (e.g. the need for opposition representation in Parliament, loyalty to the incumbent, a Rawlsian understanding of justice as fairness applied to electoral politics etc.) as being rational. When considered together with the PAP's pretensions to represent the whole of Singapore and all Singaporeans, anything other than an overwhelming victory reveals a substantial minority whose very proof of existence via the ballot box is a constant thorn in the balloon of this pretension. Little wonder then that the PAP leadership are seen, in Cherian George's brilliantly funny phrase, as "sore winners".

It is Easier to Change the Rivers and Mountains Than For a Man to Change His Character

Although Prof Chua's book was published more than a decade ago, his final two chapters on "Towards a non-liberal communitarian democracy" and "Conclusion" show how little the ideology of the PAP has actually changed since the 1980s. (In all fairness, Prof Chua also devotes his first chapter to arguing that the PAP moved from authoritarianism to a less harsh communitarianism by the 1980s.) While optimists see an inexhorable move towards liberalisation in the mode of Fukuyama's End of History especially when MM Lee Kuan Yew permanently leaves the political scene and takes his charismatic authority over older generations with him, recent events and past election campaigns look like pretty good indications that both SM Goh and PM Lee are true believers in MM Lee's illiberal brand of democracy. Since 1988 and three Prime Ministers later, the line is still maintained that upgrading helps people make rational electoral choices, single party rule is best and GRCs are necessary and good - even in the face of not inconsiderable empircally observable opposition to, at least, the first.

The comprehensiveness of this ideology is such that its core principles cannot be easily modified. In effect, the PAP could very well have its own version of the Four Cardinal Principles that cannot be compromised on: (1) upholding the meritocratic path; (2) maintaining the people's democratic dictatorship; (3) the leadership of the PAP in Singaporean state and society; (4) upholding Lee Kuan Yew-Goh Chok Tong-Lee Hsien Loong Thought. Stretching this analogy to the breaking point and beyond, the possible difference with the PRC could that against Mao Zedong, there is no equivalent of Zhou Enlai or Deng Xiaoping within the PAP.

Assuming that the PAP will not change its ideology internally, then it is doubly resistant to criticism and pressure from smart aleck bloggers, foreigners (of course), opposition parties and even 44% of the electorate. This is a first-past-the-post system where, as Yawning Bread reminds us, the winner takes all. The performance legitimacy angle is also constantly raised - which raises a chicken and egg problem (if the opposition never gets an opportunity to learn, we'll always be stuck with an unfeasible alternative) as well as a first cause problem (what kind of track record did the PAP have when they were first formed?).

An Uncomfortably Radical Conclusion

The uncomfortably radical conclusion that one is forced to draw, assuming that the diagnosis of internal ideological stasis and resistance to external environmental pressures is correct, is that the PAP will not truly liberalize itself and the country while it remains in power. Consquently, we will either be seeing more of the same (though perhaps with soothingly improved packaging or presentation) for a long time to come or to contemplate the possibility of an alternative party coming to power and taking the reins of government.