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Ms Bhavani's rebuttal of mrbrown's TODAY article "Singaporeans are fed, up with progress!" was not unexpected - see, for example, Xenoboy's analysis of the government's reaction. This post examines some points raised by those unsympathetic to mrbrown, why mrbrown has received more sympathy than Catherine Lim or Cherian George and ends off with a comparision with the rectificatioin of intellectual and media dissent in the People's Republic of China. (Btw I'm not convinced that the suspension of his column in TODAY was directly ordered by MICA and speculate that it is more likely to be the result of self-censorship and evasion of editorial responsibility.)
Most of the hundreds of comments in mrbrown's blog have expressed varying degrees of sympathy and support for Lee Kin Mun. However a few have been rather less charitable towards Mr Lee's plight. Commenter "IrememberChiaThyePoh" is particularly bitter about how mrbrown has been feted as a martyr when others who suffered harder, longer and for ostensibly more noble causes have been forgotten - hence the implications of his or her handle. I'm not entirely sure if mrbrown wants to be martyr for the cause of civil liberties. All this outpouring may simply be pent-up demand for alternative voices that decide to read mrbrown in a way that fulfills that need whether or not it was part of his intention to be read as such.
Goh Meng Seng of the Workers' Party was rather more sympathetic to mrbrown but his anguish at how all this sympathy (possible parallels to that huge Hougang rally and all the SMSes received by Steve Chia?) failed to translate into electoral victory is both poignant and palpable: "...when I was standing right in front of the ballot boxes in the counting centre, looking at the votes given to PAP team, I knew, I have too many illusions and fantasies on Singaporeans for a start." Apparently, the public may think that it is part of the occupational hazards that opposition politicians were aware of when they entered politics and should stoically bear that burden.
There seems to be even less sympathy for intellectuals and academics who are sometimes dismissed as spouters of atas cheeminology. This is not uncommon - even university students may hold this view. Thus some bloggers adopt a deliberately folksy style or even voraciously Hokkien-expletive spouting Ah Beng persona which has been very successful in attracting readership as well as shielding themselves from potential rectification by the authorities.
What Catherine Lim and Cherian George have in common with Mr Lee is that all three were only reprimanded after their articles (Dr Lim's "Great Affective Divide" and Dr George's "Civil Disobedience vs. Calibrated Coercion" - his blog post of the Straits Times article appears to have been removed but the longer academic paper "Calibrated Coercion and the maintenance of hegemony in Singapore" is still on the Asia Research Institute website: Working Paper No.48 - PDF) were published in national newspapers. However there are some important differences.
Dr Lim did not have a blog back then and although her case is often cited as the end of then-PM Goh's attempt at a kinder, gentler image of the PAP, the commenters in mrbrown's blog have a sense of solidarity that supporters of Dr Lim did not - the web allowed them to quickly discover that they are not alone. Technology can build community on the web but it remains to be seen if it can be translated into really existing effects in individual political awareness and behaviour.
And while Dr George does have a blog, it has not received anything close to Mr Lee's number of sympathetic comments. This could be due to the perception in some quarters that Dr George was associated with the establishment (many years in the Straits Times vs mrbrown's long outsider credentials with the Singapore National Education series), a less populist topic (civil liberties vs cost of living) and, at the root of it, Lee Kin Mun aka mrbrown's ordinary Singaporean image. He's clearly not an opposition politician, he's not an academic, he's a husband and father who lives in a HDB flat, does his best to earn a living, like to slang a bit, zhng his car, enjoy games and gadgets - sometimes comprain gahmen why they so liddat. Thus the empathy and sympathy: "Wah lao, that could have been me."
One of the commenters also made an allusion to Chinese political history by linking to Wikipedia's entry on the Hundred Flowers campaign. I can't help but beat my drum of pedantry again to say that this comparison is not a particularly instructive one - even if there is a parallel in "speak up / spoke up / shut up".
Firstly, although PM Lee Hsien Loong outlined his vision of Singapore as an open society, the chastisement of Cherian George had already reaffirmed that the out-of-bounds markers were still firmly in place. Secondly, the Hundred Flowers campaign was intended by Mao to attack opponents within his own party by inviting criticism from the educated public. Thirdly, the Hundred Flowers campaign only really took off and spun out of control after the CCP criticized those who had failed to turn in sufficiently robust criticism.
However even in the communist dictatorship that is the PRC, Gong Xiantian, a law professor at Beijing University, succeeded in forcing the CCP to shelf a draft law on refining the protection of private property rights after circulating an open letter stating his left wing objections, couched in the CCP's own history and rhetoric, to the legislation.
A journalism professor, Jiao Guobiao, lost his job after calling for the abolition of the Propaganda Department. There has been the usual outcry from the PRC's critics though EastSouthWestNorth's take sees aspects of it as being almost a personnel issue rather freedom of speech. Howard W. French also discusses the wider trends in the PRC's clampdown on academic dissent. Nonetheless Peking Duck also notes that some observers see that the glass is half-full. In the past, critics were jailed, subjected to psychological torture (endless self-criticism exercises) or sent down to be re-educated through hard labour.
In contrast, Catherine Lim continued to publish after 1984, Cherian George still has his NTU job and mrbrown's blog is still online. Although the calibrated response against mrbrown may have generated plenty of sympathy for him, I do not think it will translate into anything significant politically - except perhaps to deepen the sullen silence, apathy and inaction of the disillusioned. And that political inaction can never truly threaten the ruling party's hold on power.
