Singapore's cyber dissident speaks out

"You can express any view that you want, you can form a political party, you can contest the elections, you can have rallies, make speeches, no trouble whatsoever."
- PM Lee Hsien Loong, CNN TalkAsia, Dec 2006

Robert HO is Singapore's leading cyber dissident.

In late 2001, marking the first-ever case of its kind, HO was arrested in his home for allegedly posting "inflammatory" articles online during the General Elections. In 2002, following an as-yet-unspecified article(s) posted on soc.culture.singapore, police entered his home to serve him a summons to attend an investigation. Again, his computer was seized. Three weeks later, according to HO, he was forcibly taken to the police station by officers who entered his home without a warrant or a charge. In 2005, upon returning from a shopping mall where he had been distributing flyers alleging election fraud, he was again apprehended. His computer, purchased after the police failed to return the one seized in 2002, was confiscated. In all, he has been arrested another three times since 2001, and thrice the authorities had remanded him at a mental institution. Oddly enough, he has yet to be prosecuted for these alleged offences, although the criminal defamation case from 2002 may still be pending.

While critics, including international publications, have yielded to defamation threats issued by Singapore's leaders, Robert HO has instead emerged from his arrests and detention an even more recalcitrant heretic of the establishment. In Singapore's political cyberspace where fear of surveillance and libel suits have compelled dissenting netizens and bloggers to post articles under pseudonyms, HO sticks his neck out by brazenly disclosing his real identity online. He is now a regular contributor to the Singapore Review news group and is also a blogger.

Martyn See interviews Robert HO via email and phone in December 2006.

Have you always been a critic of the PAP Government?

Ha, ha. Nobody is born a PAP critic so I must have become one along the way. It would be true to say that LEE Kuan Yew creates his own enemies, through arrogance and unbridled power. I have written that LEE Kuan Yew is the 'most powerful man in the world or even in history' because he has so much total control over his entire population. You know as much, having been hauled up by his police, for essentially nothing. Doesn't that make you even more determined? Or changed you from pro-PAP to anti-PAP? Every time LEE Kuan Yew wrongs one person, he creates 100 critics or even oppositionists. If Dr CHEE Soon Juan had not been unfairly sacked from his university job, he would be there today, still teaching; and not a dedicated oppositionist. Power and abuse of power always create its own resistance which may one day succeed in toppling that power. Newton's Third Law: "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

When did I turn anti-PAP? Let me see. I lost my last job in advertising as a copywriter on 10 Jul 92. I was still pro-PAP then and still thought LEE Kuan Yew a 'great man' and all that, thanks to the Straits Times' unending propaganda. Shortly after that, I discovered that LEE Kuan Yew had been keeping me under audio-visual surveillance since I was a teen or even earlier and was releasing all this information to his entire crony system from Straits Times journalists and editors to even foreign journalists and politicos in order to embarrass me and as a publicity stunt [a kind of reality show before there were reality shows] purely to make himself famous, to self-aggrandise and to put on a command performance for the edification of his international audience, especially the Americans. Then I got angry, rightly so, and started to hit back. The whole story is more convoluted than this but this is the essence in summary.

In fact, before 1992, I had sent a few suggestions through snail mail [no pc then and the Internet was new] to then Prime Minister LEE Kuan Yew, suggestions ranging from redoing the National Anthem [which was slightly reworked subsequently] to a proposal for Block Managers to manage every HDB block much like a condo manager manages a condo; to developing Dirty Bombs [I coined this term and came up with the concept of radioactive bombs for Singapore's defence -- now it is a worldwide concern and probably only a matter of time before one goes off somewhere]. I also suggested to him that voting age be reduced to 18 like in some countries but that those below 18 also be given a vote, such that their vote be exercised by the mother, first, and for the second child, exercised by the father, and so on in the world's first truly universal suffrage. This idea was bastardised by LEE Kuan Yew years later [he never acknowledged any of my letters] as giving some privileged class of Singaporeans TWO votes instead of one, that is, the class most likely to vote PAP!

So from pro-PAP, I reacted to LEE Kuan Yew's shameless, self-serving puiblicity stunt telecasting me and my family live 24 hours a day, to anti-PAP. Then, I cast about for ways to react to LEE Kuan Yew's 24 hour a day live telecast of me and my family. I soon found a way. Mr LING How Doong of the opposition SDP had won the Bukit Gombak Consituency in 1991 and Dr CHEE, SDP Secretary-General, was serving as a manager in the Gombak Town Council. I started faxing suggestions to him. One suggestion was to do a political (actually, more a corporate) video, which he subsequently did but which drew a blanket ban on political videos from the kiasu PAP government.

I not only faxed suggestions to Dr CHEE but also to Mr J B JEYARETNAM who was NCMP from 1997 to 2001. Those were years of faxed suggestions. These suggestions could not and did not hurt LEE Kuan Yew nor diminish his power in the least but he and his ISD henchmen took the exaggerationism or kiasuism to the extreme and hit back at me.

Around 2001, I also started writing articles published on the Internet. I had bought a pc by then. The website is Singaporeans For Democracy, still accessible. I wrote some 61 articles published in SFD. ("RH: Robert's Almost-Complete Archive of Works") There were no blogs then, although there were Home Pages. One of those essays was to lead to the police arriving at my door.

In 2001, you became the first person in Singapore to be arrested for posting an article on the internet. What happened?

On 16 Nov 01, about 1115am, 8 serious, stern men rang my doorbell and came into my flat. They were ASP SOH Kien Peng, SI Jeffrey KUEK, SSS Simon LEE, SSS SEOW Chong Teck, SS TAN Soon Teck, SGT Eddie TOH, SS Leslie LEONG and SGT IRWAN. They quickly searched my entire flat, asked for my computer and took it as well as every single computer-related device from printer, floppy disks, CD-Rs, modem to cables. They then took me away to the CID Police Cantonment Complex. Being arrested and having all my entire computer system confiscated was quite unnerving and disconcerting. The handcuffs were locked on so tight I suffered a pinched nerve in my left wrist for weeks after.

At the CID, I was questioned for hours during which I dictated my statement/s to ASP SOH Kien Peng. In my statement/s, I described the years of radiation attacks from the flat above mine, from the time I lived in a 5-room HDB flat in Block 203 Bukit Batok, to my current Guilin View flat. I finished the statement/s around 1405pm, pleading Not Guilty in summation to the charge of posting in soc.culture.singapore my article entitled "Break the Law and get away with it, like PAP", posted 19 Oct 01.

Link to article

This article is also posted in Singaporeans For Democracy.

After my statement/s were recorded, edited and signed, I was taken to a cell where I was to spend the night on the bare floor. The next morning, I was driven to the Subordinate Courts where I awaited my turn for the judge to deal with me. The long queue was made up of many foreigners. Obviously, many foreigners run afoul of the law in Singapore and this could be one reason why the judicial system is so harsh -- they are mostly foreigners anyway and most could not even speak English. We accused were processed like an assembly line, with each one getting very limited time or attention. Singapore efficiency, if you like.

When my turn came to plead, I tried to tell the judge that I wanted to claim trial and ask for release on bail, since my offence is probably bailable, being merely a posting in a newsgroup. She was impatient, there being about 100 accused to process that morning before her lunch. I spoke into the microphone that she should not treat me on the basis of "once a madman always a madman" but was sent to IMH for observation anyway.

In IMH, the doctors see us about once a week, so it took about 3 weeks before the doctor assigned to me could finalise his report, which is "Fit for Trial", which is another way of saying that I was not mentally ill, that I could stand trial.

The charge against me was "incitement to violence" for asking voters to enter the polling stations without authorisation, just like PM GOH Chok Tong, Deputy PMs LEE Hsien Loong and Tony TAN and MP VASOO had done in the 1997 General Election and which the Attorney General CHAN Sek Keong [now Chief Justice] had refused to prosecute and who had written an unbelievable explanation that these 4 PAP men were not committing an offence, in his opinion, see

Unauthorised persons inside polling stations: Attorney General's letter

That this was a trumped-up charge, with very serious jail terms, is evident to all: if the AG deems unauthorised entry into polling stations by the 4 men legal, then my asking people to also do the same should also be legal, so where's my crime?

In any event, the Long Statement I made to ASP SOH, describing the years of radiation attacks on me, plus the biological attacks of putting virulent flu germs into our food/drink thus causing us [myself, my son and my little niece] to be very sick to the point of pneumonia, deterred LEE Kuan Yew from proceeding with the trial. So, at trial after I was released from IMH, LEE Kuan Yew's henchmen put on an elaborate wayang show in which the prosecutor DPP HAN Ming Kuang read the psychiatrist's report on me, but only the old historical parts and not the conclusion which is that I am fit for trial, to show that I was unfit for trial! Who would you believe the truth of my mental state? A DPP and the Straits Times or the psychiatrist who saw me? [I was told beforehand by ASP SOH that the charge would be dropped and that once released from court, I was to avoid reporters and leave the courthouse]. So I left the Subordinate Courts, collected my entire computer system back from the CID and went home without giving any interviews to reporters].

DPP HAN took so long to read all the old historical parts that the judge told him testily to stop, saying, "You can take it that I have read the report." but DPP HAN continued anyway. The next day, I knew why. He was reading, not for the court, but for the Straits Times reporters present. The next day's Straits Times carried a large report of DPP HAN's readings to give the impression that I was mad and that was why the charge was dropped. At that time, HAN Fook Kwang was Editor [now Chief Editor I believe] of the Straits Times. Note the similarity in names as in the Chinese custom of naming siblings or close relations. They are probably related and LEE Kuan Yew's henchmen, out to destroy my credibility, one reading copiously in court while the other took care to publish the read parts prominently. More attempts to destroy my credibility, and their modus operandi, are captured in this soc.culture.singapore newsgroup posting.

Barely eight months later, following two other online postings, the police twice visited you in your home.

As the above post shows, I was arrested twice more after that. One was on Wed 3 Jul 02 when ASP GOH Tat Boon, SI Kamaruzaman GAFFAR, Sgt IRWAN Abdul Rahman and S/SGT LEE Lioh Ying came to my flat to seize my computer again. Sgt IRWAN was the same man who came with ASP SOH the last time, so he went straight to my pc. I persuaded ASP GOH not to take everything, since everything had been seized and examined before and still carried the police sticker labels. So he seized only the pc tower. This has still not been returned today probably because the case is still not closed, I believe. This is the case of "criminal defamation" which carries a considerable jail term.

However, LEE Kuan Yew's enthusiasm for court cases against me had considerably chilled, since he realised that once in court and sworn to tell the truth, on pains of perjury, which is a serious offence, I would tell all about his publicity stunt light-torture of me, which many, including judges, would already know about and know to be true. Of course, he can still find judges to do his will and bidding but it would mean very personal interference from him and this could open him to complications since judges may talk, migrate, give an interview or even write a book or even a blog!. You never know. So kiasuism won again and LEE Kuan Yew never took me to court nor gave me a chance to testify in court for posterity.

ASP GOH simply stopped calling me or investigating my case and ignored my phone calls and faxes to him to return my pc tower. But LEE Kuan Yew was not one to leave critics alone. He had to tit for every tat. It's all kiasuism again. So, on 26 Jul 02, 2 non-ASP policemen came to my flat just as I was sitting down to dinner and arrested me yet again. They were Sergeant SEOW Chow Chin and Corporal Wandi. The entire police procedures book was ignored and I was handcuffed, driven to Jurong Police HQ and locked in a cell. Then, without even an interview with an Investigating Officer, I was driven to IMH where the doctor, despite strenuous objections from me, admitted me. Since doctors there see patients only about once a week, it took me 8 days to get out. I append a handwritten note I faxed to Dr CHEE Soon Juan of the SDP:

To: Dr CHEE Soon Juan, Mr LING How Doong
From: Robert HO

Recap: On Wed 3 July 2002, ASP GOH Tat Boon and 3 others came to my apartment to seize my computer and to serve upon me an Order to attend an investigation. Which I duly attended at the CID, the next day 4 Jul 2002 from about 10am to about 12.30pm.

It was a 'proper' seizure and Order served.

An 'improper' arrest:

However, on 26 Jul 2002, 2 policemen of low rank came to my apartment just as I was sitting down to dinner at about 8pm and arrested me.

I asked them "On what charge?" They did not say. I asked them for an arrest warrant. They did not have one. This is most 'improper'.

I had no choice but to follow them. They said they were from the Bukit Batok NPP.

I was taken to a cell in Jurong Police HQ and spent several hours there, locked up.

Then, without even a meeting with an IO [Investigation Officer], I was taken away to Woodbridge Hospital [IMH] at about 5am 27 July 2002.

There, I stayed for 8 days till my discharge on Sat 3 August 2002.

I know that under Section 32 of the Mental Disorders and Treatment Act; and under Section 43 [1] [b] of the Prisons Act, I may be detained in a mental hospital provided I am a threat to the safety of others or myself.

This is clearly not the case in my case.

So who ordered my arrest and incarceration in IMH? And on what charge? There is no basis whatsoever. I still do not know now.

Worse still, it seems that in future, this unlawful confinement may be enacted again and again. All it takes is for some anonymous order from somebody and I will find myself locked up and incommunicado.

It is a frightening power that has no safeguards or checks.

5 Aug '02
Robert HO

And more recently, in a case that I believe has gone unreported, you were arrested and detained for distributing flyers at a shopping mall.

On 27 Feb 05, I went to WestMall Shopping Centre to photocopy and distribute copies of a document alleging that LEE Kuan Yew rigged the 1997 Cheng San GRC election. I was arrested, locked in a police station cell [Clementi Police Division HQ] and then driven to IMH where it took me about a dozen days to get out, again because the doctors see patients only once a week mainly. This case closed with a formal written Warning on 20 Feb 06. My entire computer system, a new one from the pc tower ASP GOH seized, which is still with him, was returned to me.

Why do I keep getting entangled with the law? To understand this, you have to know, as many Singaporeans and foreigners already know, that LEE Kuan Yew had been lightly torturing me since shortly since around 1992. This consists of mostly [still ongoing and happening even now] sleep deprivation lasting from minutes [thereby leading to unrestful sleep on being awakened up to several times a night], to hours-long sleep deprivation. This is done with the CIA TWS [Through Wall Surveillance] devices, from the flat above. Why? Because, as one ISD man said to his colleague years ago at the NUSS swimming pool where I was with my family, "It's a power play". Sleep deprivation is a dangerously serious form of aggression. Lab mice denied sleep die after just two and a half weeks. Bodily organs and the immunity systems are also weakened, increasing the likelihood of cancers and other diseases.

Were you an ex-journalist? Where?

Hardly. I was a night sub-editor from late 1975 to early 1976 in The Straits Times. I went mentally ill around that time and didn't recover until 1979, the illness most proably due to the stress of doing 2 jobs at the same time [teaching by day] and not sleeping regularly or enough so the present dozen years of sleep deprivation light torture is potentially havoc to my health. None of my ancestors or family have been mentally ill so this reinforces the possibility that irregular and insufficient sleep is the cause. Once I was discharged from IMH in 1979, I went straight back to work and a normal life and have only had to eat medicine on an outpatient basis after that. Note that all the incarceration episodes of the police arresting me and putting me in IMH didn't last more than about a dozen days or so, except for the 3-week episode of court-ordered observation around 16 Nov 01. If I were really mentally ill, I wouldn't have been released in about a dozen days each time! The doctors would be too kiasu to dare risk their reputation in releasing a patient who is not fit to be released or who is still unstable.

In the Straits Times, I occasionally witnessed the 'Upstairs' control of news and I have written this in my "Letter to Blair" article, in my Archive. We all know that the Straits Times practises what they euphemistically call "nation building" but the main quarrel many of us have with this rigid and total control of the media is not whether nation building should be done or not or whether it is right for media to do this. There is a deeper issue and this is about Truth and Falsehood. Truth and Falsehood are often separated only by a thin line and that is why we talk about Half-Truths. In one of my quotes in my Archive, I wrote that "LEE Kuan Yew is adept at turning half-truths into whole lies" and it is not just a neat aphorism, it captures the fact that sometimes, very little separate a Truth from an UnTruth or Lie. So, the Straits Times should, like a court witness, always tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth. As an eyewitness to history. It is not about nation building but about Truth.

There is also the insidious effect of Time. If a newspaper suppresses a fact or a piece of news one day, it is not too bad. But when it consistently suppresses similar facts, over time, this becomes a total manipulation of the readers' mind. So, over time, even innocuous news suppression, or a slight 'slant' to the news, or a slight 'spin' take on huge dimensions in an unforgiveable attempt at nothing less than brainwashing.

How do you rate the performance of PM Lee Hsien Loong so far?

To understand LEE Hsien Loong's performance, you have to consider the advantages he inherited from his father and GOH Chok Tong and the challenges facing him. In a way, it is unfair to expect too much from LEE Hsien Loong because the challenges he faces today are the left over unsolved problems that his father and GOH did not or more likely, could not solve. It stands to reason that if his father and GOH could solve those problems, they would have done so already. So, many of the problems that remain for LEE Hsien Loong are intractable ones. However, every new leader faces the same situation, in every country, so LEE Hsien Loong cannot excuse himself for not solving them.

He faces another obstacle. His father. LEE Kuan Yew is even more active now than say, during GOH's time. There is a sense that he wants to set everything in stone, to so cast Singapore with rigid policies that long after he has become non-sentient, Singapore will still continue as though he is still in control, shaping events. Every person in power wants to shape his state according to what he thinks fit and LEE Kuan Yew is no exception. But the only way is to shape institutions, not direct policies.

If you shape an institution, that institution can go on to evolve policies to fit any new circumstances. If you cast policies in stone, policies are quickly outdated and become irrelevant or counterproductive especially so with the modern speed of change. The faster things change, the more you need institutions and not direct policies. So it is always best to leave behind strong institutions. What are some of these? Free and fair elections for example. An independent judiciary. A critical press unafraid to investigate and spotlight governmental wrongdoings. A Parliament of independent-thinking MPs that is not today's rubberstamp Yes Men. Cabinet colleagues of diverse backgrounds who follow very different Muses. An Opposition that is free to challenge the government's ideas and policies.

On all of these, LEE Kuan Yew has failed, failed, failed. He has corrupted every single institution in the land. This is his greatest failure. He did not have the wisdom to see where corrupted institutions will lead. He has created a system that needs him at the top to continue running. Once he becomes non-sentient, LEE Hsien Loong either becomes another LEE Kuan Yew, or he will find that One Man Rule or Top Down Rule cannot function. So, either LEE Kuan Yew reverses his entire life's doings or else he better hope that LEE Hsien Loong turns out to be close enough like him. But then, remember that LEE Kuan Yew has already solved all the easy problems and only the hard ones remain. Thus, LEE Hsien Loong will not have an easy time.

LEE Kuan Yew once boasted to a foreign journalist, "If people don't fear me, then I am meaningless." This has led other sharp observers to note that LEE Kuan Yew's rule is "...only thinly disguised Rule By Decree" and that he has imposed a "Fearocracy". Make no mistake, LEE enjoys flaunting his power and abusing his power to force 'solutions' on people, like the recent publicly administered 'breaking the head' of pilot Captain Ryan GOH by LEE who pointedly revealed some highlights of GOH's private family life.

LEE Kuan Yew ruled during a time when the world was simple and straightforward. LEE Hsien Loong now faces a far different world than the one his father lived through. My prediction: LEE Hsien Loong will falter once his father is no longer around. The elder LEE left not a single viable institution intact in his haste to dismantle everything that got in his way. Simply put, if you create a system where you must have a LEE Kuan Yew in charge to function, then the moment a non-LEE Kuan Yew comes along, even if he is a son, things unravel. That is why I say, leave behind strong institutions, not a strongman.

To answer your question directly, I think LEE Hsien Loong won't last long either through disease relapse of cancer or some such. God loves playing games, too, and has already given him an albino and an autistic son, such odds being many millions to one unless you prefer to take the simplest explanation that God, too, loves games! Take it as divine retribution for LEE Kuan Yew's unashamedly eugenics policies!

In this year's 2006 General Election, the PAP averaged 66.6% of the votes but in LEE Hsien Loong's very own GRC, he despite his cachet and his Father's dominating presence, got only 66.14%. This despite running against 6 neophyte no-hopers nobody has ever heard of and who the PAP boasted "will lose their deposits"! LEE Hsien Loong won't last loong!

You seem to display a particular affinity in delving into the psyche of Lee Kuan Yew. What is your fascination with the Minister Mentor?

I fought him for a dozen years. In those dozen years, I have come to fear him, ridicule him, expose his failings and wrongdoings, all of which are now in written form in thousands of postings in soc.culture.singapore and elsewhere on the wonderful thing called the Internet.

When I first began writing anti-PAP articles, I was careful about defamation lawsuits, now, I couldn't care less. LEE Kuan Yew, by committing crimes against me and my family members for a dozen years, has lost the moral right to apply the law to me since he has broken the law himself every day, sometimes even dozens of times a day, for a dozen years, against me and my family.

Nowadays, I have the luxury of ranting and raving against LEE Kuan Yew, restrained only by the facts and the Truth and my credibility.

Most still have to be careful but the Internet is spawning a freedom to think, associate and opine. For example, you can read a blog and leave an anonymous comment. That comment may be a sentence or a whole essay. Can LEE Kuan Yew clamp down on commenters? I think not. Can LEE Kuan Yew even take bloggers to court? Maybe today but it gets less and less likely as the Internet Age progresses. Already, there are proxies and encrypted communications that allow anonymous postings. If the PAP tries to wipe out blogs and Internet postings, all these will simply go underground. Then, there is email. The PAP cannot look into every email account to stamp out criticisms. For persistent emailers like me, it can quickly establish my identity and charge me but it cannot do this to the occasional critic. It is so easy to write and forward an email that it is ridiculous to treat it as equivalent to an essay meant for publication. That essay may be more formal but emails are often rough and thoughtless -- can you take the same stance on both? The law courts will not be able to handle the load!

Do you think that Singapore will become a more open society with the passing of LKY?

Definitely. I cannot wait for LEE Kuan Yew to die. He has committed and still committing so many crimes against me and my family and property that I will cheer his death. LEE Kuan Yew is from a different era. That man cannot even type, which primary schoolkids today all can. He still reads only printed paper documents, not a computer monitor. That is how backward he is. Can such a man run a 21st century country? No way! Besides, there are more university graduates today than there were people in Singapore when LEE Kuan Yew became PM. He is a relic, a kind of fossil from the past, alive long past his time. The sooner he goes the better.

You have been alleging on numerous postings that the PAP had rigged the Cheng San GRC results in GE 1997. Yet, you have not been sued. How do you get away with this?

Because it is true and I can prove it. My eyewitness is Mr David DUCLOS, a Singaporean eurasian and a Catholic. He has emailed me, then confirmed in person to my wife and I what he had seen and subsequently, confirmed on the phone to Dr CHEE Soon Juan what he wrote. Note that the police arrested me several times but never for my allegations of LEE Kuan Yew criminal attacks using TWS equipment from the flat above. Neither has he arrested or sued me for my allegations of his election rigging. Instead, he chose 2 other charges, the first for 'incitement to violence' and the second for 'criminal defamation'. Never for my allegations of his criminal attacks from the flat above or my allegations of his election rigging. He is afraid the truth will out and it is slowly outing. I have said before that if a criminal stops after a few crimes, he will usually get away with it but when he keeps committing the same crimes again and again, sooner or later he will luck out. LEE Kuan Yew's luck ran out long ago, in fact, the moment Mr DUCLOS emailed me. DUCLOS is heaven's way of evening out right and wrong.

With the view that the Government is finding it increasingly difficult to stifle, or even manage, political expression on the internet, what are your thoughts on Singapore for 2007 and beyond?

2007. A new year with all the promises of another year. Man is probably the only animal with a deep sense of time. Animals probably live out their entire lives triggered by the seasons or their hormones. Man alone have a sense of time, to plot and plan for the future, reminisce the past and recognise that the future can be moulded by his own efforts. That what we do today can shape tomorrow.

What will 2007 bring? Of this, we can be certain: 2007 will bring exciting new technologies that will entrench blogs like this and free Singaporeans even more as they start their own blogs. Many will discover that they need not even write much or anything at all. For example, aggregator blogs like Intelligent Singaporean are doing a good job of collating excellent blogs and important news articles and putting them all in one convenient click of the mouse.

I once wrote in one of my articles that 'historians of the future will probably divide human history into pre-Internet and Internet Ages, much like we currently divide history into BC and AD'; so important is the advent of the Internet, transforming human society, shaping lives and creating communities of the mind. Every morning, when I switch on my pc, I have a delicious sense of anticipation, that the day will bring forth some remarkable poetry from Xenoboy or sharp insights from Yawning Bread. Or that some news article will prove that the PAP is only human and very fallible, ha, ha, despite the unrelentingly one-sided portrayal by its controlled media [I once wrote an article entitled "The (PAP) Cult of Infallibility"]. Rarely do I swtich off disappointed.

For me, and for probably a million other Singaporeans, we are building a Singapore Community of the Mind. It is a true community by any definition. We share news, information, views, opinions; and argue, debate and dissect events of the day or issues of tomorrow. In other words, we interact, like any true community, Yet this community is still fragile and threatened by proposed new laws that tighten the already tight noose around online free thought and free speech, proposed by people who cannot understand the value of debate and discussion and who see in every criticism, an attempt to dethrone them.

One of the reasons why LKY and his PAP fear blogs is because of their very quality. The best Singaporean bloggers are astute, perceptive and highly intelligent, which is more than you can say for LEE Kuan Yew, LEE Hsien Loong and their PAP Ministers. The best of us can analyse and articulate far better than Them. That is the main reason why They want to shut us down. The best Singaporean bloggers are real Thought Leaders and Political Analysts and incisive Social Commentators. Do you have any Ministers who are as intelligent? Not a single one. George Yeo tries to write a blog but his efforts are pitiful. So are the efforts of the other PAPs.

On the Internet, it is not your position or job title that matters, it is what you write, which means what you think or can think. The Internet is a level playing field for all, PAPs and Others alike. If you can write and analyse intelligently, you will have an audience, if you can't, nobody reads you or are convinced or impressed by you. Thus, LEE Kuan Yew and LEE Hsien Loong fear blogs, not because they are rubbish or lies as alleged but because they are brilliantly argued and extremely well thought out. Some bloggers will actually make better Ministers than the present Cabinet. So LEE Kuan Yew and LEE Hsien Loong's fear of blogs is the primary fear of superior minds, a fear that has dogged power holders from ancient history. A fear that they cannot lead Thought as well as the best bloggers can. A fear of better solutions, better thinking and better ideas better expressed. LEE Kuan Yew fears blogs and the Internet, rightly because they allow free Speech and free Thoughts.

He also fears blogs because although they are fleeting and ephemeral, often only superficially written and read, often taking off from facts and articles in mainstream media, blogs can also be lasting and permanent, and therefore a record that future historians can mine for valuable clues to a society and state's preoccupations. LEE Kuan Yew would of course, prefer that historians only read his lying memoirs and his equally lying PAP media so blogs present a challenge to his always trying to have the last word in everything. Blogs present an alternative version of reality which challenges the artificial reality of PAP mainstream media. Additionally, if there is such a thing as a National IQ, blogs promise to raise that IQ, so LEE would rather that we remain stupid and therefore docile, fed lies and propaganda and swallowing it all. It is not surprising that, as one PAP MP was shocked to discover, "more than 80% of blogs are against the PAP government". That is nothing strange. It is just a natural reaction from the mainstream media's daily lies and spins and the total disservice they commit upon us. A new generation has discovered the power of the written word, the artful video and the sublime podcast. The National IQ is rising and fast. LEE would rather that we return to the old status quo in which no change is possible or tolerated. He is desperately tryng to drag us all back into the past, to an era where he always had the last word in everything and no dissent or criticism is possible, no alternative views are allowed. He always had a fear of free thinking, preferring that we instead think along lines he sets. Having said that, it is also an exaggerated fear.

Do you think this "exaggerated fear" permeates the PAP Government and its policies?

LEE Kuan Yew is the master exaggerator. All his life, he has exaggerated his achievements and the difficulties he faced. This exaggerationism is now entrenched into PAP methodology and so every online critic has to be silenced, by hook or by crook. His entire government applies this exaggerationism as its primary philosophy. When you exaggerate, you make yourself more heroic in proportion, the molehills you encounter become mountains, and your adversary or critic far more dangerous to you than they really are or were. You also overkill, which is either trying to be over successful or trying so hard that ultimately, the result may not even be worth the effort or the sacrifice -- or things and people sacrificed -- and much of the peoples' legitimate interests have been sacrificed unnecessarily due to this need to overtry, overkill and overdo.

In policying, exaggerationism means that you must always save a huge, vast sum for a rainy day that will never come. It means that you must create a fearful population forever afraid that tomorrow may never arrive and the sun may not rise. It means keeping a huge army for an invasion that will never happen. It means a perpetual prostituting to the Americans because they have the biggest army and economy. It means you must obsessively and relentlessly destroy every political opponent, no matter how insignificant. It means you must destroy this burgeoning online community because a populace is easier to control and manipulate if it is fragmented and divided [Divide and Conquer] and the online community promises to gel too many into a community not led by the PAP.

The thinking behind dictators is that communities of any kind are bad for their power and exercise of power. They would prefer their populace to be atomised into lone individuals or families because without a united front, they cannot be dethroned. Thus, all religious groups are closely watched because they are also true communities with leaders and many followers who listen to these leaders, meaning that they may not also listen to the PAP. This is one reason why the Catholic Church in Singapore was targetted in 1987-88 in the infamous so-called "Marxist Conspiracy" in which 22 totally innocent people were arrested and jailed without trial, accused of subversion to bring down the government.

Churches are communities and they are often rich, often owning multi-million dollar churches and they are pretty big communities sometimes. This exaggerated fear of groups or communities has led to the deliberate prevention and control of all societies in Singapore. The rules for registering any society of any kind, even a chess club, are strict and allow for the control of that society by the PAP. Thus, nothing is left to chance. LEE Kuan Yew prefers his entire population to be atomised into tiny individuals or families who do not communicate with one another or form a community. He would rather they simply go to work, come home to a tiny atomised family life and never interact with others. And he has succeeded in this. This is another aspect of his exaggerationism.

There is a more familiar word than exaggerationism: kiasuism. I have merely coined a new word so that you see it better when I reveal the local, very familiar, very understandable equivalent. In this, LEE Kuan Yew is once again, uninventive and uncreative as usual. He merely applied kiasuism, of which we Singaporeans are all guilty to differing degrees, to new heights and new lows.

So no true understanding of LEE Kuan Yew, his PAP or the government can be achieved without understanding kiasuism. The success and failure of LEE Kuan Yew and his PAP is kiasuism.

Kiasuism explains everything. From why the social welfare benefits are so meagre to why the state reserves are so huge to why the need for a huge army and defence spending to why the obsession with destroying even small oppositionists to shutting down Mr Brown to jailing bloggers to forever trying to increase government profits in every way imaginable to cheating in the 1997 Cheng San GRC elections to deny the tiny Workers Party a small electoral success of 5 parliamentary seats. Read my blog, "I came, I saw, I solved it".

In 2007, if LEE Kuan Yew is still sentient, this kiasuism will be even more evident as he tries to stamp-mould this kiasuism permanently into the entire Singapore state before he becomes non-sentient. He will lose because he is on the wrong side of technology, history and the progress of the the human race.

[End]

Robert HO's Almost-Complete Archive of Works

The revolution will not be televised

We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this...Television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us...This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box. Good night, and good luck.

- Edward R. Murrow

The availability of cellular phone cameras and video uploading facilities like YouTube are literally pulling the rug from under the controls that authoritarian governments and media corporations are exerting on the broadcast media. For example, rare images of North Korean poverty and public execution are now made watchable at the click of a mouse.

Likewise, you won't see the following images on Singapore's televison. Originally posted on Sg Review, with the video uploaded on archive.org, this clip of the Singapore riot police descending on four silent protesters is worth another look, now made more accessible on YouTube.



AFP report of the silent protest

Judge V.K. Rajah's ruling that the protesters' T-shirts and placards were "more incendiary than an ordinary affront or a localised breach of peace."


New wave of rebellion strikes China

In China, when the officially-sanctioned method of protest - filing a petition - becomes ineffective, protesters take to the streets. In 2004 alone, there were 74,000 incidents of social unrest across the country, from about 58,000 the previous year. It looks like the Chinese Communist Party may be buckling under its own weight of unrelenting capitalism and a growing class divide. In this 5 minute video report, Sky News produced a gripping testimony of how a prying media can unnerve State oppressors who, when they think that the outside world is oblivious, are at their brutal best.




In China, stresses spill over into riots
Beijing responds with a new campaign after at least eight recent violent incidents.

By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BEIJING – In an effort to address recent unrest fed by disparate rural, ethnic, and economic tensions, China's leadership has embarked on a "harmonious society" campaign that emphasizes awareness of the country's rich-poor gap, and even tacitly suggests the nation is at a social "crossroads."
At least eight major incidents of violence and rioting have erupted in recent weeks, against a backdrop of thousands of minor incidents in recent years.

A number of the most recent mass blow ups were triggered by minor events, such as a fight or a traffic accident between haves and have-nots, before quickly escalating to involve thousands of people. The prevalence of such cases, where crowd numbers range from 500 to 10,000, suggest a reservoir of anger existing just below China's social surface, as well as a growing "consciousness of rights," say experts like Nicolas Becquelin of Human Rights in China.

"The unrest has been deeper and more longstanding than we've been led to believe," says Mr. Becquelin. "The problem has been keeping track of all the incidents."

The Chinese magazine Outlook put the 2003 figure of local disturbances about 58,000, involving an estimated 3 million persons.

Read the rest

Speakers Cornered teaser



When the Singapore Government refused to lift its long-standing ban on public protests during the 2006 IMF-World Bank meetings, a small group of local activists initiated a face-off with the police by attempting to stage a pro-democracy march from Speakers' Corner, a government-designated free-speech zone.

The culture of elite governance in Lee Hsien Loong's Singapore

In light of the current debate on elitism in Singapore, ignited by a blog post by student Wee Shu Min, I post excerpts from a paper by academic Micheal D. Barr, Beyond Technocracy: The culture of elite governance in Lee Hsien Loong’s Singapore.

Barr is also the author of the following
The Charade Of Meritocracy,
Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture and Genes and
Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs Behind the Man


Personnel: The “elite”

This concept of “the elite” is central to the operation of the Singapore system. It grew in the mind of Lee Kuan Yew into a self-conscious, self-righteous class of talented and brilliant people with strong character, who are imbued with a collective sense of purpose and a consciously collective understanding of the thinking of the group.

Its apex and core lie in the political and administrative leadership, but its outer circles include the talented among all walks of society. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently described the elite as “a core group of people who occupy key positions of power and influence, and set the direction for the whole
society and country”.

Lee Kuan Yew described this elite many times, but this sense of selfconsciousness as an elite is perhaps best conveyed in a speech he gave in August 1966:

It is essential to rear a generation at the very top of society that has all the qualities needed to lead and give the people the inspiration and the drive to make it succeed. In short, the elite...

Every society tries to produce this type. The British have special schools for them: the gifted and talented are sent to Eton and Harrow and a few very exclusive private schools which they call “public schools”; after that they go to Oxford and Cambridge. And they have legends which say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.

In this speech Lee also directly linked his elitism and his progressivism:

True, not every boy is equal in his endowments in either physical stamina or mental capacity or character. But all those with the potential to blossom forth must do so. That is the spearhead in the society, on whom depends the pace of our progress.

Lee’s elite has many characteristics in common with the English concept of “class”, whereby members of the upper class can speak of someone being “one of us”, but in Singapore this has been mixed shamelessly with the Chinese concept of a scholarly “mandarinate” to produce a peculiarly Singaporean conception that has, in the minds of its members, the best of both worlds.

Patronage

Patronage is a vitally important element in the rise of anyone in the Singapore political and administrative elite. “Talent” and paper qualifications are sufficient in themselves to attract the notice of those with patronage to disburse, but at some point one needs to plug into a patronage network. The earlier in life one is able to do this, the better. Ideally such links would come through one’s family, but networks forged at school, or through corporate, civil or military service can prove nearly as advantageous.

Although there are elements of favouritism and nepotism in this system, the key is not found in such considerations. The absence of “talent” is sufficient to disqualify one from rising very high in the political and administrative hierarchy, no matter who your father is, but once a young man or woman has demonstrated “talent” (initially through success in examinations at school and university) one needs to be socialised into the “elite”. A substantial part of the networking and patronage is directed at socialising young bloods into the mindset and skill set of the “elite” to ensure the perpetuation of the system.


Lubricant: Personal power

Despite the genuinely meritocratic elements of the system, the oil that lubricates the Singapore system is the exercise of personal power, a feature that is common to both class systems and the traditional Chinese mandarinate. The personal character of power is demonstrated without much effort in the person of Lee Kuan Yew, who remains in Cabinet 15 years and two Prime Ministers after his retirement from the premiership, with the unlikely title of “Minister Mentor”. He was previously “Senior Minister” for the duration of Goh Chok Tong’s premiership, but now Goh holds that title. His presence in Cabinet must be most uncomfortable for Lee Hsien Loong. Not only does he have to work in the shadow of the founding father of modern Singapore, as did his predecessor, but in his case the man in question is his father. Even if Hsien Loong is really his “own man”, who is going to believe it?

Hsien Loong did not even get to announce the new line up. It was Lee Senior who announced that he would continue in Cabinet for as long as he was fit and able to serve, and it was Lee Senior who announced the new hierarchy (for protocol purposes) within the Prime Minister’s Office, whereby he would be third in line behind Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong. An anonymous “government official” was left to confirm Lee Senior’s announcement six days later.

Why does Lee Hsien Loong not simply remove him from Cabinet as is his constitutional right? Why did not Goh Chok Tong do so when he was Prime Minister? Regardless of the power they notionally possess or possessed by virtue of their institutional positions, they both understand that in or out of Cabinet, Lee Kuan Yew retains his personal networks and his personal power. He needs a seat in Cabinet only so that he can legally have open access to Cabinet and other official papers and legally retain his privileged links to the Internal Security Department. On balance Lee Hsien Loong may not even want to see him gone yet because his own power networks are still underpinned by his father. In the case of Goh Chok Tong, his efforts as Prime Minister to build a personal and independent power base were thwarted by both Lees – father as Senior Minister and son as Deputy Prime Minister. In the end, after being outflanked by father and son during a property scandal involving the Lee family in 1996, Goh gave up trying to exercise real power and handed the reins of domestic government over to Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. In any case, Goh’s efforts were never going to be very complete because he had no relatives in government, or in the elite. It was probably this characteristic more than any other that made him an ideal stop gap between father and son.

PM Lee Hsien Loong

The new Prime Minister’s curriculum vitae reads as an exemplary case study of the way that personal power, personal connections and related social advantages lubricate the meritocratic system. Lee Hsien Loong was born in 1952 as the eldest son of two brilliant solicitors, one of whom was to become Prime Minister. His economic position was comfortable without being wealthy (at least not in his early life), but more importantly he had the immense advantage of being born into an English-speaking Chinese household. Even without other considerations, this made him part of a small privileged elite in the Singapore of the 1950s because the Chinese were the dominant ethnic group and English was the language of the colonial elite.
After independence in 1965, his father successfully set out to make English – his own family’s first language – the dominant language of the Republic and the prime language of education.

Lee, however, was not content with his children being just monolingual. Even at this early stage Lee Senior had developed a fixation with what he would later call the “cultural ballast” provided by one’s “mother tongue”, and he sent Hsien Loong to top Chinese-medium schools (Nanyang Primary School and Catholic High School) so he could also master Mandarin.

Yet despite this immersion in a Chinese-language environment, Hsien Loong was failing his Mandarin, so his parents arranged for private tuition. This enabled him to barely pass his A Levels.

His relative mastery of Mandarin was to put him in good stead since, unbeknownst to anyone else, his father was later going to place bilingual Chinese (English and Mandarin-speaking) at the apex of the political and administrative elite.

As if this was not enough of an advantage, just as Hsien Loong finished his senior years of school, as if on cue the first of the Junior Colleges (JCs) opened to offer elite students a specialist study and tuition environment to prepare for university. It is barely conceivable that this is a coincidence, but it remains a fact that Hsien Loong was in the first intake of the first JC, National Junior College (NJC), where against all common practice he was allowed to sit for the Cambridge A-levels in two stages. He matriculated with A1s in pure and applied maths and an A2 in physics in 1969, and then returned as a part-time student to sit for the full set of examinations and improve his matriculation results, presumably to get a head start in Cambridge.

On the strength of his 1969 results alone he was one of eight winners of the prestigious President’s Scholarship in 1970, and also won a Public Service Commission scholarship to Cambridge to study mathematics.

After attending NJC, he also voluntarily began his National Service while waiting to depart for Cambridge, even though, as a scholarship winner, he could have deferred.

As “luck” would have it, his decision to start his National Service early served him well. While doing his National Service the Ministry of Defence initiated a system of SAF Overseas Merit scholarships and Lee was in the inaugural group of five men to win one for his study in Cambridge.

Upon his return to Singapore in 1974 the SAF initiated a scholarship and leadership programme for serving officers. Unsurprisingly, Lee Hsien Loong was in the first intake.

All in all, Lee made good use of his study opportunities while he was in the SAF. From 1971 to 1974 he studied at Cambridge, where he graduated with Double First Class Honours in Mathematical Statistics and Mathematical Economics and a distinction in a Diploma in Computer Science. After a mere three years working as a regular officer in the SAF, he was posted to Fort Leavenworth, USA, where he studied at the US Army Command and General Staff College from 1978 to 1979. Upon completion of these studies he stayed in the US for another year as a Mason Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, graduating in 1980 with a Masters in Public Administration. By this stage he had risen to the rank of Major in the SAF, despite having only served for about three years on operational duty. Despite his inexperience he was made Director, Joint Operations Planning Directorate from 1981 to 1982, and then became Chief of Staff (General Staff) from 1982 to 1984, by this time having risen to the rank of Brigadier-General.

The SAF did not get very good value out of their investment, however, for Lee Hsien Loong left the SAF to run for parliament in 1984.

I have no precise knowledge of the operation of favouritism during his military career, so we can only speculate about the importance of his family name in his rapid and comfortable rise through the ranks, risking not much more injury than paper cut.

On his entry into politics, however, there is less need to speculate. Many months before the announcement of his entry into politics, civil servants in the Housing and Development Board (HDB) were told that their job was to prepare the ground in Ang Mo Kio constituency for an Army officer who was going to retire soon and enter politics at the upcoming election. In this case the business of “preparing the ground” involved ensuring that the creation of the first Town Council (another first for Lee Hsien Loong) went smoothly.

Zulkifli Baharudin, an officer in the HDB, was put in charge, and apart from the administrative work of setting up a new municipal authority, he oversaw and engaged personally in door knocking, talking to hawkers and shop owners, making sure everyone was happy. Zulkifli says that this was his first political education and his first “real contact with the constituency”. He said in interview that even without knowing that it was Lee Hsien Loong who was being parachuted into the electorate, the work was given a high priority because the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) “was going to fight the election on the basis that it is best able to manage and lead a new municipal entity”. A few months before the election he was told that the new Member of Parliament was “the son of Mr Lee”. After that, the work intensified, and he remembers it as the hardest working period of his life.

Lest anyone is left with lingering doubts that the selection of Lee Hsien Loong’s constituency for the first Town Council might have been an arbitrary selection, it is worth noting that the next assignment given to Zulkifli was setting up the second Town Council in Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s electorate, Tanjong Pagar.

It is doubly significant to this study of personal power, patronage and special opportunities that having proved his worth and – it was assumed – political reliability, Zulkifli was later invited to stand for Parliament as a PAP candidate.

The unofficial secondment of a team of civil servants into working for the re election of the PAP government in an election is not extraordinary in itself. Entire ministries routinely devote their resources to the PAP during General Elections. I have interviewed two other civil servants who have worked in two different ministries who each took part in election work on behalf of the PAP during the 1991 election. One (in the Ministry of Information and the Arts) was involved in a ministry-wide exercise of monitoring and managing the press on behalf of the PAP. The other (in the Prime Minister’s Office) was part of a team of civil servants who attended political rallies and reported on mood and responses among the crowds. This was a comprehensive exercise that involved overtime, scheduled shift work, taxi vouchers and full use of the civil service infrastructure. Another interviewee who was campaigning for an opposition candidate (Chee Soon Juan) during the 1996 elections was followed during his waking hours by two people he presumed to be ISD agents (from the Ministry of Home Affairs). The exercise was carried out without any serious effort at subterfuge, so the primary purpose of the exercise was presumably intimidation rather than surveillance.

The dedication of civil service resources on behalf of the PAP is therefore considered routine within the civil service, but the significant feature of Zulkifli’s story is the special treatment accorded “the son of Mr Lee”, even by the standards of PAP candidates. And make no mistake. At that stage of his career, Lee Junior’s handling of his constituency was so clumsy that he would have been in trouble without this help. He tried to approach his early “walkabouts” like a military inspection, allocating a set time to each floor in each block and expecting his constituents to fit in to his schedule.

Not that you would have known that from reading the press reports at the time. The press at the time brimmed with adulatory reports about the PAP’s new candidate for Ang Mo Kio, beginning with reporting the occasional political speech that he was allowed to make while he was still a serving officer in the army.

From there Lee was catapulted into test after test set by his father, all of which he “aced”, riding on his energy, intelligence and problem-solving ability. At this point it is worth noting that he really is intelligent and hard working. His path through life was cleared by family connections, but family connections are not sufficient to win a double first from Cambridge University, or to hold down very senior positions in a highly professional army. He did these things and then went on to do more as a Minister. His first test was to tackle the recession of the mid-1980s as the Chairman of the Economic Review Committee. From there he went from strength to strength. He had a dream run through the sensitive and powerful Trade and Industry and Finance ministries and became a Deputy Prime Minister in 1990. His progression was interrupted only by a cancer scare that set back his succession to the premiership by a few years. Without belittling the scale of his achievements, it is important to note that he had an immense advantage over and above his innate “talent” in that he had much greater freedom to act than any other member of Cabinet apart from his father. Whereas his more experienced and more senior Cabinet colleagues had to take tiny, incremental steps to unwind any of Lee Kuan Yew’s initiatives, from the start Lee Hsien Loong was fearless in striking down sacred cows, beginning with the Central Provident Fund.

He could afford to be. He could live up to the mantra, “change it, improve it and build on it” with a freedom enjoyed by almost no one else in the country. As Prime Minister (and even as a disproportionately powerful Deputy Prime Minister) he was also able to invite others into his aura of autonomy, though their autonomy is heavily circumscribed because it is dependent on his patronage. Current beneficiaries of Lee’s largess include the “rising stars” he has been nurturing in Cabinet – especially Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Khaw Boon Wan. Thus Lee’s mantra is a circumlocutious cry of self-legitimation that is personified in Lee Hsien Loong himself and his father. Others may share in it only insofar as their education and
“talent” allows, and insofar as they have been socialised into the world of the elite.












Conclusion

The Singapore system of elite governance is truly a remarkable beast. Under the legitimating ideology of meritocratic elitism it delivers an effective and thoroughly modern style of technocratic governance that is nevertheless riddled with distortions and failings that threaten to make a mockery of the basic principles of its legitimacy. Worse, some of these distortions – notably the exercise of personal power and the operation of privilege and connections – are intrinsic to the operation of the system to the point where the legitimating ideology starts to look like a threadbare cover for the perpetuation of a dynasty. And yet the system works.

There is enough talent in the dynasty and enough truth in the myths of meritocracy, elite governance and pragmatism to ensure that the city-state is in safe hands, and that it is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. If the reality were allowed to stray too far from these ideals then the whole system would degenerate into crony politics – and that is not going to be allowed to happen. The imperfections and distortions create some insecurity and tension, but these are not fatal to the system. The ruling elite clearly believes that they are an acceptable price for peace, prosperity and a smooth, if imperfect system of elite regeneration.

Read the complete article (on pdf format) here

Speech Acts – Censorship and Documentary Filmmaking in Singapore

Feature by: Vinita Ramani

“In reality of course, there is no such thing as unfettered press freedom. Even the most liberal-minded person would acknowledge the necessity of some form of regulation or code to ensure responsible reporting…By this, I mean that our editors and journalists must be men and women who know what works for Singapore and how to advance our society’s collective interests.”
- Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, at the 5th anniversary dinner of TODAY newspaper, 31 October 2005

“Censorship seeks to produce subjects according to explicit and implicit norms..the production of the subject has everything to do with the regulation of speech. The subject’s production takes place not only through the regulation of that subject’s speech, but through the regulation of the social domain of speakable discourse.”
– Judith Butler, ‘Excitable Speech – A Politics of the Performative’

Demarcating the Lines – Censorship and the State

Film director Martyn See has directed and produced a short-film entitled Singapore Rebel (“the Film”), which seeks to explore the political ambitions and journey of the Singapore Democratic Party’s Dr Chee Soon Juan and his tussles with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP). Although it was submitted to be screened at last year’s Singapore International Film Festival, the film was ultimately withdrawn because the Media Development Authority’s Board of Film Censors (BFC) was of the view that it contravened certain provisions of the Films Act[1] .

Before I explore the relevant provisions of the Films Act and the actual content and significance of the Film, let me say that the BFC’s decision to withdraw the Film begs some important questions.

Namely, was this yet another instance of the BFC censoring a film it deemed politically sensitive, regardless of whether or not it could be so viewed from an objective stand-point? Was it yet another case in which an expression within civil society, an audio-visual attempt to explore Singapore’s political landscape had been prematurely curtailed by the State through its legal apparatus?[2] Or, more disturbingly, is the decision to withdraw the Film the result of Singapore’s socio-political climate where any expression which touches upon certain subject-matters is generally expected to create waves and be duly punished, no matter how expressly or impliedly the expression treats these subject-matters? In other words, has Singapore’s vigilance in regulating expression conditioned us to instinctively know, or at least believe that we know, when a film violates norms laid down by the State?

These questions form the basis of my analysis of the Film and BFC’s response to it.

The ‘Speech Act’ Theory

In “Excitable Speech – A Politics of the Performative”, Judith Butler, quoting comparative speech and rhetoric theorists, advances the theory that expression is intrinsically performative: it is not confined to the words we write or utter, but reflects an attitude or an intention to act upon that utterance or writing (or of the suggestion of multiple meanings within the utterance or writing).

This theory, which is referred to as the ‘Speech Act’ theory, postulates that “people do more things with words than convey information, and that when people do convey information, they often convey more than their words encode.”[3] Applied to our context, it may help explain why the BFC, and by extension the State, believe that it must intervene to regulate something like hate speech, or any other speech for that matter which could jeopardize national stability (“Offensive Speech”).[4]

Using concepts typically associated with international relations theory and practice, Butler takes the analysis one step further. She suggests that a State attributes an almost “sovereign power” to hate speech when it tells its citizens that it violates their civil rights and liberties and therefore must be regulated by the State’s legal apparatus. Butler goes on to observe that such a suggestion may be flawed. For starters, it is premised on the assumption that “non-state centred forms of agency and resistance” either do not exist or should not be encouraged – which is inaccurate. The existence and efficacy of alternative forms of societal progress is a topic for another essay to explore.

Butler also notes that Offensive Speech, ironically, may indeed be a State construct. It would not even exist as a category of speech in the first place without “State ratification”. In other words, “this power of the State's judicial language to establish and maintain the domain of what will be publicly speakable suggests that the State plays much more than a limiting function in such decisions; in fact, the State actively produces the domain of publicly acceptable speech, demarcating the line between the domains of the speakable and the unspeakable, and retaining the power to make and sustain that consequential line of demarcation.”[5]

This does not mean that we have no choice to determine for ourselves how we engage in speech acts. Rather, the real question is whether or not censorship has a far more significant pre-emptive role than we are aware of. In addition to setting the parameters for what is and is not permissible, it may also skewer our ability to independently review a film, for example, which has already been labelled as controversial. This ability is crucial to the philosophical concept of “agency” which asks that we undo the scene that has been set for us and critically examine the lines demarcating what is and is not permissible so that we can come to an unbiased conclusion of the art we perceive.

Does Singapore Rebel deconstruct the landscape that has been drawn for us, or does it merely fall into the dubious category of expression which the State has determined to be Offensive Speech?

Singapore Rebel – The Film

Singapore Rebel starts with a nearly 3-minute opening sequence of generic and rapidly -cut shots of Singapore’s central business district and shopping malls, which are ubiquitous in the island.

A voice-over narrates a series of stereotypical statistics about the nation. These cover the usual terrain that any news wire agency report about Singapore would: i.e. that Singapore, with a population of over 4 million, is an anomalous “little red dot” which has far outdone its Southeast Asian neighbours and yet, continues to be perceived with guarded cynicism by some outsiders and citizens alike, for its lack of political and social freedom.

The film then takes us to the apartment above an innocuous shop-house where Dr Chee Soon Juan works and takes care of his three children. An informal question-answer interview session allows for See to craft a vignette of the man and his forays into politics. Narrating his beginnings as a lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) psychology department in 1990, Chee outlines his interest in politics and his involvement in the 1992 elections during which he says he sensed the “frustrations and anger” that many Singaporeans felt.

See then adopts a reportage-styled narrative, seeking to allow the key moments speak for themselves. These include the period when Chee went on a hunger strike after he was sacked from NUS; his forays into speaking openly about politics and civil society action in 1998 and 1999, which led to the first of two defamation suits (the second followed during the 2001 elections), as well as fines and a 5-week prison sentence.

Archival footage shot by See includes Chee’s attempts to get a ‘people against poverty’ May Day rally going outside the grounds of the Istana (office of the President of Singapore). The audience, like the numerous reporters at the scene of the event, witness the police descending on the small gathering where Chee was subsequently apprehended and driven away in a police van.

Interestingly, however, See’s voice as the interviewer, and as the audience’s representative on film, only emerges in the film once the tone has been set for how we should perceive Chee – that is, as an almost solitary man struggling against the odds to question a domineering and authoritarian state. Chee is packaged and presented to the audience as the archetypal Singapore rebel and then made to answer the following questions:


“Why do you get into trouble with the law all the time?”


“You are a politician, are you not concerned with losing popularity with the people?”


“If Singaporeans are materialistic, why fight for their rights?”

Legal Dimensions – The Films Act

One does not have to be an astute historian or political activist to know upon watching the Film that it was going to face problems with the censors. The ban was not unprecedented. Indeed, it follows in the footsteps of the ban against A Vision of Persistence, a 15-minute documentary on opposition politician J.B. Jeyaretnam made in 2001 by three Ngee Ann Polytechnic lecturers. A Vision of Persistence, just like Singapore Rebel, was withdrawn from the Singapore International Film Festival by the BFC for offending section 2 of the Act. Festival Director/Programmer, Mr Philip Cheah, notes that it was the first time a film had been specifically barred under the Films Act due to its “political content”.[6]

Section 2 of the Films Act is designed to prohibit “party-political” films, which expressly deal with such political content. In particular, subsections 2(a) and 2(b) of the Act enumerate circumstances in which a film would contravene the Act for “contain(ing) wholly or partly either partisan or biased references to or comments on any political matter”.[7] Section 2b(vi) of the Act, for instance, states that a film is objectionable if it touches on a “current policy of the Government or any issue of public controversy in Singapore” (emphasis mine). Given that See’s 26-minute film is more a summation of the most controversial periods in Chee’s political career and, in my view, far less an exploration of Chee’s ethos, ideology and political vision with regards to Singapore, it is unsurprising that it triggered alarm bells and was ultimately thought by the BFC to fall foul of Section 2 of the Act.

Not only was the Film withdrawn, but it elicited a series of other responses from the authorities, reaffirming the popular belief that free expression in Singapore may be greeted by a slap on the wrist rather than applause. According to reports in news wires such as Associated Press and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA), See was told he would be fined up to $100,000 and could face a possible jail term if he went ahead and screened the Film without authorisation[8]. Copies of the Film and camera equipment were also seized by the authorities[9]. Subsequently, See’s friends, social activist Jacob George and filmmaker Tan Pin Pin, were questioned by the police about See and the Film in the course of an apparently routine investigation.[10]

Does this cautionary and somewhat punitive response on the part of the State’s quasi-judicial and legal apparatus reflect the State’s abhorrence of the Film (and its political content) or was it an instinctive response to what the apparatus had assumed would be viewed by the State as being Offensive Speech that could threaten national and political stability? Significantly, as See points out in his blog, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew had this to say about the ban in an interview with Time Magazine : “Well, if you had asked me, I would have said, to hell with it (the ban). But the censor, the enforcer, he will continue until he is told the law has changed. And it will change…”[11]

Ironically, the Film continues to live and breathe in the virtual landscape, where it can be seen in its entirety, giving it a heightened poignancy that it might not have had had the BFC and other relevant authorities decided to permit its screening.[12] Even before we can begin a critique of the film, this fact hits us, a discerning audience, as being rather ironic.

Of Subjects and Cinematic Expression – A Critique of the Film

The most important question for the audience is whether some of us walked away from the Film with a more nuanced picture of a man so riddled with controversy and so persistently labelled in mainstream media that some believe he has become a caricature rather than a political visionary.

In the context of short films like Singapore Rebel or A Vision of Persistence, the audience is simply not given the opportunity to judge the film on its own merits. The censorship authorities have operated on two levels. First, in setting the very terms of what is speakable and what is not, they put such films beyond our reach even before they make it to the screens at small film festivals. Second, and more tangibly, the censors shut the films down at inception by imposing a ban.

Interestingly, and with the greatest respect to See, it appears that the Film has itself, consciously or subconsciously, undergone some self-censorship.

One cannot help but feel that if See had wanted the Film to focus on Chee Soon Juan rather than tangible instances of civil society presence in Singapore, the Film should have yielded a more layered vignette in its 26 minutes.[13] Instead, the questions that See poses to Chee operate on our stock impressions of Chee and paint a caricature, without penetrating the rhetoric to reveal the portrait of Chee the man.

For example, See allows Chee to briefly share his recollections about going on a hunger strike, but we never find out why (or whether) Chee was inspired by India’s father-figure Mahatma Gandhi to undertake this form of passive resistance. We are similarly not given an insight into whether political struggles in other parts of the world influence Chee’s own ideology or attitude towards life.

At one crucial point in the Film, See asks how Chee feels about being labelled a “congenital liar” and a “political gangster”, to which Chee responds, with considerable self-restraint, that the truth will speak for itself. Although Chee’s response is, in the circumstances, quite remarkable, See never includes footage of instances where Chee might have reiterated what he is and stands for. Instead, we are again left with a caricature of a man asserting what he isn’t, believing that the elusive “truth” (another category that could have been explored in the film) will redeem him.

As a whole, the film, by reaffirming many assumptions we may already have of Singapore’s political scene, leaves a discerning audience with little to work with. On the one hand, Singaporeans who are familiar with Chee’s political struggles will learn little that is new here. On the other hand, Western political activists and mainstream or independent media who generally only pay attention to Singapore when faced with reports that it has an authoritative regime will have these ideas reinforced by the Film.[14] Neither Singaporeans nor their counterparts abroad discover anything that challenges established stereotypes of Chee or Singapore.

Conclusion

The subject of a film, and sometimes its author, may be transformed or tainted by censorship from within or without. As Butler writes, “the subject emerges as the result of the bar itself… barring is an action that is not exactly performed on a pregiven subject, but performed in such a way that the subject him/herself is performatively produced as a result of this primary cut,” (Butler, 1997: 138).

Borrowing Butler’s language, See’s film and Chee Soon Juan (or more accurately the caricature of Chee presented in the Film) strike us as a product of this “primary cut”, the pre-emptive and “normative” exercise of power which – according to Butler – set the very “conditions of intelligibility”. Chee has almost been driven to poverty by defamation suits which still labours on. See is the filmmaker who has been censored by the State. Amidst the surrounding controversy, they are reduced almost to clichés rather than the men they are.

An opportunity to be able to think outside the binary of the ruling party versus its often diminished and beleaguered opposition is rarely presented to us. A film that would really push the envelope would therefore have to be the “unperformable in all performativity” (ibid). Applied to the Film, this means that both Singaporeans and foreign press or NGOs may have appreciated a film dedicated to letting Chee articulate where his desire to enter politics came from, how he understands the very idea of being “politicised”, how he sees civil society, and what he thinks it takes to build a nation, assuming he thinks that is a critical question for someone venturing into the political arena. It is unfortunate that the Film does not sufficiently grapple with these questions.

Even so, there is no logic in imposing a ban, or preventing a wider audience from watching the Film. By banning the Film the State is forced to re-visit, re-condemn and re-stage what it ironically claims to have absolute power over. In this regard, the “censored speech it seeks to regulate is introduced into public discourse” (ibid: 130). Put differently, law suits and mainstream media coverage condemning Chee Soon Juan forces the State to admit in the public arena that it is a contingent entity. More commonly, politicians have to return to the site of the impermissible when foreign journalists question them about the very issues they would rather not touch on – be it Singapore’s human rights record, its lack of press freedom or its tendency to exercise heavy-handed censorship.

In the case of Singapore Rebel, it was the censors doing what they believe the law says, and this, apparently, will change. Both Singaporeans and people who see cinema as a critical and powerful tool of expression are hoping that this change will come soon.

Banned, but not broken

Singapore filmmaker Martyn See did the unthinkable - he made a political documentary. He shows that film and premiere's his latest "subversive" documentary today at the Assignment Theatre

By Ron Brownlow
STAFF REPORTER
Taipei Times
Friday, Oct 06, 2006, Page 17


Director Martyn See is all about questioning the political process.
PHOTO: RON BROWNLOW, TAIPEI TIMES

When Martyn See (施忠明) made his first film he thought it would be censored. He didn't realize he would be investigated, his tapes and video camera confiscated, and he would ultimately be warned never to do it again.

The offense: making Singapore Rebel,which chronicles the political journey of the island-state's most outspoken opposition politician, Chee Soon Juan (徐順全). See's 26-minute documentary was withdrawn from the Singapore International Film Festival last yearafter censors found it to be a political film, banned under the country's Films Act.

“If it was passed by the censor it would have been shown to a room of no more than 100 people,” said See, a 37-year-old video editor who is in Taipei this week for screenings of Rebel at the Assignment Theatre (差事劇團). His new film, Speaker's Cornered, premieres at the Assignment Theatre tonight. “Now 10 times, maybe 100 times that many people have seen it.”Singapore's Films Act bans the making, showing or distribution of “party political films,” or films “directed towards any political end in Singapore.” Those prosecuted under the act face two years in prison or fines of up to S$100,000, or roughly US$59,000.

The idea is that film manipulates audiences and leads them to make poor voting choices. Singapore's government argues tight media controls and restrictions on public assembly are needed to preserve public order.

Critics point out that political content favorable to the ruling People's Action Party, which has ruled Singapore since independence from Malaysia, has been allowed to air on national television. This includes a recent Hong Kong-produced program on former head of state Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), the father of Singapore's current prime minister.

In its annual report on press freedom last year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore 144th out of 166 countries. A Singaporean student in the US was recently threatened with a defamation lawsuit for criticizing the government on his blog.

See said he made Singapore Rebel to examine why the political opposition is marginalized by the country's media, which is state-owned, and society. He also wanted to “politicize younger Singaporeans” who are “totally apathetic towards political issues.”

He used roughly 70 percent of his footage, which he shot with a Samsung mini DV camera and edited on a Macintosh laptop computer. The entire project cost about US$400 to make. The film is essentially an interview with Chee, the secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party, mixed with footage showing Chee's home life and a protest near the prime minister's house. References to Chee's party were deliberately omitted.

“I had a very vague idea about the films act,” See said. “However, I took my chances because the new prime minister had just been inaugurated and he promised an open and inclusive society.”

Indeed, the film opens with a quote attributed to current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) in 2004: “We are an open, multiracial and cosmopolitan society. We enjoy a good reputation in the world… . Our people should feel free to express diverse views, pursue unconventional ideas, or simply to be different.”

Two months after Singapore Rebel was withdrawn from the Singapore International Film Festival, police called See in for what he describes as a “friendly question and answer session.”

There was a second interview several months later was “amicable” until the end, when the and a third time this May, just before the general elections. Acquaintances, including a filmmaker and a political blogger, Jacob George, also received calls from police.

Ultimately See's video camera, but not his tapes, were returned and he was let off with a warning.

Chee, who has been bankrupted by defamation lawsuits brought by ruling party leaders and jailed three times for speaking without a permit, saw the news as a victory.

“My first thought was that they didn't want to make Martyn a cause celebre,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I think it was a sign that this government knew where its boundaries are, that if it pushed beyond those boundaries their actions would backfire and be counterproductive.”

But See, who maintains he was never told exactly how Singapore Rebel violated the Films Act, is not so sure. “The roadblocks can be put in place at the whim and fancy of the government,” he said. “If you think that you're making some headway they always close it down.”

George agreed. “I don't see (Singapore Rebel) having a major impact,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. Filmmakers “know they had better not make this kind of movie.”

Still, he thinks people in Taiwan should watch See's film. “It gives another side of Singapore politically which is rarely ever seen,” he said.

See hopes Singapore Rebel will remind viewers that they should not take Taiwan's democracy for granted. “Just watching programs on television (here) openly criticizing the president … for me it's like a breath of fresh air,” he said. “I'm actually envious of Taiwan,” he added. “Taiwanese are interested in their political system.”


Film notes:

Singapore Rebel plays today at 12:30pm at the Assignment Theatre (差事劇團), one of three films from that country at this weekend's Left Side Film Festival. At 8pm, director Martyn See (施忠明) will discuss Singapore Rebel in a forum, also at the Assignment Theatre. Following the discussion, there will be the world premier of his new film Speaker's Cornered, a 27-minute documentary on Chee Soon Juan's attempt to protest in front of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's recent annual meeting in Singapore. For more information, call (02) 2364-5124. Assignment Theatre is located at 9-10, Ln 18, Heping E Rd, Sec 2, Taipei (台北市和平東路二段18巷9-10號B1).

'Zahari's 17 Years' to premiere in Malaysia

Three Singapore films have been selected for screening at the 2006 Freedom Film Festival in Malaysia. Martyn See's 'Zahari's 17 Years', Tan Pin Pin's 'Singapore Gaga' and 'Moving House' will feature among an international slate of films dedicated to raising the consciousness of socio-political issues.

Following Martyn See's participation in last year's festival, local documentary filmmaker Tan Pin Pin has been invited by this year's organisers to present her work. She will be attending the screenings at Taylor's College in Subang Jaya.

The festval will run over two weekends in two venues.

29 Sept to 1 Oct
KLANG VALLEY : Taylor’s College, 1, Jalan SS15/8, 47500, Subang Jaya,
For invite in Klang Valley, call Effa Desa 03-79685415

6 Oct to 8 Oct
PENANG : The Actors Studio Greenhall, Ground Floor, Zhong Zheng School Memorial Centre, 32, Lebuh Light, 10200 Penang
For invite in Penang, call Wee Ching 012-2755438 Or Chon Kai 019-5669518

Showtimes for 'Zahari's 17 Years'
Klang Valley on Oct 1, 2.30pm
Penang on Oct 8, 2.30pm

The full schedule of the festival here.

'Singapore Rebel' goes Taipei

If you happened to be in Taiwan or are planning to visit in the next couple of weeks, you might want to include some movie watching in your itinerary. 'Singapore Rebel' and Royston's Tan '15' (the movie version) and 'Cut' will be screened as a triple-bill.

2006 Asian Workers’ Works
Cross Border Cultural and Educational Foundation
September 27–6 October 2006

Shooting Left Asia Film Festival - Taipei, Taiwan

Venues and showtimes.

30 Sept - Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre

AM10:00-12:00 / The Big Durian（75’）+ Romantik ISA（43’）
PM12:30-2:30 / Hitting Two Birds With One Stone（5’）+ Surviving Beijing（125’）
PM3:00-5:00 / Labor Arts Conversation 1
PM5:30-7:30 / Singapore Rebel（26’）+CUT（13’）+15（90’）
PM8:00-10:00 / Labor Arts Conversation 2

**********************


3 Oct - Guling Street Avant-garde Theatre

AM10:00-12:00 / Hitting Two Birds With One Stone（5’）+ Surviving Beijing（125’）
PM12:30-2:30 / Singapore Rebel（26’）+CUT（13’）+15（90’）
PM3:00-5:00 / The Burnt Theater（105’）
PM5:30-7:30 / The Moon Hunter（107’）+ Don’t Forget Me（15’）
PM8:00-10:00 / Garuda's Deadly Upgrade（50’）+Mass Grave（26’）+ Faces of Everyday Corruption in Indonesia（40’）

**********************


6 Oct - Assignment Theatre

PM12:30-2:30 / Singapore Rebel（26’）+ CUT（13’）+ 15（90’）
PM3:00-5:00 / The Burnt Theater（105’）
PM5:30-7:30 / The Moon Hunter（107’）+ Don’t Forget Me（15’）


If you need further details, email me at singapore_rebel@yahoo.com

'Singapore Rebel' previously premiered in Taiwan at the Urban Nomad Film Festival.

Link to Taipei Times report