Singapore style democracy
November 30th, 2009 | 
Author: Dear Mr Shanmugam,
I refer to your speech at the New York state bar association dialogue as reported by the Straits Times on 30th Oct 2009.
In your speech, you referred to American economist Bryan Caplan’s arguments that as a political entity, Singapore should be seen as a city and as far as cities go, America has its share of cities where one party has dominated over long periods of time, which in turn suggests that party dominance doesn’t imply the lack of democracy.
Another example would be Microsoft’s dominance of global computer operating systems. People can choose not to use Microsoft, but they use Microsoft nonetheless. Yet, some of Microsoft’s practices have resulted in anti-trust proceedings by the US Department of Justice as well as the European Commission with the latter succeeding in getting Microsoft to unbundle both Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer from Windows sold in Europe because the practice is deemed as anti-competitive and unfair.
Hence, it is not dominance per say but unfair dominance that we should be concerned with. Does the mayor of Chicago go around telling its constituents that unless they vote for the Democrats, they will not get to enjoy nation wide housing retrofitting benefits? Does the mayor of Chicago lump six districts into one mega-district to be voted as one? Are all newspapers distributed in Chicago owned by just one company the shares of which belong largely to state linked companies? You will not find these unfair practices in Chicago, San Francisco or New York. You can only find them in Singapore. Only the issue of tying voting to HDB flat upgrading has been addressed barely months ago. Hence, Bryan Caplan’s assertion that pressure from the dominant party hardly matters is untrue.
While international observers have rated our government as one of the least corrupt, it should not escape their eyes that instead of taking money from under the table, they have resorted to taking money from above the table. No other government in the world takes more money from above the table than our government.
Thank you
Ng Kok Lim
Posted in Letters
12 Responses to “Singapore style democracy”
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Democracy is most vile expletive word in Singapore.
The politically “correct” of descript substituted in displacement is autocracy.
The writer is as what his middle reads.
PAP government can fool some all of the time and everyone some of the time but they cannot fool everyone all of the time.
in a true democracy, JBJ would be given the Public Service Star
http://campaignjbj.wordpress.com/
SinnerGoh on Mon, 30th Nov 2009 10:31 am
Sinners in Singapore should only “working” very hard in Geylang, not busy blogging on TR.
Are you full-time or part-time and do you offer all services?
Are you soliciting for more business here using your first name?
Banning lawyers from publicly discussing laws affecting citizenry. No other democracy in the world practice this Uniquely Singapore’s political “religion”.
Might as well lock up all opposition party members in Changi Prison would add more “flavour of disgust” to Singapore style democracy.
No mayor of any city in the US of A would dare go
around threatening to fix the opposition or brag
about buying his supporters’ votes.
In Sinkapoor we do. And we call ourselves a democracy.
That’s why we are UNIQUE !!!!
” it should not escape their eyes that instead of taking money from under the table, they have resorted to taking money from above the table. No other government in the world takes more money from above the table than our government.”
That really poignantly hit the point ! Bull-eyes !
A Mayor’s Salary is what they deserve.
‘demo-crazy’ in singapore is akin to “merito-CRAZY”!
…only a few “chosen ones” benefit…
sad indeed that most of us here-except for a conspicuos few-are not counted among the chosen ones.
There is no such thing as Singapore-Style democracy. It is just another autocratic system in disguise !!!! We are just following the way the Chinese coin the word i.e. 中国特色….. but in actual fact, it is just trying put cosmetics on ridiculous things!!!!
Just Curious on Mon, 30th Nov 2009 11:53 am
You appear shallow in your definition of ’sins’