Liberal democracy gives rise to social ills? Part 2

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Thursday, 06 January 2011

Singapore Democrats

In his bluster in the Foreign Affairs magazine in 1994, Mr Lee Kuan Yew said: "The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society..."

If Mr Lee's main object is to achieve a well-ordered society, he has missed it by a mile. For starters, streaking - a fad normally reserved for decadent societies in the West that Mr Lee excoriates - seems to be catching on in Singapore.

A couple flashes buck naked at patrons of a kopitiam at Holland Village, a guy walks into a MacDonald's joint in his favourite skin, and a lady disrobes at a bus-stop and boards a bus in her full glory.

Naked at Holland Village

Another lady, a 19-year-old, had a little bit more class. She chose Fullerton Hotel for her act. She climbed on to a lamp. In her buff. On the second floor balcony. After scrambling past five rooms.

These weren't one-off shows. In 2010, there were 105 reports of indecent exposure in Singapore in the first half of the year - that's one strip act every two days. Public nudity cases went up by 22 percent between 2009 and 2007.

And what is a well-ordered society without an altercation or two? Spats between ordinary folks on our buses are a common occurence. Watch the following video clips of perfect strangers going at each other:

If this is a well-ordered society, we shudder to think of what a crazy one looks like.

All this is not just harmless expressions of frustration. In Part 1, we pointed out the explosion of crime and vice in Singapore.

One really can't type fast enough to keep up with reports of violence. Before we could post this piece another murder took place last night, this time at Bukit Batok. A 29-year-old man was found dead - in a church compound - with bruises on his face and a shirt soaked in blood.

The pastor of the church said: "We seem to be hearing of quite a number of incidents of violence in our society."

The worst part is that it is rubbing off on our children - yes, children. Gang fights involving eight-year-olds (that's a boy in primary two for easier reference) and violent robberies by kids in their early teens seem to be the norm. (See here)

And girls? In the first half of 2009, there was a 70 percent increase in prosecutions of statutory rape (sex with underaged girls). And these are just the cases that get reported to the authorities. One 12-year-old girl was found to have had sex with 15 men.

Confucius confounded

What happened to our Confucianist culture that Mr Lee was such a fan of, the one that prides itself on communitarian values and high moral standards? Yes, the very same one that decries and rejects democratic values.

"We focus on the basics in Singapore," the Minister Mentor wagged his finger. "We used the family to push economic growth..."

Apparently not anymore. Casinos, it appears, is the way forward nowadays. Family, shmamily. Easy Street, fast money is the new mantra.

Another murder this morning But what about vice and crime that come with casinos? Mr Lee's son, the prime minister, concedes that casinos bring "undesirable activities" but then dismisses the concerns, saying: "We had no choice."

No choice? You mean we have no choice but to see our sons kill each other in gang fights, our underaged daughters have sex with older men, our youths parade themselves naked in public, our uncles and aunties engage in fisticuffs, our rich turn to drugs, and our poor to suicide?

We pay him $3.8 million to tell us we have no choice but to tear our society apart?

Anything but democracy

We hope that it is clear by now that social ills don't come about because we have political freedom. We still live under a very authoritarian regime, and yet our social problems are only increasing.

'We had no choice' The truth is that democracy and political freedom do not cause crime and vice. Rather it is the blind pursuit of wealth by the elite at the expense of the rest of society that is fueling a breakdown in order. Social breakdown comes about when a ruling party is left unchecked. Its excesses perpetuate income disparity and places an unbearable strain on society. The result is a degeneration in social order.

In fact it is in democratic societies (and they are not confined to the West) that the people can balance misguided government policies through open debate and elections, and exert an ethical influence over public policy.

The irony is that the PAP has copied all the undesirable traits of crass consumerism and corporate greed from the West while eliminating the moderating influence of an open and democratic system. Singaporeans must understand that democracy is not a Western value. It is a universal practice that allows the people to prevent the government from bringing a country to ruin.

The PAP will tolerate and allow anything in Singapore - even social ills. The one thing that it will not permit, however, is democracy because social ills do not affect members of the ruling elite. Democracy does.

Read also: Liberal democracy gives rise to social ills? Part 1

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Comments (12)

Thu 06 Jan 2011 3:38 PM | Cheers

Just wonder how come no PAP MPs mind you 82 of them ok less 2 died plus one senile come out to debunk or rebuke what was written thus far.

We don't need foreign journalist to the work we have one home grown eidtor. Shame on SPH.

If I am the MP my conscience would not allow me to continue to be paid and pretend that all is well with Singapore.

Thu 06 Jan 2011 4:05 PM | Tan Tai Wei

The "carrot and stick" strategy stagnates people at the level of only extrinsic motivation for rule following. They are not advanced to the level of internalising values and obeying rules as a call to duty, never mind the reward or punishment.

Research affirms that for people to attain to this mature level of moral development, "cognitive stimulation" and conducive "social interaction" are needed.

So it isn't surprising that Singaporeans, habituated to following rules only because of "carrots and sticks", are now beginning to behave in such unruly ways listed by SDP above, as government attempts to relax a little on LKY's "tightly knit society.

Thu 06 Jan 2011 5:39 PM | freedomT

I just saw such things happened in my feeder bus today right in front of crowded kids, a chinese man punch a malay lady for accidently stepping on his shoes in the bus. It was an old makcik and the Chinese guy was a young middle age person.

Thu 06 Jan 2011 10:10 PM | bobg - bobg

LKY needs to re-read Confucius. He is not all about well ordered, obedient societies and communal living. There is room for individualism even in his thinking. I wonder if LKY has read Amartya Sen's book "Development as Freedom". There are some lessons here for the PAP.

Here's a quote from Confucius that appears in the book, "When the [good] way prevails in the state, speak boldly and act boldly. When the state has lost the way, act boldly and speak softly".

Sen also trashes Lee's "Asian Values" argument, which is pure nonsense and probably explains why PAP officialdom has gone quiet with it.

Fri 07 Jan 2011 12:33 AM | Jufrie - The effect of the sleeping pills has yet to wear

The effect of sleeping pills prescribed by the PAP and fed to the masses by the msm is yet to wear out totally.

If only more people were to surf the internet and go to websites that tell things as they are it would be much easier to bring about change.

Fri 07 Jan 2011 10:07 AM | litotes

I am a big fan of the SDP but seriously, I doubt 3 youtube clips of people having a go at each other on the bus convinces me that society is unravelling itself. perhaps more logical would be some kind of graph that charts the increase in teenage crimes over the last 10 years?

Fri 07 Jan 2011 10:40 AM | asoaso

Dear litotes,

You another joker who doesn't read the article one ah? SDP just cited increased drug dealing, hookers, crime, youth violence, murders, nudists, young girls f**king older men...and you say they only 3 videos. It's the trend. The 3 videos are just examples can understand or not? Wahlau eh people please read properly lah.

I go to youtube and see many more fighting and quarreling videos. Some of the ladies there very chiak. Good job for pointing these things out SDP! Singapore is going to the dogs!

Fri 07 Jan 2011 12:15 PM | Kit

I watched the Blair - Hitchens debate recently and the latter's words below caught my attention.

"For a very long time we had in that (Labour) movement a challenger, apparently from the left, the communist movement, which has only been dead a very short time now and actually hasn't died everywhere yet and which said it had a much more comprehensive and courageous and thoroughgoing answer than we did to the problems created by capitalism and imperialism and other things and really proposed a fighting solution. And if I was to point to you the number of heroic people who believed in that and the number of wonderful works of especially fiction, novels and essays written by people who believed in it—you could probably, all of you mention one of your own. If you were a Canadian—I hope they still teach about him in school, the great example of Norman Bethune, heroic doctor who went to volunteer in China during the civil war on the communist side, did amazing work, invented a form of battlefield blood transfusion, just one among many examples. It was the communists in many parts of Europe who barred the road to fascism in Spain and kept Madrid, for many years, from falling to Franco and Hitler and Mussolini. Ghandi may take credit for the Indian independence movement (too much in my view) but no one would deny the tremendous role played by the Indian communists in doing this, in helping to break the challenge—excuse me, break the hold of Great Britain on their country. As a matter of fact, some people find it embarrassing to concede this, but I don't, as a supporter of it myself, the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's party, at least half of its members of the central committee and executives were members of the communist party until quite recently, very probably including Mandela himself. There's no doubt about it, there was real heroism and dignity and humanism to those people but we opposed it. We said it wouldn't work. Why won't it work? It's not worth the sacrifice of freedom that it implies. It implies that these things only can be done if you'll place yourself under an infallible leadership, one that, once it's made the decision has made that decision and you are bound by it"

Yes, some communists did some heroic things, but humanity did not embrace communism because of the bigger sacrifice and bad that it brought too.

Fri 07 Jan 2011 1:18 PM | Dawkins - RAZORTV

I also saw more cases in RAZORTV reporting too. Like in Point Blank, I swear I saw a middle age man slapping an old man on the MRT. A primary school kid came up to the man to stop him but also kena whack.

Fri 07 Jan 2011 3:32 PM | litotes

Dear asoaso,

contrary to your accusation and unconstructive name-calling tendencies, I have read the article and I am also aware of the recent trends as reported by the news. My point was that public transport quibbles don't really amount to much evidential support of social unrest. The other points certainly do but citing those events without the benefit of any kind of comparative literature is to moot point.

And like I said, perhaps a graph that charts an increase in all the vice over a period of time would be much more substantial as evidence of social unrest.

Sat 08 Jan 2011 11:32 AM | quantum - Graph plotting

You are right. But with so much of censorship around, where are you going to get all the data?
Remember the last time how one SPH reporter who was trying to photograph the Great Flood got captured by the police?
Perhaps we should start collecting such youtube clips and compile a database, from which we can plot a graph.

Sun 09 Jan 2011 9:15 PM | litotes

its truly a pity that there is not only no freedom of information act but also no independent voices in popular media. Governmental affairs are shrouded in secrecy and citizens are powerless to democratically change their government.

Nonetheless, small scale altercations on public transport are petty at best when you pit it against large scale governmental mistakes such as terrorist escapes, Suzhou industrial park.

And worse, horrendous systemic abuse such as justice that favours the connected and wealthy as well as detention/torture without trial.

Over the years, we've not only witnessed an utter lack of direction in our government but an increase in bad economic choices.

I guess its dangerous for the entire mechanization of the state to be borne out of the psyche of one man especially in the face of today's globalized economy. When his time comes and this era passes, we'll probably see it as a good experiment gone horribly wrong. But by then, most of us would have paid the price.