The metaphor of Singapore as home is a feature of Singaporean political discourses. Surprisingly, it has been the subject of little research. Notably, it is not included in Ong Siow Heng and Nirmala Govindasamy-Ong’s study (2006) on the PAP government’s metaphors, perhaps because of the variety of symbols that the party deploys (Ban Kah Choon 2004; 2). Shirley Lim (2003) usefully outlines how the state, in the 1990s, used the image of home to deter emigration.
It should be noted that the metaphor of the Singaporean home has been used by the PAP government since at least 1962.45 The metaphor’s longevity is particularly noteworthy given Ban’s study (2004:1) on the shifts in PAP imagery.
Its endurance may be attributed to the PAP’s practice of fostering nationalism.
Significantly, Benedict Anderson, ([1983] 2006) suggests that the term ‘home’
makes the idea of a nation seem natural. The metaphor’s deployment in
Singapore may be used to compensate for the aforementioned awkward birth of the independent Singaporean nation state and to nurture the imagining of a natural site of territorial identity. An illustrative comment about the unnaturalness of the Singaporean nation, which interlocks with the compensatory concept of the national home, is in a speech by Goh ChokTong, reported by Warren Fernandez et al. in the Straits Times (19 November 1996). Singapore, it is stated, ‘was not a
45 On National Day in 1962, the then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, referred to Singapore as
‘home’ to its relatively recent Chinese and Indian immigrants.
natural nation and its people had only begun to view it as their home in the last 30 years’ (emphasis added).
The metaphor of Singapore as home has been used in a variety of
contexts, which include Singapore as the permanent home of Singaporeans, the island’s national independence, and the internal running of the Singaporean home. In addition, opposition politicians have also adopted this image.
Singapore as Home to its Citizens
Two years after sovereign independence, the Foreign Minister, S. Rajaratnam declared:
For well over a 100 years, the bulk of our people did not regard themselves as a permanently settled community. Of course things have changed very much.
Singapore is now our permanent home. We must live and die here.46 (Emphasis added).
A generation later, Goh Choh Tong used very similar language in his maiden speech as Prime Minister in 1990, when he said, ‘Every Singaporean, whatever his race, language or religion, should feel: “Singapore is my home. I have a place here. This is where I belong. This is where I will live and die.’” (Cited by Alan Chong 1991: 24, emphasis added.)
The emigration of well-educated Singaporeans has been an issue. This outflow of talent was particularly pronounced in the late 1980s. The government
46 Cited by David W. Chang (1968: 767) from The Mirror, 1967 (27 March, 1).
has tended to stress the lure of attractive financial packages rather than ‘push’
factors relating to life in Singapore. Until the mid-1990s, the government sought to deter well-educated Singaporeans from leaving ‘home’, as their departure was
regarded as an economic loss (see Shirley Lim 2003). Since the mid 1990s, the government has encouraged Singaporeans to work abroad to boost the national economy, whilst urging them to consider Singapore as home (Serene Tan and Brenda S.A. Yeoh 2006: 151).
The PAP’s Running of the Independent Singaporean Home
Just a few days after Singapore’s separation from the Malay Federation, the then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, used the image of the Singaporean house to assert Singapore’s independence from her large neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia. Lee KuanYew (1965) described Singapore as ‘my little own home' (emphasis added). He also conveyed his authority in relation to his neighbours when he said, ‘ I want to be able to say that the furniture in my house [is] the way I order i t ... And what is more: most important, the master bedroom is mine.’
The image of the PAP running the independent Singaporean home has endured and has been adaptively used in relation to, and by, opposition parties.
At the PAP Party Conference in November 1996, the then Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong, stated, ‘It is the PAP which has created Singapore as a sovereign state ... and bonded us [Singaporeans] with a strong sense of belonging. It is the
PAP that will give us Our Best Home, not [non-PAP politicians such as] Chee Soon Juan, Jeyaretnam or Chiam See Tong’ (emphasis added).47
Conversely, the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) has critiqued the extent of the PAP’s authority in the home that it perceives. The former SDP leader, Chee Soon Juan (1995), in the ‘Preface5 to his book, Singapore, My Home Too, argues that the PAP alienates him from his home because the ruling party ‘doesn’t want my mind to feel at homd (emphasis added). He continues,
Singapore is my home and a home is what one decides it should be - place, space and how things are arranged. It not a place where one lives in fear... The PAP does not have a monopoly of what is best for Singapore. Only
Singaporeans have, (emphasis added).
The government has increasingly referred to running the Singaporean home with Singaporeans. Goh ChokTong, in his high-profile 1996 National Day Rally speech, said:
I say to all Singaporeans: you have to feel passionately about Singapore ... We live, work and raise our children here. We will fight and, if we must, we will die to defend our way of life and our home.... Here we will have a bright future, where Singapore becomes our home of choice. Let us work together to make Singapore our best home.' (Emphasis added).48
The Government’s report on the future of Singapore in the millennium, Singapore 21: Together, We Make The Difference, (1999: 11) articulates five new ideals in the pursuit of ‘a vision of a home that we as Singaporeans will build together’
(emphasis added). These include encouraging an ‘active participation in civic life’
(ibid. 14). However, some academics (e.g. Kenneth Paul Andrew Sze-Sian Tan
47 The quotation appears in Warren Fernandez et al.’s aforementioned article in the Straits Times (19 November 1996).
48 (Government of Singapore 1999: 5)
2003) argue that participation in civic affairs is apolitical and not the same as civil society.
Nation B u ild in g
In 1959, when the island attained self rule and the PAP came to power, there was an emergent sense of nationhood. This sentiment manifested itself in the creation of the Singaporean flag and national anthem. Nevertheless, it coincided with, and was under the broader shadow of, Malayan nationalism.
Then, at full independence in 1965, after Singapore had joined, and was then ejected from, the Malay Federation (1963-1965), Lee Kuan Kew, famously cried rather than celebrated (Philip Holden 2001). Kwa Chong Guan (2002: 109) observes that, at this point, Lee had to ‘disprove several hundred years of history’
because Singapore had long been part of larger political entities through which it had ‘related to the world’. These included the British Empire for over a hundred years, and the Malay peninsular during Singapore’s pre-modern, colonial and independent eras.
The difficulties of making the island a nation are frequently noted (Lee Kuan Yew 2000). The challenges included: the island’s small land mass (it is about the size of the Isle of Wight); its paucity of natural resources; its diverse ethnic immigrant citizenry; and the lack of a lingua franca (the Prime Minister’s National Day Speech is delivered in English, Mandarin, and Malay). National survival depended on economic success and political stability. Some of the ideologies that the PAP government pursued to build the nation included elitism (see below), multi-racialism (see Chapter Four) and communitarianism (see Chapter Five).
Economic Development
Although Singapore has no natural resources, its economic success has been phenomenal. Unemployment was at about 14 per cent in 1965 (Lee Kuan Yew 2000: 22-23) but had been reduced to 2.7 percent by1984 (Chua Beng-Huat 1997a: 135). The economy was even resilient during the Asian Crisis of 1997 and, by 1999, Singapore's gross national product per capita gave it seventh ranking in the world (Gavin Peebles and Peter Wilson 2002: 9). Chua (1997a:
131) states, The overriding goal of economic growth is the single criterion for both initiating and assessing all state activities.’ He points out that so important was the practical need to ‘earn a living’ that some scholars describe the
pragmatism of the government as an ideology. Stephen McCarthy’s view (2006:
204) that Lee Kuan Yew and the PAP have ‘grounded their legitimacy in
Singapore's economic success’, resonates with much political commentary about the PAP’s sustained electoral achievements (see Cherian George 2000: 85).
Whilst the PAP’s successful economic stewardship of the country has received wide praise and is regularly articulated by government spokespeople, the extent of the PAP’s emphasis on material development has been criticized.
Chee Soon Juan, then leader of the Singapore Democratic Party claimed in 1994 (11), that the government justified ‘all its decisions in terms of economic
progress. It cannot be denied that the spirit of Singapore has been dampened by
an obsession with consumerism and materialism.’ The late President of
Singapore, Devan Nair, who ended his life in exile,49 stated in 1994 (xi) that the economic success of Singapore had become an end rather than a means.
Furthermore, he referred (ibid. xiii) to Lee Kuan Yew’s 'egregious penchant for referring to fellow-citizens as “digits’” and alleged (ibid. xvii) that GNP was ‘the only measuring rod Lee knows’.
Political Stability
The Communists were regarded as political extremists by the British, who declared Emergency Regulations to control them in 1948. When the PAP came to power in 1959, it released communist detainees. The PAP initially had two wings, one that was pro-communist and one that was moderate. By 1961, the moderates had taken control of the PAP. Lee Kuan Yew’s (1998 and 2000) concerns about the threat of Communist-incited unrest are documented in his memoirs.
The PAP’s strong controls, ostensibly to ensure political stability, are a matter of some controversy. Han Fook Kwang, Warren Fernandez, and Sumiko Tan, indicate the differing views on the former Prime Minister’s style. Whilst they declare (1998:127) that the ‘hallmarks’ of Lee's political leadership are firmness,
49 Devan Nair resigned in 1985, after what Mauzy and Milne (2002: 126) refer to as a ‘scandal’.
He lived in exile in Canada.
decisiveness, and farsightedness they also note that ‘some’ other people call his style ‘authoritarian, even autocratic’.
Commentators who have referred to Lee as authoritarian include Devan Nair (1994: xv) and the novelist Catherine Lim (Straits Times, 20 November 1994), who referred to Lee’s authoritarian influence. Mauzy and Milne (2002:
ch.10) identify authoritarian aspects of the PAPs rule. These include measures that allow for arrest without warrant and detention without trial, such as the Misuse of Drugs Act and the Internal Security Act (ISA). Whilst the ISA is
currently little used, the fact that it still exists means that it can be invoked at any time, as with the detention of twenty-two so-called ‘Marxist conspirators’ in 1987.
Mauzy and Milne (ibid. 134-5) also refer to the use of the law of defamation against political competitors, such as Singapore’s first opposition MP, J.B.
Jeyaretnam in 1988 and 1997. They quote (ibid. 135-6) Amnesty International’s belief that ‘civil defamation suits are being misused by the Executive to intimidate and deter those Singaporeans holding dissenting views’.50 In addition, they refer to the aforementioned controls on NGOs and the media. They note (ibid. 131) the Societies Act (1967, amended in 1988) ‘that requires most organizations of more than 10 people to be registered’. They observe that the state ‘has a near
monopoly of the media’. The government believes that the mass media should inform, educate and entertain and ‘does not allow media that assume an adversarial “watchdog” position’ (ibid. 137). They observe that the government
‘insists it does not control the editorial policy of newspapers, but that it will
50 Mauzy and Milne cite ‘J.B Jeyaretnam - the Use of Defamation Suits for Political Purposes’
Amnesty Internationa! News Release, October 15 1999 on http://www. amnesty, o rg/news/1997/33600497. htm.
censure them if they print editorials that are inappropriate and not in the national interest’ (ibid. 138).
Elitist Ideology
The government’s nation-building has also been associated with an elitist approach (Mauzy and Milne 2002: 52) since the early 1960s. Chua (1995a: 36) notes that the government’s communitarian ideology, expounded in Chapter Five, is ‘unavoidably elitist’ because it is predicated on a honourable government making decisions for the population. Lee Kuan Yew has referred to society as being a pyramid being managed by those in its apex. In 1971 (28 April), he famously predicted that, if the three hundred leading male figures on whose
‘shoulders’ the country depended, ‘were to crash in one Jumbo jet’ then the nation would ‘disintegrate’.51 Stating the number of such key people needed to be enlarged he said:
It is strange, but true, that the fate of millions often turns around the quality, strength and foresight of the key digits in a country. They decide whether a country gains cohesion and strength in orderly progress, or disintegrates and degenerates into chaos.
51 Lee Kuan Yew included in this group ‘key men in the PAP’ and ‘outstanding men in [the] civil service, the police, the armed forces, chairmen of statutory boards and their top administrators’
who had ‘risen to the top by their own merit, hard work and high performance’.