Terminología especializada

The Singaporean case challenges an unequivocal assessment of ESR implementation because the ruling party had since its inception proclaimed advancing people’s well-being among one of their founding objectives and has indeed, substantiated this assertion with practical steps to do so while deeply opposing the notion of “welfare rights”. As international interpretations of rights have highlighted the standing of specifically minority groups most commonly expressed in terms of ethnicity (Davidson, 1999, p. 74), Singapore’s extensive emphasis on

multi-racialism seems a prominent reason for appreciation. Yet, a closer look at the historical developments of institutionalising ESR in Singapore reveal just how much socio-economic well-being is tied with not only the PAP’s governance strategies and their legitimacy, but also their potential as tools for social control, which has through numerous measures of incentives and disincentives been used to align people’s beliefs, values and even aspirations to those desired by the ruling elites. It is therefore in the ‘footnotes’ of the principles that guide the PAP’s rule, where the importance for assessing ESR eventually rests.

The Singaporean regime and its polity was consumed under what the PAP deemed to be

‘volatile’ circumstances, initiating the thematic of “survival driven” direction that came to guide the emergence of social policies. The lack of economic resources, ethnic conflicts, underdevelopment and the communist political momentum in the neighbouring states prompted Singapore to prioritise economic development and political stability in the early years of its independence, viewing investments in ESR related domains as a necessary condition for achieving these goals. Along with these objectives, the PAP claimed their rule to be based on the principles of pragmatism, multi-racialism and good governance (resting predominantly on meritocracy), which became the main tenants justifying the development of public policy. The idea that people should not be discriminated was guided by the view towards promoting social cohesion for an essentially immigrant population in efforts to build a common national identity for the inhabitants of the newly independent city-state, the lack of which was one of the PAP’s leading concerns. Equality and non-discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or language was thus on the outset enshrined in the Singaporean constitution (Singapore Government, 1965). As the government needed active participation of all members of the society, including women, in order to achieve economic growth, women’s rights were likewise protected under law (UN General Assembly, 2011b) and access to social welfare was not explicitly gender-defined.¹⁶⁴

It came, however, to be defined by participation in the CPF, which was the principal institution for distributing economic growth, welfare and opportunities for the Singaporean population.

As a compulsory savings scheme, the CPF fringed primarily on employment, but education likewise increasingly defined people’s opportunities within the confinement of the scheme.

164 One of the reasons behind the equal treatment of women can be traced back to historically rooted concerns expressed also in Lee’s memoirs. Lee (1998, p. 325) described his conviction of pre-independence years that:

“one reason for the backwardness of China and the rest of Asia, except Japan, was that women had not been emancipated. They had to be put on a par with the men, given the same education and enabled to make their full contribution to society.”

While it was paramount as a governmental tool to advance social policy and commit people to following their vision, it also institutionalised the notion of “self-reliance” whereby people were expected to rely on their own efforts for meeting their socio-economic needs.

Simultaneously, it significantly reduced government’s welfare expenditure, as it rested and still rests on the shoulders of employees and employers themselves. Violations of individual rights and infringing in people’s private matters, which was often carried out through mechanisms attached to the CPF were likewise subsumed under the logic of survival. It promoted the idea that Singapore was facing unenviable circumstances and the survival of the whole nation depended on individuals undertaking sacrifices for its sake, institutionalising this notion through people’s participation in the CPF.

Increasingly, the PAP’s meritocratic principle justified the view that their leaders are most capable of advancing this common good and they assumed near monopoly over defining the contents of the collective interests that were to guide survival. Rights, opportunities and the principles of governance were all interpreted in relation to this “common good”. Even the principle of equality was subject to the framework of national survival and the collective interest, and used to paradoxically legitimise various restrictions on people’s rights. While discrimination on the basis of race, religion or ethnicity was perceived as a threat to the nation, discrimination based on other criteria was often acceptable under the pretext of ‘national interest’, as exhibited by the pro-family housing or health care policies, which prescribed ethnic quotas or aimed to limit family size, especially for the poorer segments of the society.

In time, with respect to their commitments to human well-being, the PAP had managed to achieve near universal housing, significantly extend people’s access to education and subsume the working-age population under the framework of CPF, allowing them to use these ESR-related domains for ‘disciplining’ the population and exerting significant levels of social control. The trade-off for non-compliance with the PAP’s notions of collective interest was often losing their access to socio-economic benefits, thereby institutionalising ESR in a way that their enjoyment fringed on acquiescence of the views of the ruling elites. The PAP defined what norms fall under the ‘national interest’ and those who did not subscribe to the same vision would legitimately fall out of the scope of their policies. Such institutionalised discrimination was deemed acceptable as it was supposedly guided by the PAP’s objective to promote well-being and equality on the basis of race and ethnicity, laying at the core of collective interest.

Through their focus on housing, education and work, until the 1980s the PAP had managed to transform everyday life in Singapore “from one that was constituted by struggles for necessities

to one constituted by the presence of choices and the ability to exercise them” (Chua, 1995, p.

95). By significantly improving people’s socio-economic well-being the PAP government had also ensured performance-based legitimacy, which helped return them to power through elections. Increased affluence, however, also came with increasing unwillingness of people to accept sacrificing their individual rights for the benefits of the collective and their discontent was exemplified by the 1984 elections, where the PAP lost significant amount of people’s support. Instead of using this critical juncture to reform their repressive policies, the government increased their ideologising efforts. Focus on people’s self-reliance was maintained and the institutionalised mechanisms for disciplining the public substantiated by the ideological tenants borrowed from Confucianism and communitarianism. A supposedly shared Singaporean identity infused with communal values was articulated as a White paper on Shared Values and although it did not amount to formal law, values enshrined within the

‘national ideology’ document were expected to guide policy and society. Socio-economic institutions in education, health and housing, served as mechanisms for instilling these desired values in the society, and people’s lack of alternative means to access these goods and services proved effective in ensuring compliance. The coercive face of social policy became unquestionably evident when the PAP directly threatened to stall housing developments for HDB estates that did not show support for their candidates in the 1997 election (Rodan, 2011;

Chua, 1997, 1995). The argument followed the logic that national interest was at stake; the PAP ruled in the name of the national interest and communities that voted for opposition candidates are therefore themselves threats to the national interest and do not deserve to enjoy the benefits from PAP’s policies, making it evident that the access to ESR can be invalidated without legal consequences for the government (Wong, 1991).

The survival rationale guiding public policy had proven extremely successful to ensure the PAP’s legitimacy in the years following independence, so reasons for its transformation to the crisis-rhetoric were not coincidental. PAP’s legitimacy was in the early decades largely based on performance as the ruling party rapidly improved people’s standards of living through the expanding on housing, work and education opportunities for nearly all Singaporeans.

Uncontested power and people’s widespread uncertainty about the future, which was widely shared among people at the time, allowed the PAP to institutionalise their apparatus of social welfare provision (exemplified by the CPF). As alternatives to accessing social welfare were hollowed out, not only the institution itself, but also the principles that accompanied it gradually became an inevitable part of people’s lives and daily interactions. In the words of

Adler, the PAP had managed to “create the underlying rules of the game, to define what constitutes acceptable play, and to get other players to commit themselves to those rules, because the rules are now part of the self-understanding of these players” (Adler, 1997, p. 261).

Socio-economic spheres of people’s lives have been a recurrent tool to alter their realities, and the PAP has never shied away from their intensions to “change mindsets and attitudes and, therefore, encourage people to gradually change behaviour” (Lee Hsien Loong 2015). Using legal measures to incentivise or discourage certain behaviours, the government systematically adapted people’s views, values and expectations through structural channels essentially as a tool for legitimising their power. Analysing this approach to social policy can be useful in understanding why even in the presence of some political opposition and increasingly tolerated criticism of the PAP’s policies, their rule is generally seen as accepted by the society.

At the same time, advancing the logic of a recurrent crisis was a rather organic transition from the survival rationale of the earlier decades in the perceptions of many. Regardless of how much people’s well-being had improved, the ruling elite continuously emphasised the threats of a changing society, either articulated as “individualism” (Lee, 2000), a “crutch mentality”

(Goh Chok Tong, 2001) or “welfarism” (Lee Hsien Loong, 2005), with an underlying aim to advance self-reliance with regard to socio-economic wellbeing – a mentality that justified the institutions responsible for ESR provision. Other than its value as a mentality, it provided advantages for the regime in pursuing their economic objectives – it significantly decreased welfare expenditure for the government, while conveniently removing the obligation for fulfilling ESR from the state, placing it instead on the individual. When in the 1980s it became clear that many find it increasingly difficult to cope with this responsibility on their own, the duty was transferred to the community through emphasising family values and communitarianism as an essential part of the “Singaporean identity”. The transferral of welfare obligations towards the community is present even today – although the state has acquired a larger role in providing social security for the marginalised groups, these policies are interpreted as the last resort, reserved only for situations where the community has failed to ensure the well-being of its members, and aimed towards gradually helping people to “achieve self-reliance”. When later, the PAP faced the need to gain people’s acceptance of their new, emerging policies, instead of treating them as a change in direction, they were instead added to the already existing narrative, which served to reinforce and stabilise their power, unsurprisingly – in the name of the common good. This way, the PAP’s authoritarian governance strategies were not rationalised as the root of the problem, but rather the

continuously emerging and omnipresent ‘threats’ to the well-being of the Singaporean society, the response to which was persistently presented as the need to reinforce what the PAP always claimed to be right – multi-culturalism, self-reliance and strengthening the ties among the community. The narrative or a continuous crisis thus allowed to combine seemingly contradictory policies and ideas while presenting them within a continuous narrative.

Rather than legitimising each ideological principle that was said to guide policies, people were instead persuaded that crisis looms behind every corner, entrusting the PAP to appease the threats. Perceived fragility of all development and an ‘ideology of survivalism’ (Ortmann, 2009) thus gave way for the PAP to institutionalise their paternalistic vision of ESR while resisting the rights’ rhetoric; emphasise self-reliance while stressing community ties; focus on the duties of the community while denouncing those of the government and by doing this, maintaining strict oversight over the socio-economic developments in ways which allowed to shape them so as to advance the PAP’s objectives. While the success of PAP’s ideologising work is unequivocal, especially among the younger generations of Singaporeans, Barr’s analysis of Lee Kuan Yew’s policies and personal convictions remark that the “government has ensured that communal identification, differences and mistrust have remained central to Singaporean’s identity” (Barr, 2000a, p. 233). Perpetuating survival, threats and fears among the society may thus comprise an equally significant part of explaining PAP’s legitimacy as the achieved improvements in various ESR-related performance dimensions.

The very same notions of recurring crises and pervasive threats have also helped the government to delineate the seemingly rights-enhancing principles that guide their policies along the borders perceived permissible by the ruling elites. While political participation has been gradually expanded and Singaporeans allowed more freedom of expression since the 1980s, participation was only confined to the limits of permissibility as guided by the ‘national interest’. Upon assuming his responsibilities, Singapore’s current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong warned that freedoms are limited to causing “dissent on issues such as race, religion and national security” (quoted in AFP (2004)). What exactly these broad categories entailed was not entirely clear and with the government having nearly unilateral access to defining these concepts, it has frequently served as a excuse to imprison political opposition and critics of the government.¹⁶⁵ Political accountability was, in turn, premised on the principle of good

165 Until today these principles are believed to be accepted by the society that the government uses this rationale as justification for political oppression. For example, in 2015 a Singaporean teenager published a youtube video criticizing Lee Kuan Yew on the internet and was imprisoned for 53 days, not because of attacking Singapore’s lack of civil liberties, but for spreading religious division among the society (FP, 7 Aug 2015).

government with Lee Kuan Yew claiming that human rights are made abundant if the PAP delivers “clean, corruption-free, capable, effective, meritocratic, fair government” (Lee, 2000, p. 542). The government thereby insists that they “go for the substance of the human rights rather than the form” (Lee Hsien Loong 2009 quoted in Rodan, 2011, p. 75), under the assumption that ensuring people access to education, housing and health is what enables people to lead fulfilling lives. Yet in their efforts to achieve national development, some

‘pragmatically’ chosen groups often remained outside the scope of the PAP’s proclaimed equality, continuously showing that they retain the right to interpret the scope of equality.

Women’s rights situation in Singapore exemplified this point – while they did undergo a

“cultural transformation” (Chua, 1995, p. 94) and their legal possibilities for marital affairs were expanded, in policy they were often reduced to tools for population planning (Davidson, 1999, p. 82) making their freedoms and agency dependant on whether or not it coincided with the desired state-level policies.¹⁶⁶

And while the laws governing Singapore admittedly ensure people the basic minimum requirements of ESR even without an explicit mention in the constitution (UN General Assembly, 2011a, para 63), the notions of self-reliance and communal responsibility has left increasingly many people without adequate access to ESR. This is mainly because access to well-being in Singapore is outsourced to the national machinery (Thio, 2010) and community organisations, while ‘welfare’ is presented as individual and communal responsibility, not entitlements that can be claimed from the state. Domestically, this approach has allowed the rights discourse to be “contained within a well-developed language of social responsibility”

(Chua, 1995, p. 98). So, although the government has been omnipresent in the delivery of social services from planning and financing to governing and observing their consecutive effects and it is hard to find another example of where the state has equally involved itself in the management of the social sector, they have vehemently resisted being labelled a ‘welfare state’.

State involvement is practically limited to certain programmes with ‘catchy’ titles, in principle promoting the same notions of self-, family- and community-reliance. Resisting both, the notion of rights and welfare, the PAP has engendered the view that, while successful delivery of human well-being is their achievement, any failures are due to administrative functions and should be taken up with the respective organisations.

166 Although Davidson (1999) also notes that sometimes income, rather than gender was the basis for

discrimination, as proven by the eugenics policies, which incentivised educating women to have more children, while providing poorer ones incentives to undergo sterilisation.

Not only social, but also legal institutions in Singapore are built on the idea that “domestic statute prevails over customary norm” (Thio, 2010) and human rights are inescapably intertwined within the contexts in which they take place – “history and culture is of paramount importance” (Singapore Government Press Release, 1998). The crisis rhetoric has provided Singaporean leaders a comprehensive argument for justifying their human rights situation also the international arena. Since ESR rights do not prescribe the implementation of certain policies, the government has focused on the notion that rights “provisions are not couched in absolute terms. They may be restricted by law in the interest of security or public order” (UN General Assembly, 2011b, para 22). Since the beginning of their rule, Singaporean leaders worked to promote the persistence of such threats, arguing that they undermine Singapore’s survival. According to the PAP,

“Singapore’s diverse society poses a challenge in balancing social harmony with the preservation of individual rights. As recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, individual rights must be subject to legal limits in order to protect the rights of others, as well as to maintain public order and general welfare.” (UN General Assembly, 2011b, para 110)

They went on to emphasise that “[p]reserving racial and religious harmony will remain the absolute priority” (Ibid., para 155) and this necessitated sticking to the core principles of meritocracy, secular government and multiracialism. Admittedly, under current circumstances in Singapore, not only riots surrounding ethnicity, but also their violent outcomes seem unlikely. With the country and its nationals having enjoyed over 60 years of experience as a nation-state, it can fairly be presumed that a certain Singaporean identity has been “imagined”, if only because of the pervasive efforts of the government to do so. One can assume that the overarching purpose of such proclamations lies with the authority these principles afford for the government to pursue desired state direction while maintaining the possibility to interpret any protest calling for rights of minority groups as potentially disruptive of the state’s social

They went on to emphasise that “[p]reserving racial and religious harmony will remain the absolute priority” (Ibid., para 155) and this necessitated sticking to the core principles of meritocracy, secular government and multiracialism. Admittedly, under current circumstances in Singapore, not only riots surrounding ethnicity, but also their violent outcomes seem unlikely. With the country and its nationals having enjoyed over 60 years of experience as a nation-state, it can fairly be presumed that a certain Singaporean identity has been “imagined”, if only because of the pervasive efforts of the government to do so. One can assume that the overarching purpose of such proclamations lies with the authority these principles afford for the government to pursue desired state direction while maintaining the possibility to interpret any protest calling for rights of minority groups as potentially disruptive of the state’s social