Celebrating 50 years of PAP rule – Rule by Replication

I find precious little difference between the PAP and the opposition camp in quite a few areas.  One significant similarity is in this.

There was quite a fuss made by ‘oppositional voices’ over the recent increase in NMPs (‘nominated members of parliament’ who, whilst being able to take the government to task on issues, do not have the right to vote) because it was perceived that dissent was being incorporated without it being given any influential voting power.  In this, the government is supposed to be saying, ‘we have given you the right to voice your disagreement, but that doesn’t mean we have to abide by your suggestions.’  In this, the podium is deemed to be enough reason to ignore what is being pronounced.

Now let’s look at the ‘opposition’ camp.  What kind of democratic flavor do we have there?  One significant call is for space to be accorded to different opinions.  But decisions and perspectives are still based on ‘majority rule’ as opposed to ‘reason rules’.  Democracy is taken to mean the granting of space for disagreement as opposed to a space wherein reason arbitrates between counterposing views.  The defence for the inconsideration of reason is by way of the ‘logic’, ‘since everyone has an opinion, nobody has a right to impose theirs, no matter how reasonable it might be’.  In other words, the sanctity of all opinions is held up and over that of reason.  Pluralism is thus turned on its head.

This is one of the main sources for the emergence and reinforcement of the tyranny of the majority - A phenomenon that is practiced in government, and the oppositional sphere.  Consequences of ‘reason by majority’ includes being subservient to both propositional and oppositional figures argued for by mere prominence; accessing traditional methods of activism; working with what you have as opposed to working on what you have; taking existing biases as convention unless it affects the interests of a majority or members of the majority; and thinking that the democratic endeavour is fulfilled by the mere granting of space for dissent as opposed to validating the significance of this space by being open to reason and changing one’s traditional or habituated stance and approach.  Hence, the granting of space for counterpositional views is deemed reason enough to ignore views. 

One recent and significant example of this I have encountered can be witnessed in my taking issue with singaporedaily.net's sexist and racist, ‘daily chiobu’ section.  I raised my brow, they defended it, I critiqued it on a reasonable basis, and they ignored it.  Is this not what the government is being criticised for?  And this is further illustrated in the comments section at sgdaily and my site.

And in the others’ reply in both instances, conspicuous by its absence, is what I’ve generally encountered in Singapore, be it in the propositional camp or oppositional one – one of the reasons why I decline direct involvement in the ‘opposition’ which generally requires one to know their place and abide by the pronouncements of prominent icons.  In both camps, we have lions mistaken for lions because their train of adherents are too busy being rabbits.  I suppose that the failure to consider reason is generally based on 'the majority not having a problem with it'.  Thus, the selfsame tyranny of the majority as witnessed in the NMPs vs. the Government saga.  I find it quite hilarious that so-called oppositional voices declaim exclusivity and apathy whilst embodying the self-absorption and sheep mentality that founds it in their own perspectives.

A most astute Chinese philosopher once said, ‘what the government is, the people will be’,(or something to that effect) in his call to the state to be ‘human-hearted’ in its rule of the people.  I’ve long suspected that the perspectives the government is led by, if not contended with, will over time produce a people that are none too different.  And when this begins to wash up on oppositional shores, it indicates that change, if it comes, will bring about the replication of the core within the ‘new’.  Is it any wonder that the imperial system of Russia and China was displaced by an equally totalitarian one in the aftermath of both the Russian and Chinese revolutions?  In my research conducted more than a decade ago on ‘racism within the colonial and Asian context’, I discovered that ‘independence’ was generally granted only when the western capitalist ethos had been replicated amongst the natives.  Thus, I’ve said every now and then, laughingly, to people who speak about colonialism as if it was a phenomenon of a historical past, ‘colonialism didn’t end, it just got franchised to the natives’.   In those scenarios, we find the true perspectival lineage of almost all oppositional movements in the world of today – the failure to assume that the devil they seek to counter will find an incubator within them as well.  This, I suppose, founds the basis upon which Marx’s statement, ‘the history of all hitherto existing societies, is the history of class struggles’, makes more sense than just historical materialism in itself.

Once one errs on the side of caution and assumes this to be true, one might then begin to recognise how top-down rule manifests and perpetuates itself in top-down replication – a realisation that I’ve never encountered amongst the natives.  The spirit of iniquity finds not refuge in the powers of any period in time.  It is not so short-sighted as wo/man.  Rather, it seeks its perpetuation by replicating and proscribing the imagination of the people within self-serving perspectives.  So, when revolutions or reformations do take place, it just couches itself within a well-prepared abode within the new powers of the morrow.  And if history is anything, it could be perceived as a process by which iniquity may continue its reign in the hearts and minds of the people whilst leading the people to believe that they have arrived or are at the gates of the modernity of democratic civilisation.  In this, is iniquity’s triumph.

Ed

It's ironic that SingaporeDaily.net placed this article under the 'singapore politics, they are a-changin'.  Seems like the point has been missed by an eon and a half.