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about Asia Buzz
Asia Buzz: Lightening Up
Appearances aren't always what they seem
By
ERIC ELLIS
May
2, 2000
Web posted at 2:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 2:30 a.m. EDT
In the year since I've been based in Singapore, moving here from San Francisco, I've often been asked by friends and colleagues how I'm adjusting, moving from possibly the world's most famously liberal city to one of the world's most notoriously illiberal.
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"Gosh, it must be tough? Haven't you been kicked out yet?" they remark.
Though expressed as fun, at their core are good questions and issues
and ones which deserve thoughtful answers. I thought about it again
on Sunday night, as I wandered down Orchard Road with my wife, past
the notorious Orchard Towers, a building full of gaudy bars and desperate
men that Singaporeans know as the "Four Floors of Whores," and on
to the Lido cinema complex to see the acclaimed Anglo-Pakistani race
comedy East is East.
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Once at the Lido, it was difficult to get inside, and not because
it was a full house. Outside, scores of young gay Singaporean men
were jamming the footpath and aching to get into a hot new disco nearby
called The Sunday Club at Venom. They, and a good few transsexuals
and transvestites, totaling about 500 in all. A scan through the lineup
indicated that a 30-year-old would've been a rare thing, as would
a non-Singaporean. I spotted a guy I'd interviewed before, a young
Singaporean Malay transvestite who does a mean Madonna strip show
for $1,000 an hour at local elite dinner parties, some of which have
been attended by government ministers, as he confided. Shocking!
Onscreen before the show was a Singapore not in evidence out there
on the street; one where companies like Citibank highlight their local
banking products in the soft focus of perfect family life, where a
young Dad in a polo shirt was gamboling together with young wife and
child across an expansive lawn. A frisson of sarcastic laughter went
around the cinema at the corniness of it all.
It made me ponder again the question I'm often asked, and the answer
that I offer; that appearances aren't always what they seem. I say
that on days when I'm feeling charitable, or if I haven't read the
local newspapers that day. If I have, then my answer is "thank goodness
for the Internet." As a news junkie, I think I would probably have
gone crazy living in Singapore before the Internet arrived.
The thought of rising daily to a bland diet of the Straits Times and
Business Times is one too horrible to contemplate. These are the papers
whose editors claim are not influenced by officialdom. They are also
the papers that claimed Singapore had emerged a "winner" after missing
out on Hong Kong Cable and Wireless HKT to Richard Li's Internet-led
megabid. As the Li offer starts to falter in the sagging stock market,
and SingTel reenters the fray, I wonder what these towering journals
of record will say if SingTel eventually ends up with HKT; that Singapore
is now a loser?
The Internet allows me--and 4 million Singaporeans if they want and
know how--to get an alternative and more refreshing take about where
we live, the country, the region, the world, that takes me beyond
the nonsense often served up locally. The "official press" is one
thing but on the Net it's a different story. Indeed, by the standards
of regimes skilled in ultracontrol and social engineering, the Singaporean
government takes a flexible, even enlightened approach to the Net.
True, authorities fiddled around online a year ago, claiming to be
checking for viruses but the chorus of disapproval was so loud that
even the troglodyte Straits Times heard it.
Even the venerable Senior Minister, Asia's philosopher-king Lee Kuan
Yew, is being pragmatic about the Information Age. At the recent launch
of StarHub's new telecom operation, Lee made a speech that lauded
the Knowledge Economy, at one point even admitting that he had no
idea what half the terms he was reading out meant. But that didn't
mean he didn't endorse them. He wants Singapore to prosper beyond
his reign, and he has recognized that that means embracing and co-opting
the Internet, and even some of the "flies" it brings into the household.
Other regional governments would be wise to follow suit, lest they
be consigned to permanent penury in an information-based world economy.
I'm thinking of places like Laos--try logging on to Vientianetimes.com,
anything but an official newspaper--North Korea and Burma, where it's
illegal to own a modem without approval from the state and where authorities
ban public Internet usage.
As the scene on the streets outside the Lido suggests, Singapore is
lightening up, even if the government doesn't like to parade the fact
publicly in the press. And you know what? The Internet and its supposed
threats to autocracy have been with us for about 5 years and Singapore
is still here. Moreover, the current government is likely to be in
power after the next election, Internet or otherwise.
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