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about Asia Buzz
Asia
Buzz: Comfort Zone
Singapore, take a good look in the mirror
By
ERIC ELLIS
June
23, 2000
Web posted at 10:30 a.m. Hong Kong time, 10:30 p.m. EDT
It's amazing what you find trawling around the Internet, as distinct
from trawling through a newspaper, particularly those of tightly wound
places like Singapore. Take a look at a recent report, titled State-led
Creative Destruction, compiled by the U.S. embassy in Singapore.
I wonder, if it wasn't for an eagle-eyed wire reporter, whether this
document would've seen the light of day in Singapore's media. In most
other media environments, Washington's take would have been front
page news.
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ASIAWEEK |
Intelligence
The story behind today's news from the editors of Asiaweek
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The site offers a fairly frank assessment of government policy in
the nanny state -- a critique that questions whether Lee Kuan Yew's
paternalistic administration of the past has adequately equipped Singapore
for the challenges of the future, for the so-called Knowledge Economy
where information is more powerful than ever.
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I wonder which nation's people wouldn't want to know what the world's
only superpower said about them officially. All politics is local,
so the saying goes, and often in Singapore the tiniest mention of
the country abroad gets prominent coverage, particularly if it portrays
the nanny state in a positive manner.
But not so this report. It struggled into the middle pages of the
quasi-official press, underplayed and, as often happens with controversial
(read critical or questioning of the government) stories, was bylined
by the wire agency, in this case Agence France Presse. By internationally
accepted standards of news judgment, this should have been a hot local
story, up there on the front page in a town where a modest adjustment
in public transport costs does make page one.
But are we to assume that the local media, which markets itself as
the region's premier news source, didn't pick up on the view from
its most important foreign embassy? The answer might well be in the
detail of the report itself, to wit: "The effectiveness of the government
has ironically reduced the propensity of the populace to anticipate
new challenges and effect survival strategies on its own."
The Americans continue: "Šin this respect, Singapore may be a 'victim'
of its own success in that decades of economic prosperity under a
paternalistic but committed and competent government has led to a
comfort zone developing around the people." Lee Kuan Yew couldn't
have put it better himself.
But the U.S. embassy in Singapore is not in the habit of putting out
press releases that might be embarrassing to their hosts. Authorities
here would doubtless say that the site is not playboy.com‹it's open
to anybody who wants to have a look around. But usembassysingapore.org.sg
is not Yahoo. It doesn't exactly roll-off-the-typing fingers.
How much to tell the people is an interesting dilemma for a control-obsessed
nation rhetorically trying to wean itself away from government involvement
in the economy, in order to ensure its economic survival. As the embassy
site explains: "The Singapore government is caught in a 'catch 22'
situation. Thus far, it has maintained a relatively conservative and
prudent stance towards privatization, indicating that it would divest
if 'the market conditions are favorable and the price is right.' It
emphasized that as 'government shareholdings (in government-linked
companies) are public assets, they should be divested only if doing
so would add value for Singaporeans.' However, as various senior political
leaders have pointed out, there are virtually no local private sector
entrepreneurs with sufficient resources, interest and expertise to
take over or make substantial investments in the major GLCs. And the
more these GLCs expand -- and 'crowd out' the private sector -- the
less likely the government can divest its growing assets in them."
And how much it tells its people how it plans to do that.
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