Cherian George's Controversial Article on Civil Disobedience Annoyed PAP
- From: "ICHIBAWA" <china@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 21 Oct 2005 16:57:59 -0700
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE vs CALIBRATED COERCION
This is a work in progress, part of my evolving thinking on my theory
of "calibrated coercion" as a key governance skill of the PAP.
The Opposition's attempts to inject civil disobedience into
Singapore's body politic represents an intriguing challenge to the
People's Action Party's ideological hold. It calls for deft
handling. While thwarting a protest is easy for a government as
powerful as Singapore's, the question is how much political capital
the authorities will have to spend in the process.
This is the real power of such campaigns. By deliberately but
non-violently flouting laws that they deem unjust, opponents put the
authorities in a fix. The state could choose to close one eye, but this
would diminish its authority and probably invite successive follow-up
breaches, until these are too large or too flagrant to be ignored. If
the state responds with force against a peaceful protest, the activists
can claim the moral victory. They may succeed in convincing the wider
public that the law in question - and the state's power in general
- is neither just nor moral, but ultimately backed by sheer force.
Thus, campaigns of civil disobedience test a state's moral
legitimacy, revealing whether its rule is based mainly on consent, or
on coercion.
Dr Chee Soon Juan has been dabbling with this strategy for some years,
at least since 1998, when he spoke in public without a permit, landing
him in prison. His new book, The Power of Courage, explicitly promotes
non-violent civil disobedience as an opposition strategy in Singapore.
The government has responded that the rule of law has to be respected.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said that willful law-breaking
"regardless of whether you think it is a silly law or not... does
violence to the rule of law", even if the actions are peaceful.
While the principle of zero tolerance for law-breaking is
straightforward, applying it will be a challenge. The tactic will test
a key element of PAP governance: its acumen in calibrating its use of
force against political challengers, such that opponents are
neutralised with minimum collateral damage.
This is not to deny the other - and much better-understood -
sources of the PAP's strength, namely its outstanding record in
delivering the goods, its internal discipline, and its ability to win
genuine ideological support from the majority of Singaporeans. But
every state, by definition, also comprises instruments of force. And
the intelligent use of force is no less a dimension of good governance
than, say, the removal of red tape or efficient tax collection.
The calibration of coercion may be one of the least appreciated of the
PAP's many skills. Indeed, stating it as I have here will probably
provoke some incredulity. After all, even some of the PAP's most
ardent supporters think it is guilty of occasional overkill. PAP
leaders themselves are not coy about their macho side. Mr Lee Kuan Yew
talks of knuckledusters and nation-building with equal aplomb. If the
PAP were to develop and merchandise a computer game it would be a cross
between SimCity and Streetfighter.
Image aside, however, the facts show a government increasingly aware of
the need to exercise self-restraint in its use of force. Yes, it has an
array of repressive tools within easy reach. But, compared with other
states that possess similar tools and are controlled by similarly
strong-willed leaders, Singapore's government has been relatively
judicious and sophisticated in its use of its iron fist.
The spectrum of coercive tools available to an authoritarian regime
today ranges from political murders and disappearances at one extreme,
torture and imprisonment without trial, to criminal prosecution, civil
action, the banning of organisations, sabotaging opponents' means of
earning a living, and character attacks through state-controlled media.
The most extreme of these tools have never been used in Singapore. And
it is noteworthy that detention without trial, under the Internal
Security Act, was used frequently in the 1960s and 1970s but has not
been meted out on non-violent political opponents in almost two
decades. As for criminal prosecutions, most of these have not involved
jail terms. Dr Chee went to prison because he would not pay a fine. The
state's weapon of choice - defamation suits under civil law -
similarly does not involve incarceration, though it can certainly be
devastating financially.
Some may argue that these distinctions are academic, as the PAP's
calibrated coercion is still coercive enough to neutralise the
opposition. On the one hand, that is precisely the point being argued
here: the PAP has developed into an art form the ability to suppress
challenges with a fraction of the brutality employed by the most
ruthless dictatorships, but with an effectiveness that more than
matches them. On the other hand, the difference between physical
torture and a lawsuit is hardly insignificant. To claim otherwise -
to say that Singapore is like the Soviet Union of the past, or like
present-day Zimbabwe - is to trivialise the suffering of dissidents
in some of the most inhumane regimes of the modern era.
Furthermore, different tools have different secondary effects, which is
why calibrated coercion is not only more ethical than unbridled
repression, but also the smarter option for any regime interested in
long-term consolidation rather than short-term plunder. States that
overplay their hand often find that the excessive violence backfires on
them. It unleashes a sense of moral outrage that opponents can harness
to mobilise a hitherto-inert public behind their cause.
In the Philippines, the sight of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr.,
gunned down in cold blood on the tarmac of Manila International Airport
in 1983, was the beginning of the end of the Ferdinand Marcos regime.
Indonesia, May 1998: the shooting of four student protestors is the
tipping point that turns the Reformasi campaign against President
Suharto into a fullblown revolution. Malaysia's Reformasi got a
fillip from the sensational images of Mr Anwar Ibrahim being snatched
away under the Internal Security Act, and then emerging from custody
with a black eye, courtesy of the police chief. Mr Lee Kuan Yew would
later comment that the Mahathir Government erred in using the ISA
instead of a straightforward criminal charge - a rare hint that the
calibration of coercion is a conscious policy, even if never
enunciated.
One of the few political theorists to have analysed the cost of a
state's violence to the state itself was Hannah Arendt. In her pithy
treatise On Violence, she rejected Mao Zedong's oft-quoted dictum by
arguing that while violence can flow from the barrel of a gun, power
cannot. Power corresponds to the human ability to act in concert; it
belongs to a group and exists only as long as the group coheres.
"Single men without others to support them never have enough power to
use violence successfully," she said. "Even the totalitarian ruler,
who chief instrument of rule is torture, needs a power basis - the
secret police and its net of informers. ... Where commands are no
longer obeyed, the means of violence are of no use. ... Everything
depends on the power behind the violence."
Power is sustained by legitimacy, and legitimacy is what is lost when
violence is misapplied. "To substitute violence for power can bring
victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the
vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power,"
she said. In totalitarian police states based on terror, the state
turns against supporters as well as against enemies, because it is
afraid of all power, including the power of friends; it begins "to
devour its own children, when yesterday's executioner becomes
today's victim". Therefore, even though violence, power and
authority often appear together, they are not the same. Indeed, she
says, "Power and violence are opposites; where one rules absolutely,
the other is absent. Violence appears when power is in jeopardy, but
left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance."
Arendt thus put her finger on the counter-intuitive truth that
run-of-the-mill dictators have failed to understand. As in so many
other areas, the PAP belongs in a different league. It may have wielded
mallets to smash assorted flies in the 1960s and 1970s, but since the
so-called "Marxist" arrests of the mid-80s, it has been relatively
self-restrained in the use of force.
This is why the Catherine Lim Affair was able to create such a stir in
the mid-90s, and is still talked about 10 years later, despite the fact
that Ms Lim was not arrested, exiled or "fixed". She was not
punished professionally; her books continued to be published and used
as literature texts in government schools. Three decades ago, these
less-calibrated means of coercion were more routine. A Singaporean from
that period, transported through time to the present day, would be
dumbfounded by the notion that the Catherine Lim Affair - which never
got nastier than a verbal lashing - could be iconic of PAP
intolerance towards dissent. He would have concluded, correctly, that
the PAP had changed.
Our time-traveler would be wrong, however, if assumed that the PAP had
undergone a fundamental philosophical conversion towards liberal
ideals. It has not. The change is at the level of methodology. By
systematically shifting political controls behind the scenes -
through legislation covering the trade unions, universities, the press,
religious groups and the legal profession - the PAP has pre-empted
ugly confrontations with institutions that could challenge its
authority.
The contemporary scene of calibrated coercion is a mixed blessing for
Singaporeans who want more freedom. There is certainly less cause for
fear today than in the bad old days when coercion was more blunt. On
the other hand, the PAP's self-restraint gives its opponents much
less ammunition. Controls are so seamlessly integrated into the system,
and coercion is so well calibrated that the average Singaporean can go
through much of life without bumping into the hard edges of PAP
authoritarianism. This is bad news for pro-democracy activists, who
consequently have a tough time reminding Singaporeans that they should
care about political liberalization.
That's where Dr Chee's strategy of civil disobedience comes in. It
is a rational response to the PAP's success at calibrated coercion.
It involves seeking out laws that may not enjoy great public support,
and deliberately flouting them to provoke a forceful response that. The
use of force will give victory to the PAP, but the price of victory, to
borrow Arendt's words, will be "paid by the victor in terms of his
own power". The strategy turns the state's monopoly of force
against itself.
Other states have fallen into the trap when those at the top
miscalculate, or when their functionaries - especially the police or
army - get trigger-happy when putting down peaceful protests. There
is little risk of the latter in Singapore, where uniformed services are
highly disciplined and under firm civilian direction. The former
scenario - political miscalculation - also seems unlikely.
However, it should be noted that a new and less experienced generation
of ministers and permanent secretaries is taking charge. For them,
there may be an urge to deal with challengers of any sort in the most
expeditious manner, and the temptation to get their way through actual
or threatened force may be irresistible. The alternative - the use of
reason and debate - may seem too slow, too weak, especially when the
more decisive tools are one's fingertips.
The situation, in short, is dynamic. The Chees of Singapore will
continue to push for radical change. The authorities will not give in;
they will say no. But they will have to think carefully about how they
say no.
.
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