The Media, Cultural Control and Government in Singapore by Terence Lee

Author:Terence Lee [Lee, Terence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, Southeast Asia, Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Media Studies, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781136978562
Google: Tx3JBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-05-06T01:15:53+00:00

By detailing the terms of engagement and governmentality, Lee was really pre-empting the effects that Catherine Lim (2004), in another Straits Times commentary piece written in response to Lee’s landmark speech, considers as the ‘noise’ and ‘nuisance’ of civil society and political criticism. In her 2004 piece, Lim argues that “the problem of political criticism and public debate is entirely manageable, [since it] is only a nuisance and therefore will never merit the attention of a national problem such as unemployment” and other economic challenges (Lim, C. 2004), referred to by Lee as “bread and butter issues” (Lee, H.L. 2004; as cited in the opening quote to this section). In demonstrating the effectiveness of the PAP government’s realpolitik, Lee cautioned that the (in)famous OB markers, designed to ensure that government authority is never undermined, would continue to apply because the less articulate majority “still do not play golf” (Lee, H.L. 2004). Not only would OB markers remain fully intact under his reign, Lee had sagaciously used the “not playing golf” metaphor to contend that these majority of ‘ordinary’ Singaporeans (as opposed to the elite and better-off in society) were more interested in material and economic issues than in political participation, social activism, or the cultivation of civic or civil society.

One could convincingly argue here, though, that the clarion calls for a more ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ society are mere political rhetoric that mobilizes the ‘feel good’ factor of civic and/or civil society (Kumar 1993: 37). After all, the so-called space(s) for feedback, consultation and civil society, or civic participation, remains circumscribed by rules and markers that have been laid down by a continuing administration that remains committed to authoritarian modes of cultural control. The contradiction here is rather glaring: if open and autonomous citizen participation in the policy process is the primary marker of a genuine and informed civil society, as Gillis (2005) frames, then a civil society cannot quite exist in an authoritarian-leaning set-up such as Singapore. Differently put, a civil society defined and managed circumstantially by the powers-that-be cannot be seen as independent, autonomous, or free. As Chua Beng-Huat puts it more cogently:

What we have [in Singapore] is substantively a politically absolutist single-party dominated government that is able to hold on to power by both relaxing the boundaries for civic participation as circumstances require, and by clearly delineating and policing areas of social life in which it entertains no compromises, including the realm of competitive politics.

(Chua 2005: 75–76)

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