Insights on Singapore's Politics and Governance from Leading Thinkers

From the Institute of Policy Studies' Singapore Perspectives

Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9789811204869
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents insights on Singapore's politics and governance from leading thinkers, based on selected commentaries from Singapore Perspectives conference series co-published by Institute of Policy Studies and World Scientific. Contributed by the who's who of Singapore's government, business and academia circles, they provide diverse viewpoints over state–society relations, governing principles, electoral politics, foreign policy, among other important issues.

Will consensus or contest secure Singapore's future? Should pragmatism be retained as Singapore's governing philosophy? What if the nation-state is no longer the key organisational unit of the international community? What if Singapore has to choose between China and the United States? What if Singapore becomes a two- or multi-party system? This volume explores a range of possible answers to these questions and more.

Contents:

• Singapore's Emerging Informal Public Sphere (Cherian George)
• Forging New Paths with Audacity and Vision (Peter Ong)
• Trust and Let Go (Philip Jeyaretnam)
• Information, Insulation and the Public Interest (Cherian George)
• Model of Governance: Big Government or Big People (Peter Ho)
• Governance in Singapore: History and Legacy (Chan Heng Chee)
• Three Scenarios for Singapore's Political Future (Kishore Mahbubani)
• Governing in the Future — Together (Lawrence Wong)
• Sustaining Good Governance in an Era of Rapid and Disruptive Change (Donald Low)
• The Emergent in Governance in Singapore (Gillian Koh)
• The Role of Political Competition in Promoting Well-being (Sylvia Lim)
• Consensus Rather than Contest will Secure Singapore's Future (Kishore Mahbubani and Chua Beng Huat)
• Sovereignty for Small States (Bilahari Kausikan)
• Pragamatism Should Be Retained as Singapore's Governing Philosophy (Kishore Mahbubani, Tong Yee, Vikram Khanna and Eugene K B Tan)
• What if the Nation-State is No Longer the Key Organisational Unit of the International Community? (Wang Gungwu)
• What if Singapore Has to Choose Between China and the United States? (Joseph Liow)
• What if Singapore Becomes a Two- or Multi-Party System? (Ong Ye Kung)
• The Real Question Behind 'What if Singapore Becomes a Two- or Multi-Party System?' (Ho Kwon Ping)
• Strategic Planning for Singapore's Future (Heng Swee Keat)

Readership: Students, academics, policy makers, corporate sector officials and civil society activists, and general public interested in Singapore. Singapore Perspectives;Institute of Policy Studies;Singapore's Politics;Singapore's Governance0 Key Features:

• Coverage of important issues on Singapore's politics and governance from state–society relations to foreign policy
• Contributed by the who's who of Singapore's government, business and academia circles

CHAPTER 1

Singapore’s Emerging Informal Public Sphere

CHERIAN GEORGE

INTRODUCTION

One of the major media milestones that Singapore crossed in 2006 was the introduction of High Definition TV or HDTV. Offering extremely high resolution widescreen pictures coupled with the benefits of digital interactivity and more channels, HDTV was showed off at selected public places such as community clubs. The Media Development Authority and private-sector technology partners were banking on the likelihood that crystal clear images of glistening dew on the tip of a leaf in a nature documentary, or the instantly spottable golf ball sent zipping through the air by Tiger Woods, would convince Singaporeans to embrace HDTV and justify the investments in this new technology.

Ironically, however, the televisual trend that caught on in 2006 without any formal encouragement had a screen size of about one-fortieth of a HDTV set, and grainy pictures reminiscent of the work of an impressionist painter not wearing his glasses. This was of course YouTube, which became the flagship of the movement known as user-generated content — a movement supposedly so significant that Time magazine named You as its Person of the Year. Together with blogs and other communication technologies, YouTube is helping to turn “the journalism of the lecture” into “the journalism of the conversation” (Gillmor, 2004).

One key question is what impact this development has for the public sphere — the space where citizens discuss and deliberate matters of common interest and public concern, and hold the state accountable. It is tempting to frame the trend in competitive terms, as a battle between traditional mainstream media and alternative new media for supremacy in the public sphere. However, although there are some competitive aspects to this dynamic, it is useful to view it also as a complementary relationship, just as “Off-Off-Broadway” productions are part of the same ecology that also produces high-end Broadway hits, and garage tinkering is organically tied to high-end research laboratories. Social theorists suggest that the public sphere isn’t and shouldn’t be unitary or monolithic. We should instead think in terms of a formal public sphere that is complemented by multiple informal public spheres. The formal public sphere is where the broadest national issues are discussed, consensus is sought, and negotiation and social conciliation is practised. It’s where people figure out their common interests and work through their shared problems as a Public. This is the role that national newspapers and broadcast channels are well suited for.¹ Indeed, to the extent that nations are imagined communities (Anderson, 1991), the national media are principal “imagineers”, to borrow a job title from the Disney corporation.

However, the norms and protocols that are necessary for the proper functioning of the formal public sphere typically exclude and marginalise minority points of view, even in the freest of liberal societies. Therefore, the informal public sphere plays an important role in allowing broad participation; they are the spaces where people can share ideas more freely. “Here,” says Jürgen Habermas (1996), “new problem situations can be perceived more sensitively, discourses aimed at achieving self-understanding can be conducted more widely and expressively, collective identities and need interpretations can be articulated with fewer compulsions than is the case in procedurally regulated [formal] public spheres.” These are the roles that user-generated alternative media, with their low barriers to entry, are exceedingly well suited to.

An informal public sphere is not new either as an idea or as a social phenomenon. In Singapore, however, it may take some getting used to. People’s Action Party (PAP) ideology has emphasised consensus rather than the expression of dissonant viewpoints. This ideology has been institutionalised in the media system, with strict licensing laws ensuring that the mainstream media are under the duopoly control of large, trusted corporations. The proliferation of niche and alternative media has put pressure on mainstream media and on the government.

CHALLENGES FOR MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Singapore’s mainstream media are being challenged on a number of fronts — profits, readership and viewership, and influence. Blogs and other user-generated content are only part of that challenge, and indeed the mainstream media were in gradual decline long before blogging. The audience’s attention is dissipating across a wider diversity of media forms. At the same time, the advertisers that used to reward newspapers for their ability to congregate the masses now have alternative outlets, ranging from niche magazines to public transport vehicles.

This decline needs to be put in perspective: newspapers are still the most profitable media businesses, and still occupy the commanding heights of the news business; it is just that its degree of dominance is slipping.² Mainstream media’s superior resources should mean that they will continue to be able to offer more and better content than most of their competitors. However, as general interest media, the mainstream media cannot hope to serve all of the people all of the time. As Singapore society becomes increasingly complex and variegated, as sub-cultures proliferate, and as tastes become increasingly specialised, it is getting tougher for the national media to serve all of the people even some of the time.

Media companies around the world are responding by spinning off more niche publications and supplements. There are two problems with this approach. One is that not all readers are created equal in media companies’ eyes. If you have the disposable income to shop for cars, luxury watches, designer clothes and spa vacations, media companies will pander to you in order to deliver you to their advertisers. Readers of lesser means are less attractive to advertisers and are thus unlikely to see the creation of magazines, supplements or special sections on such themes as how to reduce household bills or maintain emotional health through methods other than shopping. In a country with a growing and already sizeable socio-economic divide, there is a risk of large segments being unserved by the media. There is another problem with going niche. While people want to nurture their own unique identities and pursue their own interests and lifestyles, society as a whole would be poorer if there were no common spaces left. If the national media appealed to all of the people none of the time, one would have to ask if there is anything Singaporean about Singapore any more. Therefore, the mainstream media need to balance individual desires for niche content with the social need for common spaces. This is easier said than done, but must remain a top priority.

Space for Alternative Views

Another challenge faced by mainstream media is their handicap in reflecting alternative views. This is the result of two distinct attributes. The most obvious is the burden of operating under a government licence. The regulatory regime requires mainstream media not to try to set the political agenda, which in practice means that editors are expected to filter out or at least not over-amplify views that contradict government positions on key principles or policies. Alternative media on the Internet are not subject to discretionary licensing and therefore enjoy much wider latitude in expressing contrary views (George, 2006).

In addition to political constraints in countries such as Singapore, the mainstream media around the world also operate with a technical disadvantage. Paradoxically, the professional operations and high production values associated with mainstream media seem to be creating a counter-demand for a more personal, supposedly authentic experience via cottage-industry media. This phenomenon is not unique to the news media industry: it seems to apply to most cultural and lifestyle products (Carroll and Hannan, 2000). Thus, there are beer connoisseurs who would shun Tiger and Heineken and opt for microbrews and homebrews, despite the latter’s inconsistent quality. Similarly, music lovers may scoff at assembly-line boy bands, no matter how slick, and seek out underground, garage bands. This tendency may also explain the aforementioned appeal of YouTube, despite the seemingly superior quality control exercised by the TV industry. The imperfect but personally crafted and authentic is being embraced as an antidote to the impersonal and industrial, no matter how professional the latter.

Can Singapore’s mainstream media overcome this twin handicap of licensing and industrial standards? The dichotomous regulatory regime — with stricter supervision of mainstream media and more latitude for niche and/or alternative media — is likely to be preserved. However, since think tanks are supposed to think the unthinkable, I would be shortchanging this IPS forum if I failed to at least raise the question of reviewing the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act. It is noteworthy that in Malaysia, which has a comparable newspaper permit system, the Malaysian Human Rights Commission has called for the following amendments: making permits permanent rather than requiring annual renewal; making the granting of permits automatic, subject to objections from security agencies; and requiring the government to publish reasons for permit rejection, which can then be challenged in court (Suhakam, 2003).

Liberalising licensing rules (and aggressively upholding competition laws) could have the positive effect of diversifying the regulated mainstream segment of Singapore’s media. Media entrepreneurs and professionals would have the freedom to explore new business models and editorial concepts. While these are unlikely to displace The Straits Times as the country’s number one daily, they could offer the public options that do not currently exist. In other sectors such as education and healthcare, industry restructuring over the past decade has allowed the emergence of more providers and allowed them greater autonomy, thus multiplying choice for Singaporeans. Regulators of local news media are relative laggards in this regard.

Realistically speaking, Singapore is unlikely to engage the question of licensing any time in the near future; it may be more practical to consider less out-of-the-box options. Even if the letter of the law is not revised, the government needs to adapt to a changing environment and calibrate its controls accordingly. In supervising the mainstream media, regulators and internal gatekeepers should avoid widening the gap between mainstream and alternative media. I hesitate to call it a credibility gap, because most people do believe that the mainstream media are by and large accurate and believable. For reasons I have touched on earlier, it should perhaps be called an authenticity gap — the mainstream media are seen as somehow failing to provide an authentic experience; to be presenting the news accurately, yes, but not for you and me — unlike, say, a favourite blog.

Mainstream media can try to respond by providing more space for user-generated content and a sampling of that other world, which is precisely what The Straits Times is trying to do through STOMP and what Today tried to do by enlisting the blogger, mr brown, as a columnist. The failure of that experiment and its backfiring on Today’s reputation showed how dicey this challenge is. Responding to one of mr brown’s Today columns, the government said that while mr brown was entitled to his views, “opinions which are widely circulated in a regular column in a serious newspaper should meet higher standards” (Bhavani, 2006). It added, “If a columnist presents himself as a non-political observer, while exploiting his access to the mass media to undermine the Government’s standing with the electorate, then he is no longer a constructive critic, but a partisan player in politics.”

Bridging the Divide

It is unclear whether Today’s immediate termination of mr brown’s column was instigated by the government. Undoubtedly, though, the authorities believed that the particular offending article should not have been published in that form. Mainstream media editors have thus been sternly reminded not to abdicate their responsibility, as gatekeepers of the formal public sphere, to filter the strident voices and other noise of the hoi polloi. For the mainstream media’s own good as well as for Singapore’s, however, we should avoid erecting a firewall between mainstream and alternative media. Ideas need to flow between the two. The national media should have the latitude to reflect the buzz of alternative spaces. But, after the government’s statements in 2006, can they? The sternness of their warning notwithstanding, the authorities may not be totally opposed to newspapers reporting or republishing online viewpoints as long as three criteria are met. First, of course, the statements quoted must not cross any boundaries of law or good taste. Second, avant-garde or minority views should not be misrepresented as reflecting mainstream or majority views. Third, the mainstream media should be mindful of the power they possess to bequeath symbolic status on the people and perspectives they give space to, and should therefore be judicious in whether and how they do so.

These may seem onerous rules, but they are not impossible to work with. Existing journalistic conventions allow newspapers to carry diverse content by applying a range of editing standards, which are signalled clearly to the reader. For example, regular readers know that the views that The Straits Times regards as most authoritative are to be found in its own editorial and in columns such as “Thinking Aloud”. At the other extreme are its user-generated content pages — and even among these there is a clear hierarchy, with the “Forum” page at the top and other sections for reader contributions — including online views — given lower status. Similarly, clear signalling tells the reader that the “YouthInk” is not to be treated as seriously as more grown-up columns. The issue is not so much that readers are likely to get confused, but that editors require deniability: for their own protection, in a tightly regulated environment, they need to be able to distance themselves from content that they carry for the sake of providing a comprehensive range of viewpoints. In hindsight, perhaps Today’s mistake was to give mr brown’s column the same look and feel of its more elevated columns, thus apparently giving the editors’ stamp of approval to the arguments therein. Today’s relatively small staff of full-time writers creates a greater reliance on user-generated content; these and even humour columns are not distinguished particularly clearly from more considered viewpoints. To borrow the words of Singapore’s eloquent former information minister George Yeo, Today’s design was and continues to be a case of boh tua boh suay.³

All in all, mainstream media editors can probably be trusted to preserve the distinction between formal and informal public spheres, and not to go overboard with user-generated content. After all, it would be self-defeating to do so, compromising their main competitive advantage in professionally produced content. However, there is a real risk that certain other professional standards will be compromised due to the competitive pressure posed by alternative media. Digital delivery and fewer layers of checks sometimes enable alternative media to be the first with the news. Professional journalists know that they are supposed to “get it first but first get it right”. Unfortunately, once the alternative media release a piece of news, there is pressure on mainstream media to publish it on the grounds that it is already “out there”. There is plenty of evidence worldwide to suggest that this risk is already materialising, short-circuiting the standard, rigorous checks that journalists know they are supposed to exercise (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 1999). Usually, newspapers will try to hide their less scrupulous judgments with a fig leaf, suggesting that although the gossip they are recirculating has not been verified, the fact that is creating a buzz is eminently newsworthy and reportable. Singapore’s national newspaper is not immune to such tendencies: the front page of The Sunday Times was recently splashed with sexy photos of a model that, according to online speculation, was the Mongolian woman who had been murdered in Malaysia. It turned out that she was a Korean model unconnected with the sordid affair.

In appealing to the mainstream media not to imitate the alternative media in some respects, I do not want to give the impression that the national newspapers and broadcasters are always the paragons of virtue and guardians of high standards, while the alternative media are irresponsible and anti-national. On the contrary, with mainstream media becoming increasingly commercial in its impulses, the informal public sphere is seen by many Singaporeans as the more hospitable space for contributing to public life. Indeed, one could say that there is at least as much nation-building going on in the alternative media as there is in the national mainstream media. Of course, if you define nation-building in old-fashioned top-down terms — equating it merely with treating the nation’s leaders with deference and amplifying their messages — then the mainstream media have the edge. However, if we adopt the contemporary understanding of nation-building as a bottom-up process of active citizenship, à la Singapore 21 and Remaking Singapore, then the action is increasingly in the alternative media. In a growing number of sectors — heritage and history, the arts, natural history and the environment, local music and culture, even the National Service experience — the most passionate and knowledgeable efforts to connect Singaporeans with their nation are taking place in the informal public sphere.

Increasingly, the national media are adopting commercial marketability rather than nation-building as their touchstone. They are getting away with it partly because they are careful to continue playing their traditional top-down nation-building role and thus appease their political masters. Besides, they are business entities, it’s their money, and it’s their prerogative to make investment decisions. On the other hand, Singapore’s media giants are prote...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Chapter 1: Singapore’s Emerging Informal Public Sphere
• Chapter 2: Forging New Paths with Audacity and Vision
• Chapter 3: Trust and Let Go
• Chapter 4: Information, Insulation and the Public Interest
• Chapter 5: Model Of Governance: Big Government or Big People
• Chapter 6: Governance in Singapore: History and Legacy
• Chapter 7: Three Scenarios for Singapore’s Political Future
• Chapter 8: Governing in the Future — Together
• Chapter 9: Sustaining Good Governance in an Era of Rapid and Disruptive Change
• Chapter 10: The Emergent in Governance in Singapore
• Chapter 11: The Role of Political Competition in Promoting Well-being
• Chapter 12: Consensus Rather than Contest will Secure Singapore’s Future
• Chapter 13: Sovereignty for Small States
• Chapter 14: Pragamatism Should Be Retained As Singapore’s Governing Philosophy
• Chapter 15: What if the Nation-State is No Longer the Key Organisational Unit of the International Community?
• Chapter 16: What if Singapore Has to Choose Between China and the United States?
• Chapter 17: What if Singapore Becomes a Two- or Multi-Party System?
• Chapter 18: The Real Question Behind “What if Singapore Becomes a Two- or Multi-Party System?”
• Chapter 19: Strategic Planning for Singapore’s Future