| Yawning
Bread. 9 June 2008
Pity that Youthquake 2 didn't make it to the Richter scale
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The turnout was disappointing. The audience comprised just 20 people, of whom maybe none were university students. The only ones I was sure were students were the three speakers.
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Yet here was an event organised by young people and, I suppose, intended for young people. There are possibly a hundred thousand university and polytechnic students in Singapore. Right now, it's school vacation, so it's not as if they had classes to attend, so why weren't they there? What is an education, unless a person takes an interest in, and to a degree, participates in affairs of the world? Book learning is dangerously narrow.
What accounts for this poor turnout? Was it the rain that dissuaded people from leaving home? Was the event poorly publicised? Are people afraid to be seen associating with an opposition party?
It can be all of this and I am still convinced that a big part of the explanation is just civic apathy. I said as much to Sylvia Lim, the chairperson of the party, when I chatted with her briefly. We discussed why Malaysian civil society is so much more vibrant than Singapore's, and I said to her: I worry that at the rate we are going, Singapore is almost guaranteed to go into a slow decline. A culture of complacency means nobody is watchful, and even when something is obviously going wrong, nobody takes ownership to do something about it. I fear the future of Singapore is one of gradual fading as other countries catch up and surpass us. She concurred. * * * * * Bottom-up democracy is a huge asset to have. It's as important to nations as your immune system is to your body and health when you have the misfortune of getting sick. * * * * *
What I want to do is to encourage Bernard Chen and others in the Youth wing to persevere. Hopefully with time, Youthquake will establish itself as a reputable and popular forum. Additionally, I hope the main Workers' Party will do likewise too, for reasons I will explain below. My impression is that the party is far less communicative than they need to be to make a difference. On many issues, we don't hear a squeak from them, or if we do, it is really late. Partly, I understand the need to arrive at an agreed position among executive committee members before a statement is made, and this always takes time. It is also a reflection of the internal discipline that Secretary-General Low Thia Khiang and Sylvia Lim believe is essential for a well-run party. The worst thing that can happen is when the passionate and reckless among its members say all sorts of wild things and the party has to expend time and goodwill repairing the damage. But relative silence too has drawbacks. People perceive the party as (1) aloof, (2) slow on the uptake of topical issues, or that (3) it simply has no opinion -– it doesn't know what to think. Each of these three perceptions can be fatal to the sense of leadership that political parties are expected to provide. Personally, I feel quite frustrated about this weakness of the Workers' Party and on a few occasions, I have tried to gently nudge them on this.
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The other weakness is the reluctance to enunciate an overarching philosophy of political direction. "What do you stand for?" is a critical question that any political party needs to answer. Low tends to take the position that since the party has only 2 seats in Parliament and is nowhere near to forming a government, at this stage they only need to play a watchdog role. Yet, this is not a satisfactory reply. Even a watchdog must operate with some sense of when to bark and when not to bark. For any given government policy pertaining to economics or social services, for example, do you criticise it for being too laissez-faire or too centrally-controlled? You need some kind of coherence in your response, otherwise it is quite fair for Lee Kuan Yew to dismiss the Workers' Party as doing no more than taking opportunistic potshots. The problem that any opposition party in Singapore faces -– and I sympathise -– is that they are already so marginalised by the unrelentingly oppressive system, they can't afford to alienate anybody. The temptation to appear to be all things to all people, in the hope of getting every available vote, is great. The more specific the party is about its policies, the more likely that someone somewhere will disagree and not support you. A balance has to be struck between being seen as too wishy-washy or merely opportunistic, and thus losing support for that reason, and being too specific, and losing support for the opposite reason. It's a difficult balance, and I am not going to pretend I know the answer. But one good way, in my view, of at least partly addressing all these problems, is to engage the public a lot more through organising forums. Choosing topics that are current helps the party appear relevant without having to issue precise position statements. Allowing party members to speak up from the floor in their personal capacity allows different views to be aired and shared with the public without committing the party to that specific position. Getting a sense of the audience's concerns enables the party to gauge voter preferences. And once in a while, a good policy idea may fall into your lap.
So Youthquake is a useful trial bed, but forums shouldn't only be something for young people. As the study conducted by the Institute of Policy Studies after the 2006 general election showed, there is not a lot of difference in support levels for opposition parties among different age groups. What this means is that it will be useful to engage with other age groups by having the main party organise forums too, e.g. on the same topic, transportation. That of course still leaves us with the
problem of where one is going to get an audience from, given the all too
familiar civic apathy and fear of being seen on the wrong side of the
political fence. In this essay, we have come full circle; it is frustrating. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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I think our universities and polytechnics may need to give points to
students who participate in civic affairs, to get young people out into
the world for a more rounded education. This was the thought that
crossed my mind as I sat at the back of the room during the 2nd Youthquake
organised by the Youth wing of the Workers' Party, last Saturday, 7 June
2008.
