the week: it's not a monument
Lee Hsien Loong oversees a groundbreaking ceremony for Founders' Memorial; the Government does a public consultation on the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill; some students protest the Bill
Construction of the Founders’ Memorial has begun, kicked off by a groundbreaking ceremony helmed by Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Singaporeans can now rest easy knowing that our founding fathers will forever be immortalized at the Gardens by the Bay. Seriously though, who asked for this? Do any Singaporeans actually want this? Did the founders even want this?
If we go by what we publicly knew of Lee Kuan Yew’s final wishes, there seems to be no doubt that he would not have wanted to be commemorated in a monument. This was acknowledged by his son then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Parliament after his passing in 2015:
“Mr Lee made it very clear throughout his life that he did not need and did not want any monument.”
And yet somehow after much deliberation, the Government had arrived at the perfect way to honour Lee Kuan Yew and his fellow founders: they were going to build a monument for them. You could see barely a month after his death the PAP were already pushing out the message that Mr Lee actually wanted this memorial, as seen in this Facebook post by Minister Ng Eng Hen,1 where he writes: “[Lee Kuan Yew] supported the idea of a memorial for our founding fathers that could teach future generations about the values and beliefs that built up a successful Singapore”. Of course, I did not know Mr Lee personally, so it could very well be the case that Mr Lee wanted a memorial like this all this time. But why then did SM Lee Hsien Loong say this in his groundbreaking ceremony speech: “I first suggested the idea of a Founders’ Memorial in 2015, a few weeks after Mr Lee Kuan Yew had passed away”? Was the idea of the memorial already known to and supported by Mr Lee Kuan Yew before his death, or was Minister Ng just making this up to legitimize the building of Founders’ Memorial? The whole thing just reminds me of Communist China, the USSR or the DPRK, where power hungry opportunists would claim to speak on behalf of the dead Mao, Lenin or Kim Jong Il to garner support for their own ideas.
As SM Lee explains in his speech: “Therefore, instead of honouring Mr Lee alone, I proposed that we consider a memorial dedicated to the team of people – our founding leaders – who fought together with him and brought us here, and to the ideals, values, hopes, and aspirations that they held dear.” It’s a loophole you see: as long as it is not a monument but a memorial and as long as it does not only commemorate Lee Kuan Yew but all the founders, then it’s all kosher (or, since we’re in Singapore, halal). I would rather they just built a giant statue of LKY like Christ the Redeemer towering over the city, or carved his face into the side of Mt Faber - the first face of our very own Mt Rushmore, or taxidermized his body so the public can visit and mourn him like Vladimir Lenin. That at least would have been less insulting to the intelligence of the Singaporean people. Maybe I’m a cynic, but this memorial feels like yet another attempt by the PAP to constantly remind the people of LKY (and friends), that always and forever must we be grateful to him (and by extension the PAP). Or maybe it’s just a really nice way of commemorating our founding fathers.
According to SM Lee, Founders’ Memorial will “tell the story of how they overcame the odds to build a strong, united, and independent Singapore; how they led the people of Singapore through successive battles first against colonialism, then communism, and finally communalism”. That sounds great, and I agree that we should have something that informs younger Singaporeans of their shared history. If only we had something like that. The exhibit in the National Museum of Singapore already does a good job of telling Singapore’s history and the contributions of the founders. It might be a little old and outdated, but that could be fixed by just updating the exhibition. Do we really need a memorial just for this?
The Memorial and NS Square (which I’ve written about here) will cost Singaporean tax payers about S$800m. One has to wonder if the PAP Government did not spend so much money on vanity projects like these, Terminal 5, or the National Stadium, would they have to raise the Goods and Services Tax (GST)? After all it was then PM Lee Hsien Loong who said in a rally in 2015:
“What will make you need to raise GST? Profligate spending and irresponsible, unsustainable plans. That is what will hurt and require you to raise taxes and GST.”
Like I said before, I think there is room for a political party in Singapore who would campaigns on cutting wasteful spending and keeping taxes lower. If they must build these vanity projects, I would rather the Government tendered these out to private developers who would have to construct and operate these venues for profit ensuring the tax payer does not have to pay for these. You might say, didn’t they sort of try that with the Sports Hub and didn’t that end in complete failure? Yes, which might point to the fact that we didn’t need the Sports Hub, or that the Sports Hub was way too extravagant of a project for a country of our size. Are the facilities actually properly utilized? Probably not. I would rather the Government stuck to public infrastructure spending without any of these vanity projects. After all, a monument by any other name costs just as much.
Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) held a public consultation for the proposed Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill, seeking feedback from Singaporeans. I’m glad the Government is taking into consideration the views of Singaporeans on this issue, though the extent to which I do not know. I have already made my views on race clear here, essentially I’m of the opinion we should reduce the laws regarding race not increase them.
The Bill contains some of what you might expect: it will port over race related offences from the Penal Code. It is noted by the MHA that “the element of threat to public peace or public order” is not necessary for the offences to be made out, so under s298 using a racial slur and hurting someone’s feelings (this document uses the term “racial feelings” though I have no idea what that might be. Do people of different races have different feelings? Or is there some special category of feelings relating to race I’m just unaware about?) is enough to trigger a prison term of up to 3 years. All words have power of course, but I’m not sure that merely hurting someone’s feelings (or “racial feelings”) should be a crime. As also noted by the MHA, incitement of violence is already a crime, but I could see there being merit to enhancing penalties for race based crimes.
Now the slightly more dubious part of this is the introduction of reparative measures to mend community ties. I’m not sure what the Government has in mind for “reparative measures”, but if the act is going to be performative like issuing an apology to the community or some kind of racial and religious sensitivity training I’m not sure it would help at all. I’m not sure it’s possible to compel racists to actually change their mind short of a full re-education ala American History X where you force them to actually physically integrate with other racial communities (though without the threat of sexual violence). It’s an interesting idea, though depending on the details of the Bill I’m not sure it’s actually practicable, though maybe Parliament can come up with an interesting solution (that’s what they’re paid for, after all).
And now the most dubious part: the introduction of Restraining Orders against content prejudicial to racial harmony. Under this new proposal, the Minister for Home Affairs can issue restraining orders against the “production or distribution of content that prejudices the maintenance of racial harmony in Singapore”. This includes the communication or production of the material; addressing an audience on the subject; printing, editing, or contributing to a publication; or holding office in the editorial board of a publication. It is worth noting that there already exists a similar provision in the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MRHA), but the new Bill seeks to expand it to include racial matters as well.
Once again, the PAP seeks to expand the powers of the executive, giving ministers more power to decide what content is savoury and desirable for the Singaporean public to peruse. This comes as the latest in a long line of legislation including MRHA, POFMA, FICA, and even the latest new rules from the Elections Department on election advertising. The “safeguard” (if you can call it that) is a Presidential Council which consists of individuals who have distinguished themselves through public or community service (which makes them experts on racial matters? I’m not quite following this line of logic), which together with the cabinet would make representations on why or why not there should be a restraining order to the President, who then would have the final say. The President would also have the discretion to veto appointment of Council members. As an upside (if giving outsized powers to the executive was not enough for you), we also get to once again amend the Constitution to grant the President these extra powers, a document which according to current PM Wong should be sparingly amended.
Using the President once again as the “second key” as a check against executive power could be a nice idea if the unique circumstance of Singapore’s political landscape did not always result in the President being an ex-member of the ruling party. Maybe in the future when Singapore’s political landscape becomes more diversified it would be an easier pill to swallow, but for now I’m not sure the average Singaporean believes it offers any kind of effective check against executive power at all. There is also the question of why can’t any kind of restraining order go through the court system? Is Minister Shanmugam going to play the same card he did for POFMA where he said the courts would be too slow and by the time a POFMA order could be issued by the courts the disinformation would be everywhere (never mind that the same logic could be applied to a wrongfully issued POFMA order, by the time a correction to the POFMA order is issued by the courts the news cycle would have moved on and the source of information thoroughly discredited. Of course to the PAP it would be inconceivable that a Minister could ever be wrong)? Is there some pressing need for a restraining order to be applied? Would everyone be racist by the time the courts manage to issue the restraining order? If there were any pressing need on threat of violence, there already are other provisions which can handle it, namely incitement of violence under the Penal Code and s74 which covers incitement specific to race related offences. Is there a need for issuing incredibly urgent restraining orders? I’m not sure there is, and if there is I would hope PAP would make a convincing case for it in Parliament. I think any expansion of executive powers need to be checked by the legislature and the judiciary - already as it is the executive have an outsized influence in the Singapore political system.
And so continues the ongoing infantilization of the Singapore public. We the hoi polloi cannot decide for ourselves what is racially offensive, and our fragile minds and eyes need to be shielded from such horrors, lest we succumb to them and become infected with that vicious racism. The Singapore public cannot be entrusted with any kind of material: not disinformation or fake news, we need POFMA for that; not election advertising, the ELD has made new rules for that; and certainly not racist materials, if anyone were to see those they too would become racist. It is for our betters the Ministers and the PAP to protect us against the evils and ills of that ilk, for only their minds are so fortified that they can risk weeding through the filth, while leaving the Singaporean discourse pristine and clean. This all reminds me of Cut, a short film by Royston Tan which remains sadly relevant today.
The students protest against the… Bill?
A group of students from various institutions have marched to the MHA offices seemingly in protest of the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill. In a press release, the students set out their specific objections to the Bill, many of which I have covered above. But then the release takes a strange turn, and it turns out that the entire reason they were opposing the Bill was so they could continue protesting about the Israel-Palestine conflict? Two things can be true at once:
I support the right to protest, and I think Singaporeans should have more rights to peaceful protests and demonstrations. This would largely include the review and abolition of the Public Order Act;
I think the cause these students are protesting for is stupid.
I have already made my position on the Israel-Palestine conflict clear, but let me reiterate a few things:
All war is bad. Any loss of innocent civilian life is a tragedy;
Sometimes war is necessary. I won’t belabour the points I’ve made in my previous post but I think there is a clear moral difference between Israel and Hamas, and while the Palestinian people are paying the ultimate price in this conflict, and they have my deepest sympathies, Hamas needs to be eradicated not just for Israel’s sake but for the Palestinian people as well.
What is it about this conflict for some people that every single issue somehow goes back to this one? The protestors are almost always disproportionately young and college educated, and I think our institutions are somewhat to blame for this. I’ve talked about before how the youth of today are indoctrinated in our institutions by Marxist ideology. It’s what leads to this pseudo-intellectual moral relativist stance I find commonplace in society today, where people unable to take a moral stand: people are always keen to draw moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel, that both sides are equally bad. One is a democracy which defends rights and freedoms enjoyed in the developed world, the other is a terrorist group who would rather use the lives and suffering of their people as a platform to promote their ideology. These are not the same thing. But I suppose this fence-sitting behaviour is only par for the course when our own Government routinely exhibits similar behaviour.
The protestors go on to post this critique of this article by The Straits Times. You know it is bad when I’m defending The Straits Times, so let me go through some of the more egregious comments. Some of the comments are so banal I’m not sure it’s worth going through. Already in the first image there is the accusation that The Straits Times submitted the article late. The article was published one day after the protest happened. I don’t think this news was particularly important or urgent that it needed to be published on the day of it happening, and waiting for statements from the people involved is considered responsible journalism. There’s both lack of an understanding of what constitutes proper journalism (this is a recurring theme amongst the protest movement in Singapore, I think checking sources and verifying the truth should be a celebrated standard), and an inflated sense of self-importance. This was hardly the breaking news that the commenter seemed to think it is, publishing it the next day is honestly completely fine.
On the fifth image it becomes absolutely clear that this group is unable to view this issue in an objective way. The suggested correction of the term “Israel-Hamas war” in the article to “Israeli-perpetrated genocide in Gaza” is insane. And on the ninth image the comments2 completely loses any grasp on reality. I’m not quite sure where to begin with this one. What do you want the police to do? They have no jurisdiction in Israel. Do you want them to start rounding up Jewish people in Singapore? I’m not sure what outcome these protestors will be happy with any more, and the stated goals of the protest are not very clear. The Singapore Government has already voted for a ceasefire in the United Nations, and have coordinated and delivered aid to the Palestinians. Minister Vivian Balakrishnan even flew down personally to Israel to berate their Prime Minister. What more do you want the Government to do? I’m not even sure that majority of Singaporeans are against Israel at this point, despite the post being so confident that it is the “will of the people”.
What is it about this one issue that makes the Singaporean youth so fired up? There are so many other issues in the world, but somehow this one issue which has more moral clarity than most of the other issues ends up being the one they can’t let go of. Where are the protestors against Saudi money in our institutions and Government? The Saudis have been involved in a civil war in Sudan for longer than the invasion of Gaza, and have killed just as many innocent civilians. Will the protestors take up this issue with the Singapore Government? Or do they not care when it is Muslim on Muslim violence? Similarly will they denounce China and Chinese money in Singapore for the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang? Or is Chinese on Muslim violence not worthy of their ire? Will they stop using their smart phones (on which they no doubt took and posted pictures of their protests and crafted their messages) which are made from metals which are mined from modern slavery? Why is it that this one issue is taking up so much of their bandwidth? Is it just the case that it is easier to pressure a democratic ally of Singapore into some kind of compliance? That this is nothing more than signaling that you are doing the “right” thing?
I think there needs to be an examination in Singapore and Singapore’s institutions of educations why the youth of today are so laser focused on this one issue and this one issue only. Part of it is that it is the trendy cause of the day, but I think it goes deeper than that. But if you want a racially harmonious society, examining this issue is more important than pushing through any amount of bills.
There is a great irony in referencing Ozymandias in his post. I get that Minister Ng was trying to say the PAP was not building a monument, and therefore it was nothing like Ozymandias at all. This giant S$235m building is a memorial, not a monument, it’s in the name - Founders’ Memorial. But it kind of is a monument though.
The full quote is “Will the police also take firm action against foreign interests like the genocidal state of Israel, which has violated international law by killing tens and thousands of Palestinians, yet is still permitted to continue partnerships with publicly-funded universities and maintain diplomatic relations with our government AGAINST the will of the people?”