Entering 2015, in Singapore, the wealthy island in Southeast Asia, the deadline for the next general election is approaching. However, the ground may not be sweet to PAP, the ruling party which was troubled by some of its MPs’ clumsy performances lately one after another.
LKY, the founder of the party is also facing the challenge of rewriting history by former political prisoners. In early December 2014, at the party’s 60th anniversary rally, Lee Hsien Loong, the PM cum party secretary-general, emphasised that the next GE would be a deadly serious fight. It was deemed as declaring war, alerting his party comrades that if they do not take the oncoming GE seriously, they may meet their Waterloo in the election.
群鼠乱山岗， Rats roam around the mountain,
野史逼官肠， History pressured to be re-written,
灵骨无处安， No space to rest the urns,
天色渐昏茫。 And the sky is getting darken.
The above limerick may be an appropriate narrative of where the political and social winds are blowing in Singapore in recent times. Some political observers point out that LHL’s cry is no exaggeration. After a series of electoral defeats in 2011 and 2012, a few popular measures were introduced to benefit the people, however the response was rather cold. This is because those policies may look spectacular on the surface, however their benefits were limited. A good example is the medical policy, which is yet to be fully implemented, the locked CPF contribution has already been raised, ending up with more discontentment.
During this period of time, the government’s accusation of doubtful accounts of the town council run by the opposition has caused a lot of unhappiness among the people. Many netizens believe that the move is politically motivated. All of a sudden, there is a “Rat mountain” next to a MRT station in the west under the PAP run town council. There were hundreds of rats fighting for food with the stray dogs. Some residents pointed out that this occurrence had already been there long time ago. One netizen uploaded on line the film showing rats roaming around the mountain giving rise to the displeasure of many people, and all fingers were pointing at the government and the MP of that constituency. The next day the authorities immediately engaged dozens of pest control specialists to get rid of the rats, and the job lasted for a week. The government then diverted the focus from the key issue of poor maintenance of the area to blaming the feeding of stray dogs by the public resulted in a fertile environment for the rats.
The latest topic is still in development. BTO buyers of new HDB flats in a northeast constituency were ready to move in, but was shocked to find out that there would be a columbarium inside the proposed Chinese temple in their community, and they are not sure whether there would be funeral and cremation facilities in the future. They then protested on line. The PAP MP hurried to clarify, however there were still dubious points to be explained. This is because the party awarded of this piece of land is not a temple, but was a $1 private company set up just before the tender. The public opinion was taken by surprise, the new home buyers felt cheated and believe that there are more undisclosed matters behind the scene.
Similar trivial matters continue to crop up, all because of the well-developed social media which inhibit covering up and suppression of such information. Some political observers believe that it might be most advantageous for PAP to cut the Gordian knot with a snap election. Any delay may simply allow time for more undesirable matters to emerge. Many of its young MPs are not capable enough to handle the unexpected situations, and they also lack experience and popularity for damage control. It would only end up with more negative social impressions which would certainly pull down the PAP.
However, the most powerful ammunition for the oppositions is the history of how LKY took power.
Last year, the PAP reprinted a book which contained LKY’s speeches when he was in a war of power struggling in his early days of political life. Tremendous publicity had been thrown in for the event. The speeches were made in 1961 when he was engaged in power struggling with the Malayan Communist Party. The government’s intention was to prove the legitimacy of LKY’s win of political power, and his anti-communist movement was an act of justice. The government has also built a memorial for fight against communism in the heart of the city. To the political observers, these series of acts by the PAP government are in response to the growing trend of questioning the legitimacy of LKY’s seize of power.
LKY’s opponents and those dissidents he imprisoned for many years, have gather information out of the declassified documents from the British government to prove that LKY’s crack down on his party comrade, Mr. Lim Chin Siong, was not a communist at all as described by LKY through his propaganda machineries. Lim was in fact a more popular Chinese educated leader among the PAP members. His academic qualification was inferior to that of LKY, and his method of power struggling was also lost out to that of LKY, nevertheless he outshined LKY with his charisma and was much closer to the middle and lower classes of the population. The oppositions point out that LKY had took advantage of the British and the Malayan ruling party’s fears of communist rule in Singapore, and had through enormous propaganda producing a monstrous communist portrait of Lim Chin Siong ready to take over the rule of Malayan peninsular. With all these fabrications, he then made use of the British to imprison Lim Chin Siong.
To his opponents, that part of history associates with the moral standing of LKY became the top leader of PAP. They have also queried LKY’s involvement in betraying Singaporeans during the Japanese occupation. The numerous anti-communism activities organised by the government is obviously intended to get rid of all noises during the celebration of SG50, providing a historical legitimacy for LKY.
Although materials of the unofficial history are abundant, but till today the academics are unable to voice it out loudly. Would those materials be of any help to the oppositions in the upcoming general election? Nobody knows. This is because many of the young voters do not understand what happened then, so nobody knows whether they care for the justice of that time.
Source: 超越新闻网 beyondnewsnet – 欢庆独立五十年，星洲执政党忧变天