The Permanent Secretary of MCYS gave an extremely debatable and questionable speech on principles of governance today, of which some points gave rise to remarkable contradictions within themselves and the general dialogue session as a whole.
Of course, what they deemed as a dialogue session was not really a dialogue session. Remarkably, it consisted of a one man show, the Permanent Secretary, “engaging” in dialogue with 400 students when the student body neither had representatives nor had a mike to voice their opinions in the process of the session. As such, it seemed rather pointless to have such a session when the student body neither had much time to voice their opinions nor the means of making their opinions heard through the process of the dialogue session.
One can also point out to the questionable qualifications that the Permanent Secretary had while giving this questionable speech. The Permanent Secretary’s “Principles of Government” talk, of which some part was based around foreign affairs, seemed rather biased and uncomprehendable. The Permanent Secretary whose specialty lay in the community, youth, development and sports, actually gave a lecture on foreign affairs! There were 2 consequences as a result of this. Firstly, one could point out to the fact that he made Singapore look like the “Centre of the Universe”, just like Mussolini did, and that whatever Singapore was doing, in relation to the Western Countries, was unswervingly right and morally correct on comparison with the Western countries. The Permanent Secretary tried to justify what was justifiably wrong. He pointed out the “Licensing Act”, and mentioned that although the Western Countries condemned this act where Singapore tried to regulate the information on the Internet, they eventually made a U turn, and somewhat approved of the act later. PM pointed out countries such as Israel and Germany, who introduced the act to regulate anti-seministic websites and pro Nazi information respectively.
The PM’s argument failed on 2 grounds. Firstly, PM quoted a phrase from The Economist on the Licensing Act, “.. not a matter of should but how”, suggesting that Singapore was right in introducing this act. He conveniently ignored the fact that this phrase could be intentionally modified by the Singapore government, or this phrase could have been referring to a different subject altogether, as Daryl puts it, it could well be “The overthrowing of Singapore’s government is not a matter of should but how”. Secondly, the context of this argument that the Licensing Act is necessary is completely different when comparing Israel and Germany, with Singapore. The very reason for Israel and Germany doing that is for purely historical reasons, while in Singapore, the sole intention is possibly to restrict Singaporeans from getting “ideas” from the web that might possibly spell the end of PAP’s 43 year reign.
The other consequence that I referred to in the second paragraph was that people started to question his expertise in Foreign Affairs. An MCYS Permanent Secretary giving a foreign affairs lecture is tentamount to the audience assuming that since the PM really isn’t a specialist in Foreign Affairs, hence the Permanent Secretary is merely a mouthpiece for the Singapore government in trying to brainwash 18 year old kids and trying to convince them that the Singapore government is right. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that the message eventually seemed to justify the Singapore government’s actions in Foreign affairs, rather than showing us “The Principles of Governance, What Makes Singapore tick”, as the above quote was the supposed topic of the day.
One more remarkable contradiction in PM’s speech, although countless, I would have to point out to the one that I saw as most damaging to the PM’s speech. PM pointed out that the need for censorship was necessary, since there are dangerous elements out there in the internet that may damage Singapore’s religious and racial harmony. Prior to that statement, PM said that Singapore’s racial policies were successful. Now the remarkable contradiction is seen here. If Singapore’s racial policies were really that successful, is there a need for the Singapore government to introduce censorship for the sole purpose of maintaining religious and racial policies? The PM seemed to be contradicting himself, saying that Singapore’s policies were successful, then admitting that the racial policies did not have much effect since censorship was required to promote racial harmony in addition to Singapore’s racial policies. Therefore the contradiction was not explicit but implied.
There are many other contradictions that one can bring up, but I won’t, but most definitely, the PM deserved we ACSians taking potshots at him during the Q&A. The most genius of all questions “Why, were the cameras able to show James Gomez putting the election papers into his bag during GE 2006 when they failed to prevent Mas Selamat from escaping from Whitely Road Detention Barracks on the 29th Feb 2008?”
A well deserved question.
