The Absence of Trust

An article from www.yawningbread.org that seriously reflects the current status of our society. Please just read and comment.

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The Absence of Trust

A number of dispiriting things have happened recently. We are burning away international goodwill because of mandatory capital punishment. Australian Nguyen Tuong Van is due to be executed on 2 December 2005 despite pleas from the Australian government, and mass demonstrations in Melbourne.

We lost a university because their academics were not convinced that there was true academic freedom in Singapore. Our government pooh-poohed those concerns, but then a few days ago a well-regarded local academic told he how he had just been penalised -– and heavily -- for speaking and "mixing with the wrong company". I won't name him yet, because the matter may still be in flux, but I heard it from him first-hand, so believe me, it's true.

We have the Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong dismissing the low ranking given to Singapore by Reporters Sans Frontieres in their Press Freedom Index. Goh, in his defence of press control in Singapore, suggested that a free press would necessarily be an irresponsible press, leading to racial and religious riots. In doing so, he insulted all thinking Singaporeans.

In so many areas, there are controls and controls in Singapore. The common denominator is the total absence of trust in our own citizens to do the right thing, freely.

The government doesn't trust journalists and editors to exercise due care, so press controls.

The government doesn't trust webmasters and bloggers to write responsibly, so they have enacted sweeping powers (the Broadcasting Act and the Internet Code of Practice) to licence and rein in political comment on the web.

They don't trust film-makers: the Film Act empowers officials to seize and destroy films, and cameras even.

They don't trust workers, so no independent unions are allowed. The National Trades Union Congress must have hegemony, and a cabinet minister heads it.

They don't trust politically aware citizens to focus on the "right" issues, so all parades and street marches are disallowed unless government-organised.

But of course we know they don't trust citizens, politically aware or not. Thus the array of elections laws and regulations that make it impossible for the Peoples' Action Party (PAP) to lose.

And not forgetting how they can't let citizens nominate themselves for the presidency either.

They didn't trust juries, so jury trials were abolished.

In fact, they don't even trust judges to use their discretion, so capital punishment is mandatory for certain offences regardless of circumstances.

They trust nobody to do the right thing independently.

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And then we had Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the APEC summit in Busan, Korea, telling the world's press,

"The overall tenor of society must be geared towards openness …The social milieu must encourage risk-taking and embrace diversity...In some cases, it may mean radical changes to the status quo. Such tensions will have to be managed carefully."

How is this statement about openness and risk-taking compatible with the paranoid controls we see in place? Our government won't even take the risk of trusting its own people, even after it has spent 40 years trying to give everybody a good education.

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If you carefully go through the text of our laws, you'd be astounded at how sweeping the executive's powers are. Furthermore, there is a tendency to use broad language in legislation. Here are two examples:

"The Licensing Officer may, in his discretion, suspend or cancel a licence, as the case may be, if he is satisfied that the licensee is not a fit and proper person to hold such licence."

-- Public Entertainments and Meetings Act, Section 14(2)

"The Registrar shall refuse to register a specified society if he is satisfied that... it would be contrary to the national interest for the specified society to be registered"

-- Societies Act, Section 4(2)(d)

In the above, who is a "fit and proper person"? What is the "national interest"?

Such vague phrases leave wide discretion to civil servants to act, even in an arbitrary fashion. In response, the government says they are honourable men, not about to abuse their powers. Trust us, they say, we need these sweeping powers just in case of an emergency, but otherwise, they will exercise a "light touch".

We are being called upon to trust the cabal, when they have not an ounce of trust in the private citizen.

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In the absence of trust, there are zillions of laws and regulations to ensure that things are the way the PAP wants them. Laws and regulations are, naturally, punitive in nature, and when a society is habituated to such an environment, the ability to function in a more open environment is compromised.

Quite different skills and assets, beyond obedience, are required in a freer space. One is knowledge and education, in order for each person to make judgments for himself. Another is self-awareness and consideration for others, so that he is able to regulate himself and sustain civil relationships.

In many ways, the rudeness and inconsiderateness we encounter every day, and the puerile outbursts we see in many online political forums, are a reflection of a society that has become too dependent on external control, and has lost individual, internal discipline.

Yet, in the long run, this is not tenable. Singapore has to compete with the rest of the world, and a rigid top-down structure is a losing proposition. Change is inevitable, and the more rigid the structure, the less able it is to respond to changing needs and times. Instead of flexing and shifting gradually, a rigid system tends to absorb the contrary forces, which far from disappearing, keep building up as latent tension in the system, until it can't absorb anymore. At that point, the thing snaps.

Squeeze plasticene and it yields. Squeeze a ceramic bowl, and at first it doesn't, but at some point, it just breaks irreparably.

This being Singapore, perhaps a better example would be from the realm of economics. Take fixed exchange rates and floating ones.

Prior to July 1997, Thailand had a fixed exchange rate, at Baht 25 to US$1. For a few years, lulled by the apparent stability of the exchange rate (now we know it was just an illusion that came out of policy rigidity), plenty of Thai businesses borrowed from abroad. Their loans were mostly denominated in US Dollars and were of relatively short term too. They borrowed for all kinds of industrial and property development projects that would only yield a return over the long term.

But many of these projects were grossly underutilised as businesses were over-investing. Furthermore, the terms of trade were steadily moving against Thailand with the opening of China.

Smart financial outfits saw the adverse trend and started to pull their funds out of Thailand. They started to sell their unwanted Thai Bahts for hard currencies, such as the US Dollar. Since the policy was to maintain a fixed exchange rate, the bank of Thailand (BOT), the country's central bank, had to redeem all these Bahts -– at 25 to a Dollar -- and pay out in foreign currencies.

As the outflow increased, it became a virtual stampede. And still the BOT had to live up to its obligation to buy the Baht. Eventually, the bank ran out of money and the government had to agree, on 2 July 1997, to let the exchange rate float.

The BOT spent a total of US$32 – 33 billion between January and August 1997, in an attempt to hold the fixed value of the Baht and later, to moderate its fall. The country's foreign reserves were emptied. The amount spent was about 18% of the entire country's entire GDP of US$185 billion for the preceding year, 1996. That is to say, 18% of each and every Thai resident's work and effort in 1996 was spent fruitlessly in defending national pride.

The Baht fell from 25 per US$ (the old fixed rate) to 58 per US$ in January 1998, its lowest point. It crashed to less than half its old value.

When the system could no longer hold and the Baht crashed, thousands of businesses were caught with foreign currency loans that, in local Baht terms, suddenly doubled in value, with repayment due soon. As a result, many businesses went bankrupt. Other firms, dependent on imported raw or semi-finished materials, could no longer afford to import them, and went belly-up too.

The Thai economy of 1998 shrank 10.5% from 1997, and millions lost their jobs.

Singapore through this period had a floating exchange rate. Our central bank didn't have to defend any particular rate for the Singapore Dollar. We had a flexible system that could adjust with the circumstances, and while our economy also suffered because we had trade and investment links with our neighbours, the pain we felt was nowhere near that of the Thais.

Most important of all, we didn't spend billions defending national pride.

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The amazing thing is how, for a country that is so adept at coping with change in economics, we are so blindly rigid in other areas, such as the social and the political.

It may be more difficult to quantify the price we pay for rigidity, but pay we do. Brands have value, and accountants call that line item "goodwill" in a company's accounts.

Do foreigners think less of us? Do our diplomats have less influence because others are less keen to be associated with us? Do we lose investments, especially in the soft industries that need freedom from censorship, e.g. film-making? For instance, are we dishing out higher subsidies to attract those film-makers who are willing to shoot their movies here, to make up for those who shun us?

Do our companies, such as Singtel and Singapore Airlines, have a harder time winning acquisitions or traffic rights abroad? Do they have to over-pay to get their way?

With the stink attached to our name, is there a loss in efficiency in every dollar we spend trying to recruit foreign talent? That is to say, if we spent $10 million on a campaign that managed to woo 50 professionals, might we have needed to spend only $5 million to woo the same number, if Singapore didn't have such bad press?

Do we lose our own talent? Consider this: there is a steady outflow of Singaporeans migrating to other countries. Has anyone quantified it? How much have we spent educating them, only to lose their brains and skills to another country?

The amount of goodwill we burn to salve the PAP's pride and paranoia, is enormous. And eventually, change will overtake it anyway -– it's an inevitability of history. But when that happens, will our political landscape look like Thailand's economy in 1998? Will our political institutions, and societal stability, collapse into ruins, because the PAP has bullheadedly tried to sustain a rigid policy for too long?

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