Victor Mallet - The Trouble With Tigers - The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia

You’ll be left behind. Then in twenty, thirty years’ time, the whole of Singapore will be bustling away and your estate, through your own choice, will be left behind. They’ll become slums. That’s my message.

– Singapore prime minister Goh Chok Tong, warning voters before the January 1997 election that their housing estates would be denied government renovation funds if they elected opposition members of parliament. The ruling People’s Action Party won 81 of the 83 seats available. 1

Golkar [the Indonesian ruling party] officials calculated as far back as last year that they would win precisely 70.02 per cent of the vote on polling day.

– Financial Times, 24 May 1997. Golkar went on to win 74 per cent of the vote. 2

In Singapore you have a one-party system. You have several parties, but it’s all artificial.

– Somsanouk Mixay, editor of the Vientiane Times , a state-controlled newspaper in communist Laos, discussing south-east Asian politics. 3

The fact that the political parties are not functioning does not mean that people are not politicking. People do not stop breathing just because you shut the windows.

– Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Indonesian political analyst. 4

Elections in Singapore and Indonesia are very different affairs, but for decades they had the same outcome: the government won.

The 1997 election across Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago was both colourful and violent. President Suharto’s children joined the election campaign, officially labelled a ‘festival of democracy’ complete with parades and musical entertainment, on the side of the ruling Golkar party. His son Bambang Trihatmodjo, a wealthy businessman, appeared on stage with a popular singer who belted out catchy numbers such as ‘Golkar, my sweetheart’. Throughout the country, the rival parties dressed up lampposts, vehicles and supporters in their party colours; in the remote eastern territory of Irian Jaya, tribesmen were persuaded to swap their traditional brown penis sheaths for new ones in bright, Golkar yellow.

Political competition, however, was a sham. There were three parties decreed by the government. Golkar was the one that was destined to win, as it had done for the previous quarter of a century. The United Development Party, known as the PPP from its Indonesian initials, was supposed to represent Islamic opposition and used the colour green. And the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) – red – brought together opponents of the left. These last two had the task of creating a semblance of democracy by disagreeing with the government without causing it serious embarrassment: they were in effect licensed opposition parties. In the 1997 election, though, it all went wrong. Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of the charismatic late President Sukarno, became leader of the PDI and seemed likely to win too many votes from Golkar. Even worse, the government feared she would break an unwritten understanding about the sanctity of President Suharto and stand against him in the forthcoming presidential election. In a move which provoked riots in the Indonesian capital Jakarta and elsewhere, she was removed by the government – which blatantly interfered in the running of the PDI – and replaced with a more compliant leader. Many of her supporters deliberately spoiled their ballot papers or stayed away from the polls in the subsequent general election and the PDI vote collapsed to a humiliating 3 per cent of the total from the previous 15 per cent. The PPP’s Moslem supporters were not happy either, although their party increased its share of the vote to 23 per cent. They accused the government and Golkar of cheating. During political protests in Borneo rioters set fire to a shopping mall, killing 130 people who happened to be trapped inside, and destroyed dozens of other buildings. To add to the government’s chagrin, some PPP voters carried banners in support of Megawati; she had nothing to do with the Islamic party but had come to be seen as a generalized symbol of opposition to the government. The conclusion was obvious: Indonesia’s carefully structured but patronizing electoral system was no longer an adequate channel for the political aspirations of an increasingly sophisticated population. It was in fact falling apart, as subsequent events demonstrated. Instead of a picture of democracy that included a confident Golkar and tame minor parties, there was a beleaguered ruling party facing a strident Islamic opposition; and outside the official framework were a growing number of extra-parliamentary pressure groups which rejected the whole notion of state-sponsored pseudo-democracy. In 1998, as Indonesians felt the pain of the south-east Asian financial crisis and protested in the streets against the corruption of their leaders, Suharto himself was ignominiously forced to resign as president, leaving his hand-picked successor B. J. Habibie, his relatives and political allies to an uncertain future.

Elections are much more peaceful in the prosperous city state of Singapore. In the campaigning before the poll in January 1997, there were some noisy opposition rallies at which Singaporeans cheered every attack on the humourless and ruthlessly efficient People’s Action Party which has run the country since independence. But the overall winner of the election was never in doubt, because the opposition parties left enough seats uncontested to ensure a parliamentary majority for the PAP. In doing so, they hoped to encourage cautious Singaporeans to vote for the opposition as a protest against the PAP while remaining secure in the knowledge that the PAP would continue to run the country.

Worried by the prospect of a reduced majority, Goh Chok Tong, the prime minister, and other PAP leaders pulled out all the stops in an attempt to crush their opponents. Goh famously threatened to deprive areas which voted against the PAP of state-financed housing upgrades; most Singaporeans buy apartments in government-built housing estates and can therefore benefit financially from such renovation schemes as well as enjoying the improved amenities. 5

Nor was that all. Goh, Lee Kuan Yew and others deluged their opponents with lawsuits before and after the election, a practice they had employed before but rarely with such ferocity. In the most prominent case, the popular lawyer Tang Liang Hong, who had joined forces with J. B. Jeyaretnam of the Workers Party in a hotly contested, five-seat constituency, was sued by a dozen leaders of the PAP – including Goh and Lee – for calling them liars. In the statement that prompted this flurry of legal activity, Tang was responding to their accusations that he was a ‘Chinese chauvinist’ who opposed English-speakers and Christians. He pointed out that he spoke Malay, had a Christian daughter and was standing for election with an Indian Christian. This declaration of the facts was not enough to save him: Tang fled the country shortly after the election, saying the PAP was trying to bankrupt him, and was eventually ordered by a Singapore court to pay the equivalent of S$8.08 million (the equivalent of more than US$5 million) in damages to PAP leaders, although the amount was reduced to S$4.53 million (US$3 million) on appeal. Jeyaretnam was ordered to pay much smaller damages in a related defamation case brought by ten PAP members. The Tang case was notable for causing a serious diplomatic row between Singapore and neighbouring Malaysia. (In an affidavit, Lee Kuan Yew had expressed astonishment that Tang should have fled for safety to the Malaysian city of Johor, ‘notorious for shootings, muggings and car-jackings’; Lee, lambasted by the Malaysian government and by government-sponsored demonstrators who gleefully insulted him as ‘stupid’ and ‘senile’, was forced to apologize.) 6 Singaporean ministers also became the object of international ridicule for pursuing opposition politicians through the courts for expressing thoughts that elsewhere would be part of the normal cut and thrust of democratic debate. The justice system was criticized too. But PAP leaders expressed no regrets, insisting repeatedly that they had to protect their reputations. They also won the election, halving the number of their elected opponents from four to two and leaving the opposition weaker and considerably poorer than before.