Is there a government out there better than the PAP?

Hi there, I would like to take one of my readers up on something he said in a comment a while to me ago and I feel that perhaps it was one of those big, profound questions that I couldn't quite do justice to in a standard answer. Hence, better late than never, here's a full post to address that issue. Now in that comment, I was challenged on my anti-PAP stance - the PAP may not be perfect, but could I name another country where the government was doing a much better job? I suppose that was a dig at me for being British, given the mess we're currently in over Brexit and clearly, our government is the laughing stock of the world and making the headlines for all the wrong reasons given how there's so much political infighting over Brexit. I do love it when my readers ask thought provoking and challenging questions, it does tell me what my readers would like me to talk about on my blog. So in today's post, allow me to talk about how well the PAP is doing and compare the Singaporean system to what I have observed after having lived and worked in a number of countries.

How would you evaluate the PAP's performance?

Different governments are good at doing different things. 

Now I don't think you can actually rank governments in terms of their performance, not easily anyway because different people will have different criteria they would want to use for such a ranking and so for example, some people may insist that transparency and anti-corruption should be an important factor but others may care far less about that and be far more concerned about issues like women's rights and lifting the poorest out of poverty. Let's take Italy for example - a country that I had recently visited. They have an amazing public transport system: the trains and buses are modern, efficient and run on time but the best part of it all, it is incredibly cheap. A 60 km journey from Pistoia to Pisa Central cost me just 7 euros whereas an equivalent 60 km journey in the UK would cost me 26.86 euros. Their brilliant public transport system puts most countries in the world to shame! But nonetheless, the Italian government is notoriously corrupt and they are usually going from scandal to scandal, it is one of the most corrupt countries in the Eurozone. Former president Silvio Berlusconi faced so many dodgy corruption allegations and was constantly in court - cases against him ranged from bribery, tax fraud to sex with an under aged minor. Yeah and this man still served 9 years as president over 3 periods. Is he guilty of all of these charges? Probably not, but would trust him to be honest in his political dealings? Hell no. He is as slippery as an eel and so creepy, yet enough Italians clearly liked him and supported him.

If you have a job that involves a lot of traveling or commuting, say you are an Italian salesman who has meetings all over the country, then you probably would be very satisfied with the government because the wonderful Italian public transport system is the envy of the world and it makes your life a lot easier when you know you can get to a meeting in another city quickly and cheaply. But imagine you're a young graduate in Italy today trying to find a job, holy shit they currently have a youth unemployment rate of 35.1% and that's already down from a high of 42.7% in 2014. Italy actually has an excellent education system, but they are churning out all these well-educated young people into an economy where there are just not enough jobs for all of these highly educated Italian youths looking for a work. If your parents had money, they could fund you to go look for work elsewhere in the EU, outside Italy. If you're an unemployed Italian youth today, you would have plenty of reasons to be pissed off at the Italian government. In comparison, the UK has a youth unemployment rate of just 11.3% (lower than the EU average of 15.2%) and may I remind you that we're supposed to be the ridiculous country in a disastrous mess over Brexit, but somehow the economy here is in a better shape at least when it comes to providing employment for youth people! At least if we have Brexit as an excuse for anything that goes wrong now, what's the Italian government's excuse for their astonishingly high youth unemployment rate? That's just a simple example of how the Italian government excels in certain aspects of running the country but has fared rather badly in other aspects.

The current situation is good but not great? 

Let's give the Singaporean government credit where credit is due. There is a rather old piece I wrote way back in 2011 about the top five things I love most about Singapore - there were two things on that list which you could give the government credit for: public transport and the environment. I'm on the fence when it comes to public transport in 2019 - don't get me wrong, I think it is still a very good system when compared to other cities around the world in terms of efficiency and cost to the user. Is it perfect? No it isn't, there are too many instances of the MRT breaking down and even when it does work, have you ever tried changing trains at Bishan or Dhoby Ghaut during rush hour? The fact is the foundations of the MRT system were laid down in 1987 when the population of Singapore was just 2.75 million - today it stands at 5.75 million. The population has more than doubled and the infrastructure just cannot keep up with the population growth - the demand has more than doubled in that time but has the capacity of the MRT doubled? No, it just means longer waits, more crowded trains and much more unpleasant journeys. What if the population keeps growing by another 50% - would SMRT be able to increase capacity on their trains by a further 50% to keep pace with demand? I doubt it, this is something they've failed at so far and the future looks uncertain at best, bleak if I may be honest when it comes to public transport in Singapore. So yeah, whilst the public transport system in Singapore is okay for now, what will the future hold? Is it simply going to crumble under an ever increasing demand as the population keeps on growing?

There's a great Italian song by the rapper Shade called 'Bene ma no benissimo' and that translates to "good but not great"; there are many things like public transport which I would put into that category. I'm not saying that it is bad - there are certainly many problems that government would need to solve in the long run when it comes to public transport but for what it is worth, it is okay for now. But here's the thing - Singapore isn't the only country in the world with a good public transport system, I can easily name you a number of cities which have brilliant public transport systems which are pretty reasonably priced as well: Taipei, Hong Kong, Barcelona, Rome, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and that's just a few to begin with. Perhaps we shouldn't be that surprised and pleased when governments do get things like public transport right - it really depends on what your expectations are. Should I say, "holy shit, the train is actually arriving on time, this is totally amazing!" Or should I expect trains running on schedule to be the norm - as in the case in countries like Spain and Japan? One thing that I can give the Singapore government credit for excelling in is the environment - too many people feature on tourist attractions like Gardens By The Bay or the Botanic Gardens, but I'm talking about the more low-key things that Singaporeans take for granted with some small street in Hougang or Tampines. Practically every single street in Singapore are lined with trees and shrubs which are beautifully maintained - sure other countries do make an effort to make the environment more green but no country in the world does it as efficiently or as well as Singapore. Credit to NParks for the truly amazing job they are doing and that is something you can give the government for: truly benissimo.

Great for some but not good for others? 

Then there are areas where the Singaporean government has served some people well whilst letting down others - take education for example. For many years, the education system in Singapore has been touted as one of the best in the world in terms of producing great results but let's look at the problem with it. If we were to focus on say the top 20% of each cohort, of course it looks fantastic - these are students with straight As and can probably get into the university course of their choice. In general, the results are good if you were to look at the mean, median and mode results. But what about those in the bottom 50% or even the bottom 20%? How are they treated in the Singaporean system if they're never ever going to become the straight A student who will go on to university? What kind of options are there for these people? The parents of these students are sent into panic mode - so the poor kids are subject to endless hours of tuition to try to bump that C grade to an A grade and when all else fails, they send the kid to a private university to get a degree not worth the paper it is printed on just to be able to claim that their child is a graduate like everyone else. A combination of society' attitude towards those who are not academically inclined along with a lack of initiatives by the ministry of education has created a situation whereby the bottom 50% of each cohort are poorly served by the education system and they're made to feel that they don't deserve attention, resources or additional help from the system because they're not worthy like their peers who did achieve those straight As. So instead of parents complaining to the authorities, "what are you doing for my child who isn't academically inclined?" Unfortunately such parents are more likely to keep quiet and hang their heads in shame, because they feel they have failed in their duty as parents and they often blame themselves.

A good case study is Germany: vocational training is extremely well structured - the German government has organized plenty of apprenticeships for those who undertake vocational training and this is supported by the government, private sector employers and even trade unions. Because the training structure is so well run and does lead to respectable jobs, there simply isn't a stigma associated with those who opt for this route instead of the academic route. The German system works so well that they have the lowest youth unemployment rate in all of the EU and has one of the most robust economies in the EU. Their success is down to the fact that they do not neglect the bottom 50% of each cohort, but dedicate plenty of resources to make these people as productive as possible, to help them achieve their maximum potential through non-academic, vocational training schemes, to give them the skills to find a good job without a degree. What is the government doing for those average or below average kids in the neighbourhood secondary schools then? The problem in Singapore is the culture: if your child study hard and gets good grades, that means your child is well-behaved. But if your child performs badly in the exams, that's taken as a sign of moral failure - that the child was lazy, ill-disciplined and had been doing something idiotic like playing computer games instead of revising for his exams. They will never accept that the child is simply stupid and limited in his abilities to excel in those exams, so everyone goes into denial about the child's stupidity. Instead of dealing with the issue, a huge tuition industry has boomed up to serve these people in denial. The concept of private tuition in Germany is very rare - I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but the level of uptake is much lower than in East Asian countries: it is the exception rather than the norm.

A system with winners and losers. 

How you feel about this system would reflect and demand on how you are affected by it. Let's do a little comparison: Mrs Ang has a daughter who is a brilliant straight A student and is in one of the top schools in Singapore - her daughter has the option of applying for a number of scholarships and has benefited from having the best of everything at her school which has fantastic sports facilities and great teachers who are trying to get her into Oxford or Cambridge. Mrs Goh has a son who is the same age as Mrs Ang's daughter, but he is in a neighbourhood secondary school and his grades are mediocre at best - he's good at some subjects but struggles in others. His school is relatively modest compared to the school that Mrs Ang's daughter goes to and his teachers there are really trying their best, but with limited resources, they expect Mrs Goh to get her son extra help outside the school through the private tuition industry. How each parent feels about the Singaporean system is very much influenced by the situation their child is facing. Whilst Mrs Ang may go as far as to feel some sympathy for the frustrations that Mrs Goh would experience, she has little reason to want to change the status quo which has greatly benefited her daughter. She may even feel that her daughter deserves a lot more resources from the government than Mrs Goh's son, given that many Asian parents would assume that Mrs Ang's daughter had achieved those excellent results because she was a 'good girl' who would stay at home, revising for her exams whilst Mrs Goh's son was a 'bad boy' who was either out roaming the streets, up to no good or even if he was at home, he was surfing the internet or playing computer games instead of studying. Hence, the Ang family are better off in Singapore whilst the Goh family would be far better off in Germany because the two families are facing very different circumstances.

I can just imagine Mrs Ang saying something like, "my daughter is going to be a scholar at one of the world's top universities, she will return to Singapore to become a minister one day or maybe a CEO of a big company and will have so much to offer Singapore in the future when she becomes someone important. What kind of job would Mrs Goh's son do when he grows up? Tell me what is he capable of? He can barely sit down and memorize some basic facts for a geography test, would you trust him to handle anything of importance? I wouldn't. People like that end up working in places like Starbucks, where you will only trust them with a very basic task like making coffee - you don't need a degree for that, you just need to follow instructions on how to make a cappuccino and that isn't exactly rocket science. Would you invest as much money and resources into the education of a guy who is going to grow up to do a job like a barista at Starbucks? Or should the amount of money you invest in the student correlate with what they will contribute to society in the future? The government doesn't have a bottomless pot of money to invest in education - it needs to make the best possible decisions about where to allocate limited resources to get the maximum benefit for society as a whole and if that means investing in the brightest, most talented people like my daughter whilst overlooking stupid people like Mrs Goh's son, then tough - that may seem somewhat unsympathetic and callous but it is a completely rational decision when you consider the return in investment you will get from each individual you invest in. Is this fair? No, it isn't, but in the real world, being fair has nothing to do with being rational. The world is inherently unfair. How do you account for the fact that my daughter have a much higher IQ than Mrs Goh's stupid son? I can't answer that question - sorry, life is just not fair."

Things are changing, albeit slowly. But is it too little too late? 

Yet when you look at a country like Germany which has a very different kind of education system compared to Singapore, one notes that neither is better or worse, they are just different in the sense that they have a different approach, a different focus and deliver a different result - yet Germany is hardly poor or suffering just because they are not doing what the Singaporeans do. In fact, I am glad to see that Singapore is trying to change and evolve their education system by scrapping streaming in secondary schools, these steps would make the Singaporean education system a bit more similar to the German and Finnish model - though these are baby steps and there's a long way to go to change traditional Asian mindsets of Singaporeans when it comes to education. So even within an area like education where it is widely recognized that the Singaporean government excels at, there is still room for improvement and credit to the Singaporean government, they are willing to make the necessary changes to adapt their education to keep it relevant to the modern world. So for any topic you can possibly pick to judge the Singaporean government on, there will be winners and losers: let's take public housing for example. If you fit the mould of the young couple who is married with kids, you will find loads of schemes to help you get on the property ladder with a nice HDB flat. But if you are gay, unmarried, a single mum or divorced without children, then you're effectively shut out of the public housing system which will always give priority to families with children and you're going to get no help at all from the government to get on the property ladder. So is this an ideal situation? No. Far from it but when you are such a crowded small country, there are bound to be many problems when it comes to public housing and this will result in winners and losers with any solution.

Hence I can go through each category from defence to law and order to education to public housing to the environment to foreign policy to healthcare to the economy and find some things that the Singapore government is doing right and others areas where they are making mistakes - you could do that with any government in the world and get more or less the same outcome: they are good at some things and bad at others. On the whole, the Singaporean government isn't doing too badly at all but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have room for improvement. The biggest issue I have with the Singaporean system is the complete lack of checks and balances - this is because the PAP has such a firm grip on power that there isn't an effective opposition to challenge them should they make a mistake and this has already happened. There are well over a million China born migrants in Singapore today (otherwise known as PRCs to the Singaporean locals) and many of them have obtained either permanent residency status or have naturalized as citizens. Now it is not that Singaporeans are anti-immigrant, but the two biggest complaints about PRCs in Singapore are as follows: there is very little or no quality control and there are too many unskilled, lowly educated migrant workers from China in Singapore today. And secondly, there are just too many of them (along with migrants from other countries like India, Vietnam, Myanmar, the Philippines etc) putting huge pressures on public housing, healthcare, transport and education. Did Singaporeans who objected to this huge influx of PRCs have any real say in the matter? No, clearly not.

Do you have any power to stop a bad decision?

So let me put this hypothetical situation to you: say in ten years, Singapore's population has grown to something like ten million and there's just not enough space for the population to keep growing. So in order to prioritize space and resources, the government sets up a social scoring system where you're graded on how educated you are, how much money you've earned, how much you have contributed to society (for example, have you done something like Joseph Schooling in bringing glory to the nation on an international stage). The government then strikes a deal with Australia to rehouse the least productive Singaporeans - mostly older people with low incomes - on Christmas Island - those who have been selected to be rehoused on Christmas Island cannot appeal the decision and have the choice to voluntarily comply or be arrested and deported into exile. This is when Mrs Goh's son is served a notice - he has performed badly in his studies, has failed to get any respectable qualifications and most importantly, he is unemployed; so the government decides that he should go move to Christmas Island to take care of the elderly folks who have been sent there. Thousands of others like Mrs Goh's son are also selected and again, they have no choice but to comply with the order or face arrest. Now this may sound like a scene from some kind of dystopian, futuristic novel or a scene out of a movie like the Hunger Games but let's run with this for a moment and let me prove a point: if you do have a functioning democracy, then there will be checks and balances in place for the opposition to stop the ruling party from doing anything they want - so if enough people disagree with the current government, they can simply vote the government out at the next election.

The alternative is that you end up in a system like China, whereby there is no democracy and no elections and the citizens have no say over the laws in the country. China has a super long list of human rights violations - just look at what they are doing to the Uighur minority in Xinjiang province for example, the locals have absolutely no power to stop the way the Chinese government are subjecting the Uighur Muslims extremely high levels of restrictions on their daily lives and over a million Uighur people have been interned in re-education camps. So what I am describing above isn't such a dystopian nightmare after all - it is simply what millions of people in China have to endure everyday. Thus this is my main problem with the Singaporean system at the moment - there is no credible opposition who is any position to challenge the PAP. Now you may ask whom we can blame for this situation: you could point the finger at the opposition for not getting their act together - instead of working together to present a united front against the PAP, we have as many as nine parties jostling for power and often all they end up doing is simply splitting the opposition votes, paving a clear path for the PAP to gain an easy victory at each election. Or you could blame the PAP having crushed any credible opposition with an iron fist in the past, thus effectively discouraging anyone with anything to lose from being quite rightfully afraid of joining politics. That's why we have jokers like Tan Hui Hui and Roy Ngerng in politics in Singapore instead of anyone whom we can take seriously. I did speak to a highly educated lawyer who works behind the scenes supporting one of the opposition parties but he wouldn't personally run for office for a simple reason: he has too much to lose. He has a brilliant law career and he is in a relationship - he doesn't want to risk losing it all just because the PAP decides to cook up a case against him to disqualify him from running against one of their candidates (and yes I can understand his decision).

But there's a simple reason why things won't change. 

The fact is if you're not happy with the way Singapore is, you have two choices: the first is to stay and try to make the best of the situation in Singapore, the second is to move on, vote with your feet and seek greener pastures elsewhere. The problem though is that the more people opt for the second option, the less people there are left to stay and try to change things. This is not like North Korea where it is extremely difficult to even leave the country - heck, even in a country like China, you're free to go live and work elsewhere if that's what you want to do. Allow me to state the obvious: it is far easier to get yourself to another country where you think you will be happier than to try to take on the Singaporean government to try to change it. That is why when people look at the two choices, they always pick the lowest hanging fruit and just leave. The people who are most unhappy with the way things are have long left for a simple reason - you can't lead a popular revolt without having popular support, the way Aung Sung Suu Kyi had a lot of support in Burma even when she spent years under house arrest. If you're trying to lead a revolution without an army behind you, well, you just look like a lunatic who has bitten off more than you can chew. Yes I'm talking about people like Tan Hui Hui and Roy Ngerng. So "changing Singapore" isn't a realistic option - it's like kids who have bad parents, you can neither choose nor change your parents, you can only learn to adapt to the situation and make the best of a difficult situation.

This leads to a lot of Singaporeans choosing to appreciate the things that the Singaporean government does excel in whilst choosing not to focus on (or totally ignoring) the areas which Singapore is performing rather poorly in. This is a perfectly human trait which led to my reader challenging me to find another government in the world that is doing a better job than the Singaporean government - it sounds like my Singaporean reader is in Singapore not so much by choice but by accident: ie. s/he was born in Singapore to Singaporean parents so by default, s/he is Singaporean by nationality and s/he didn't actually choose to be Singaporean - that's just the way things turned out. Such a question suggests to me that the reader is actually trying to convince himself/herself that things aren't that bad in Singapore and most importantly, there isn't a better alternative to Singapore out there. Given that this reader probably has parents and other family members that tie him/her to Singapore, moving away from Singapore is probably quite a difficult option to even contemplate seriously. Mind you, given how right wing some of the governments in the West have become (the US, UK and Australia to begin with), moving to the West has become a lot harder in 2019 compared to say 20 years ago when the world was a very different place. So even the Singaporeans today who do want to seek greener pastures abroad may find it actually rather hard to make it happen simply because the bar has been raised so much. For some of them, making the best of what they do have in Singapore is really the only option they have left since they have no alternative.

Making the best of a bad situation

This does remind me of a situation which I found myself in during my NS days - there was this guy, let's call him "Koh" (not his real name or his surname, obviously). Koh and I worked in the same unit, we had to spend a large number of hours throughout the working week in close proximity to each other and we depended on each other a lot to get work done. I didn't like Koh, we had nothing in common but more to the point, he made virtually no effort to try to get along with me or establish any kind of rapport with me at all. I could sense that he was just miserable about having to serve NS and was trying to make everyone as miserable as him. I rejoiced each time Koh did anything right and I took it upon myself to befriend Koh, I was nice to him and I knew that I would be rewarded with a better working relationship with him - that was my motive, I wanted my working life to be easier with him. I didn't offer that kindness because he deserved it or if he had earned it, I offered it in spite of the fact that he was a pretty nasty person. My persistence paid off - I wouldn't say that Koh and I became friends, no. But we had a functioning working relationship and he didn't give me any trouble the way he was giving others a hard time. I remember on my ORD day, I shook Koh's hand and said to him, "I am glad I had the opportunity to work with you, I learnt a lot from working together." He laughed and said, "When did I teach you anything?" I didn't respond to that - but circumstances had compelled me to figure out how to make the best of a miserable, awful situation, that was the valuable lesson. I did so by focusing on the few times that Koh did do things right, that reminded me of the saying, "even a stopped clock is right twice a day" and unfortunately at times, it did feel like I congratulating a stopped clock for being right twice a day when I struggle to find something, anything that Koh did right.

How do you cope with a bad situation?

Likewise I see a huge difference in the way my sister and I deal with our parents. I have basically decided I couldn't deal with them as they are the most unreasonable people I know, they have absolutely zero social skills, their autism is off the scale and I can't get along with them at all - there was nothing to be gained by keeping in touch with them. So I moved to the UK and now I don't have any kind of relationship with them, but as my sister in Singapore has a son and my parents love participating in his life as grandparents, she has little choice but to deal with them on a daily basis much the same way I had no choice but to deal with Koh when I was serving NS. How does she manage without allowing them to drive her crazy? Well, she does pretty much what I did with Koh - she focuses on the positive things that my parents do get right and chooses to ignore or forgive the stupid shit they get wrong. It isn't rocket science: people do that all the time when they have no choice but to make the best of a terrible situation that they just can't walk away from. By that token, my reader who challenged me to find a government that is doing a better job than the PAP may not be a huge fan of the PAP, but s/he is merely trying to convince himself/herself that the PAP isn't too bad after all and the same way I simply had to find a way to get along with Koh in spite of the fact that he was one of the most difficult people I have ever met. Besides, my reader didn't actually sing praises of the PAP, rather the sentiment was, "they're not perfect, but none of the other governments out there are perfect, so how are you any better off than me in Singapore now that you're in a different country with a different kind of system? It's different but no better than Singapore - so what's the point of that?"

Picking and choosing the one system that is right for you. 

At the end of the day, we're all different people and we have very different needs. You can't have a one size fits all approach when it comes to judging how well a government will serve you. Mrs Ang and Mrs Goh may both be parents in Singapore but the Ang family is clearly a lot better suited to the Singaporean system than the Goh family, who would be far better off in a country like Germany. I am an openly gay man and I sure as hell do not want to live in a country like Singapore which discriminates against people on the basis of their sexuality - no, I'm far better off in a country like the UK where there are laws enshrined in our institution to outlaw any kind of discrimination on the basis of one's sexuality. If you're a heterosexual woman in Singapore like Mrs Ang and Mrs Goh, then the Singaporean government's stance on the LGBT community doesn't really affect you at all so it wouldn't be a factor in deciding whether or not Singapore was the right place for you to live. No, in their case, they are far more affected by how the government structures education as this has a direct impact on the kind of future their children will have within the Singapore system. Likewise, Mrs Ang only has a daughter, so she really doesn't care what goes on in the SAF whilst Mrs Goh would be far more concerned as her son would be obliged to serve national service - thus that's one factor that doesn't affect Mrs Ang at all but is extremely important to a Singaporean mother like Mrs Goh. By that token, Singapore will be heaven for some, but hell for others.

I shall end on that note and turn this over to you my dear readers: if there isn't a single government out there that is good, then what do you do when confronted with this imperfect situation where there are no simple answers? Do you stay where you are and make the best of a bad situation or do you swap your current system for another system, knowing that you may encounter different problems when you are in the other country? Please let me know your thoughts on this matter, especially if you are a Singaporean in Singapore, are you happy with the PAP or are you merely making the best of a bad situation? Do you want to move to another country? Leave a comment below please, many thanks for reading.