By Philip Jeyaretnam

I wanted just to identify something which holds us back, which holds Singapore back. I identify this as a triangle of suspicion… The dynamic starts like this: when you people of different backgrounds coming together and living in close proximity, there is a strong tendency to fear your neighbours. The different smells, the customs, the behaviour… So from there you have a natural desire that somebody out there will keep your neighbours in check, that they will follow the rules, and indeed beyond having rules and implementing them and enforcing them, that someone out there will mediate between different groups in society. And you get that natural dynamic where you have that enforcer who plays a mediating role, triangulates between disparate groups and kind of takes charge.

Now, the second apex in this triangle is a philosophy within the ruling party that suggests that political competition is not a good thing, and is even bad. So you then have a suspicion when people form associations, when people come together, you have a suspicion that they are going to become platforms for political dissent and competition.

This suspicion or philosophy then fuels or leads into the third apex of the triangle, which is citizens themselves becoming cautious about associating, for fear that this is considered to be a political act, and that they might find themselves being nipped in the bud. So, I think that explains a lot of the sense that when there is a problem, the citizen does not go out and form a cat patrol society but instead writes in to the forum page of the newspaper.

Obviously, real progress on this front does depend on breaking this vicious triangle. But I would suggest that it is important to do so, and it is important to do so because I think the old mantra that Singapore was too small for people to “rock the boat” needs to be replaced by a new idea, a new sense that Singapore is too small not to let people row their own boats, if that is what they want to do, not to let people change mid-stream, if that is what they want to do.

The above excerpts are from the article by Philip Jeyaretnam for Singapore Perspectives 2009.

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