Crisis narratives in political discourse in singapore

As a contribution to this area of research, I look specifically at one particular discourse of crisis that attends Singapore society, namely the discourse of racial crisis.. In addition,

of “an advanced developing economy” Where it was once a politically, economically and socially unviable nation-state, Singapore is today an advanced industrialized country, accomplishing developmental feats that have often made it the object of international envy

The question on every political analyst’s lips is: how did it accomplish this, —

“it” being the smallest state in Southeast Asia, with only a geographically strategic location, but having neither a hinterland nor other natural resources, and only a non-indigenous, racially divided, migrant population As Rodan (1993a: xi) put it summarily, much of the attention Singapore has attracted is due to the fact that it had managed to survive as an independent sovereign nation, against almost incredible odds, and transformed itself so successfully:

[1/1] … along with the other newly industrialising countries (NICs) of East Asia,

[Singapore] achieved industrialisation when so many other developing countries languished Added interest stems from the fact that in the 1960s the island’s political status was precarious, with grave doubts both inside and outside Singapore about its viability as a separate nation

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While political analysts may be divided over the gains and losses to the polity

of the political system that has evolved in Singapore and the form in which governance has been constituted here, they do not disagree on the main factor that has led Singapore out of the political and economic doldrums of the 1960s: the postcolonial government which has, since Singapore achieved independence in 1965, been led by

the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) In trying to understand the PAP’s successful management of Singapore, we look at the strategies of control that have arguably been employed in governing the republic, thereby bringing about Singapore’s successful growth and development

To some political analysts, the PAP’s exercise of control operates through a principle of “authoritarianism” Rodan (1993b: 77) for instance, argues that the system

of political government here is one that can be described as “authoritarian” Noting that while “government has been determined in Singapore by popular elections since

1959, with parliament and political parties, rather than military juntas, prevailing”, these are merely “democratic appearances”, and in reality, “an authoritarian regime has managed to successfully coexist with these [democratic appearances] in Singapore”

(Rodan 1993b: 77) Hence, state power based in a system of restrictive rules and regulations, including the use of various repressive mechanisms, the co-optation of groups, the implementation of legislation and policies etc, has been the over-arching mechanism through which effective control of the republic is constituted

Others, however, see the situation in less critically opposed terms For them, the focus shifts from the initial premise of an authoritarian-type political system, to

how the particular system operates, regardless of what system it is In Chan (1975: 51),

for instance, one finds the argument that the effective development of the republic – its economic growth – is spurred on by the gradual and ultimate depoliticisation of the

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citizenry Arguing that the first decade since independence has seen the “steady and systematic depoliticisation of a politically active and aggressive citizenry” in Singapore, Chan proposes that the state has increasingly become “administrative”

With depoliticisation, the “rough and tumble of politics is reduced and the allocation of resources and values is a matter to be programmed and scheduled by the political leadership and its administrators” While this meant, among other things, that policies and plans may be swiftly implemented by the leadership and its administrators, in the process, avenues for political participation and articulation necessarily also become increasingly limited – a consequence Chan notes is in keeping with the philosophy of the “administrative state”, which believes that time spent by groups and counter-groups “to lobby, influence and change policy outcomes are a waste of time” As a result, there is an inevitable ceding of control of the citizenry to the state, and it is herein that the state’s control over the citizenry is effected The control acquired by the administrative state over the citizenry meant that it could then proceed expeditiously with its policies pertaining to economic development, thereby enabling the growth and development of Singapore

What Rodan (1993b), Chan (1975) and other studies in this area address is the fundamental question of how the republic has enabled its growth and development Put another way, what mechanism and tools, or strategies of control, have been utilised in the development of the republic?

While the question begs a comprehensive study of all elite-utilised methods of control for the management and development of the economic, social and political spheres of the republic, this would require far more space than the constraints on this thesis would allow, and interest in this question must, for the moment, be unfulfilled

But even as the broader question remains unanswered, this thesis seeks to provide at

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least some insight into it by focussing on the development of the social sphere, more specifically, the creation of order and harmony among disparate ethnic groups The question it thus asks is: what has been/is the strategy of control utilised by the political leadership in enabling the creation and continuity of a socially harmonious and relatively conflict-free society, even as primordial, atavistic ties threaten to tear it apart?

1.2 AIMS OF THESIS

This thesis sets out to show that among the strategies of control utilised in, and by the state, is the (recurrent) construction of, and reliance on a discourse of crisis As a precursorial note, this thesis allies itself with the following quote:

[1/4] The discourse of crisis has been one of the most conspicuous and constant strategies of control in Singapore1 This is used to create a climate of domestic uncertainty and even a sense of fragility about the state and the economy

(Rodan 1993a: xv)

As we will see in Chapter Two, the discourse of crisis is constituted by the packaging of social, economic and political issues in terms that suggest the potential of these issues erupting into veritable crises In the literature, studies in the discourse of crisis pertaining to female reproduction rates, religion, immigration policies2 and the erosion of Asian values3 have been attempted and two of these are discussed in that chapter As a contribution to this area of research, I look specifically at one particular discourse of crisis that attends Singapore society, namely the discourse of racial crisis

In addition, as the abovementioned discourse(s) of crisis appear to have been studied in exclusively sociological or political terms, this thesis attempts to illustrate the construction and manifestation of the discourse of racial crisis by an appeal to language research, in particular the discourse-analytic approach and narrative analysis

See Clammer, John (1993)

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As the discourse of racial crisis is one instance of the strategic construction of the discourse of crisis in the Singapore state, a description of the over-arching discourse of crisis will be attempted with reference to its constituent discourses, of which the discourse of racial crisis is but one

The thesis will conclude with a discussion of the function of the discourse of (racial) crisis as a means of effective social control

1.3 DAT A

My data consist of newspaper articles – reports and opinion pieces – culled from the

national broadsheet The Straits Times, as well as ministerial statements, speeches and

government press releases, sourced from various governmental websites

Keeping in mind that the topic is a highly sensitive one and therefore demands strong supporting documents that only a diachronic understanding of the issues can provide, and in order that the exposition given here is as comprehensive as possible, the notion of having a fixed time frame in which the data is to be culled from is rejected Included in the data set are various documents ranging from 1965 to 2002

However, to be working within space constraints is, regrettably, to be working with the knowledge that only a very diminished sample of the data can be presented and imp lied as representative, to some extent, of the entire set of data that cannot possibly

be cited here

In terms of the texts that have been chosen, I have found that whole speeches are not only unwieldy, but unnecessary data, and in its place, is rather, a selection of texts in which matters pertaining to “race” were touched on

(in particular, a socially harmonious and relatively conflict-free society that will function in the direction of the elite political will) is the (recurrent) construction of and reliance on a discourse of crisis

For this project, I will adopt a language discourse-analytic approach in the exploration of the discursive phenomenon that attends Singapore society This phenomenon presents itself recurrently in official messages and has been described as creating in the Singaporean a “siege mentality” I hope to explicate in this thesis, the notion of a discourse of crisis, and further, examine in greater detail one discursive construction of crisis, namely, the racial crisis

1.4.1 The linguistic approach 4

The link between language/discourse analysis and the understanding of social phenomena may be understood in the following statements on the study of discourse:

[1/2] …the study of discourse is the study of any aspect of language use

(Fasold 1990: 65) [1/3] the analysis of discourse, is necessarily, the analysis of language in use As such it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent of the purposes or functions which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs

(Brown and Yule 1983: 1)

In another statement of this view, Fairclough (1989: 23) advocates a “dialectical conception of language and society”: “language is a part of society; linguistic phenomena are social phenomena of a special sort, and social phenomena are (in part) linguistic phenomena” Following from this view, Schiffrin (1994: 31) reiterates that

“the analysis of language as an independent (autonomous) system would be a contradiction in terms”, and that as “discourse is assumed to be interdependent with

4

I am aware that some linguistic approaches are also constructivist in nature While I discuss the m under the “linguistic approach” (rather than the “social constructionist approach”, see later), I do not mean to suggest that they are NOT constructivist I have separated this discussion on method into the linguistic and social constructionist approaches only so that I may give to each a fuller description

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But what does it mean to carry out a discourse analysis? One broad underlying description of the discourse-analytic tradition in linguistics is the notion of studying

“the organisation of language above the sentence or above the clause, and therefore to study larger linguistic units, such as conversational exchanges or written texts”

(Stubbs, 1983: 1) What follows is then that “discourse analysis is [also] concerned with language use in social contexts and in particular with interaction or dialogue between speakers”

Proceeding from this, Stubbs distils three possible approaches to discourse analysis In the first, discourse analysis involves looking at transcripts of conversational data, inspecting them thoroughly for the kinds of surface organisation and patterns they show A second way of conducting discourse analysis looks at data collected through recording and observation, but to neglect the surface forms of utterances, and only to pay attention to their underlying functions Finally, the third approach rests on paying particular attention to aspects of language which syntax and semantics have had difficulties in explaining

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In these three approaches, highly technical linguistic analyses are carried out, involving the use of methods and tools found in for instance, conversation analysis, as famously propounded by Schegloff and Sacks (1973), involving concepts such as structures of talk and discourse organisation; the anthropologically-rooted ethnography

of communication (Saville-Troike 1982; Hymes 1972) with attendant concepts of language/speech functions; and lastly, in finding that there are certain lexical and syntactic characteristics of English which cannot be accounted for within sentence grammars, and that extra-sentential phenomena are relevant to phenomena within a clause, the argument is made for studying larger linguistic units above the sentence or clause

In the final, Stubbs’ suggests that discourse analysis is the study of syntagmatic organisation and of the relationship between form and function which thus distinguishes discourse analysis from other sorts of study

Extrapolating from Stubbs’ approaches and his conclusions on what discourse analysis is, we may describe the task as this: discourse analysis of texts is an examination of the means by which language affords producers of texts to express messages and communicative acts, through the organisation and manipulation of language units This then necessitates a close consideration of the relationship between what is/has been said/written and the functions these utterances/texts serve

In this project, we analyse the texts produced by, and in, society which constructs a discourse of (racial) crisis, and seek to determine how language has been put to use, made to function and the purposes it serves producers and consumers of those texts

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1.4.2 The social constructionist approach

Further, it is not merely the language we are interested in, per se It is the interactions language makes with society, the ways in which it has been put to use in society, that are of primary concern in this project For the purpose of examining the construction

of a discourse of crisis in a society, we look at the texts that inhere and proliferate that society and hence the messages that are handed down through time, and attempt to decipher holistically how these messages engage and draw its recipients into absorbing

a certain reality, to create certain notions of life in society, and finally, to motivate responses so that life persists in that society

What the examination requires is, apart from an appeal to language research –which offers the lens through which to “see” our data –, a grounding of this language analysis in wider, social terms in order to explore language’s enabling powers of maintaining or transforming society – the knowledge, structures and actions within

As proposed, I attempt in this project to illuminate the construction of a discourse of crisis in a particular society As such, we look at how language has been used and indeed manipulated, to serve the construction of a particular kind of discourse In this, we find a similar vein of thought within social constructionist approaches to discourse

As a preliminary definition of discourse, social constructionist approaches see

it as a “particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world)” They share the starting point that “our ways of talking do not neutrally reflect our world, identities and social relations, but rather, play an active role in creating and changing them.”

It has been proposed that all social constructionist approaches embrace four basic premises (Burr 1995: 2-5)

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 A critical approach to taken-for-granted knowledge

 Historical and cultural specificity

 Link between knowledge and social processes

 Link between knowledge and social action Briefly, the social constructionist approach is based on the notion that our knowledge and representations of the world are not reflections of the reality ‘out there’, but rather are products of our ways of perceiving the world, or in discursive analytical terms, products of discourse (Burr 1995: 3)

Our views of, and knowledge about the world are the ‘products of historically situated interchanges between people’ (Gergen 1985: 267) Our understanding and representations of the world, hence, are ‘historically and culturally specific and contingent5’ (Phillips and Jorgensen 2003: 5), and the outcomes of existing prevailing discourses as well as, in a way, ‘hand-me-downs’ of previous triumphant discourses in history Discourse is the social action that produces the social world – including knowledge, identities and social relations – as we know it, and key in maintaining specific social patterns

These so-called ‘products of discourse’ are created and maintained by social processes (Burr 1985: 268) Knowledge is created through social interaction and competitions over which products of discourse persist and which do not

Finally, the social constructionist understands that within a particular worldview, some forms of action are natural and others unthinkable Because

‘different social understandings of the world lead to different social actions, [and therefore] the social construction of knowledge and truth has social consequences’

Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory (or discourse theory), articulated in

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), is one such social constructionist approach

Phillips and Jorgensen (2002: 6) describe Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory hence:

Discourse theory has its starting point in the poststructuralist idea that discourse constructs the social world in meaning, and that, owing to the fundamental instability of language, meaning can never be permanently fixed

No discourse is a closed entity: it is, rather, constantly being transformed through contact with other discourses … Different discourses are engaged in a constant struggle with one another to achieve hegemony, that is, to fix the meanings of language in their own way Hegemony then can provisionally be understood as the dominance of one particular perspective

Discourse theory “aims at an understanding of the social as a discursive construction whereby, in principle, all social phenomena can be analysed using discourse analytical tools” (Phillips and Jorgensen 2002: 24) This project is an attempt to study the discursive construction, in Singapore society, of crisis, in particular, the racial crisis

1.4.3 Combining the approaches

But while Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory offers a strong theoretical foundation for discourse analysis, their aim at theory development means practical tools for discourse analysis are lacking Discourse theory is unlike Fairclough’s (1995a, 1995b), for example, whose toolbox might provide an analysis in which features of texts could

be identified that would go unnoticed in an ordinary reading

Hence, while adopting Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory’s strong theoretical basis for discourse analysis in the understanding of a (social) construction

of discourse, it is necessary to supplement it with methods from other approaches In this thesis, the method of analysis is a synthesis of the social constructionist and the linguistic approaches, where the former provides the theoretical basis and the latter provides the tools to carry out the study

Proceeding closely in the tradition of discourse theory, my analysis and discussion in this project will define Laclau and Mouffe’s concepts of ‘identity’,

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‘antagonism’ and ‘hegemony’ (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) in the construction of a crisis discourse in Singapore society, together with a language approach to discourse analysis

In using the social constructionist discourse-analytic approach, I am seeking to understand the discursively constructed identity/reality of society through an examination of the texts produced, or the social discourses that proliferate that society, which manifest naturally, language as it is used and being used in society for the furtherance of dominant ideologies and elite ideals

With the concept of ‘identity’, we examine the construction of the identity/

reality foisted on the Singapore citizenry by dint of the island-republic’s size and location (in this project, known as the ‘geographical aspect’ in crisis construction), its history of bloody racial conflicts (‘historical aspect’), and finally, the alternative

‘identities’ of individuals within the discourse (‘human aspect’), and the consequences entailed and functions served by these constructions (Chapter Three)

In addition, the analysis compares the construction of the discourses of the racial, religious and reproductive crises, to further the notion of crisis-discourse construction in Singapore society (Chapter Four)

With the notions of ‘antagonism’ and ‘hegemony’, we examine and discuss how the dominant and prevailing social discourses define the parameters and restrict the participation of competing discourses (Chapter Five) The discourse-analytic approach is hence augmented by narrative analysis that is based on the work of Linde (2001)

Abstracting from Linde’s analytical framework for how narratives work for and within institutions (see Chapter Five), it becomes possible to describe how producers

of the discourse limit boundaries of articulation and hence suppress alternative,

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competing discourses and occasions in which the dominant discourse asserts itself, excluding all others This then allows the successful orchestration, management and concretisation of an enduring crisis discourse in society and affords a social control mechanism for a harmonious, conflict-free society (Chapter Six)

Simply stated, given language’s all-pervasive role in human activity and the insights offered by a discourse-analytic approach, perhaps some of the questions explored in the existing research on Singapore may also be answered, to some extent, when approached from a linguistic perspective

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The Discourse of Crisis 2.1 THE CONCEPT OF ‘C R ISIS ’

Definitions of ‘crisis’ include the following:

[2/1] - A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point

- An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending, abrupt or decisive change

- The point of time when it is to be decided whether any affair or course of action must go on, or to be modified or terminated; the decisive moment; the turning point

- An unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty

- A crucial stage or turning point in the course of something

[2/2] A point or moment of great danger, difficulty or uncertainty

(Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English)

[2/3] A decisive moment, a time of danger or difficulty (calamity, disaster,

catastrophe, danger, emergency)

(Oxford Complete Wordfinder)

While not exhaustive, the three sources cited here should be sufficient to give a general idea of the semantic composition of the concept “crisis” Broadly speaking, the concept may be understood in association with (i) “danger” and “difficulty”; and involving (ii) a “decisive moment” In order to understand “crisis” in the Singaporean context however, it is necessary to reinterpret these concepts in terms of the subjective Singaporean reality To do this, we must begin with a look at Singapore’s early history

It is common to find, in works detailing the history of modern Singapore, the discursive representation of the country cast in the light of its extreme perilousness upon independence, and descriptions of its subsequent development made in the light

of its hard-fought, hard-won victory over great adversity Overwhelmingly, references

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to the early development of Singapore are replete with phrases and descriptions surrounding such notions as “the struggle for survival”, “challenges to overcome”, “the nation’s extreme vulnerability”, “the nation’s openness to external threat” etc., all of which, it may be said, belong quite unquestionably, within the semantic possibilities of

a Singaporean “crisis” In the annals of Singapore history, moments of “danger” and

“difficulty” that had befallen post-independent Singapore requiring “decisive” action

by its leaders are well-documented, and irrelevant for my purposes to elaborate in detail here The brief survey of Singapore history that follows is thus neither comprehensive nor intricately detailed, but it is hoped, is suffice for elucidating the Singaporean concept of “crisis”

History had begun for independent Singapore in an abrupt separation from the Federation of Malaysia, and had unfolded through traumatic and testing times In

1963, Singapore achieved independence from her British colonial masters as part of the then-new Federation of Malaysia This political union was, however, fraught with much bitterness and hostility between Singapore’s incumbent ruling party, the People’s Action Party (PAP) and the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO)

of Malaya The intense acrimony came to a head in 1965, and Singapore became now

a new independent republic6

For the state leadership at that time, independent Singapore was thought to be a

“foolish and absurd proposition” (Lee Kuan Yew, quoted in Drysdale 1984: 249), and Singapore was presented with a veritable crisis with the separation from Malaysia As Chua (1988: 29) describes, politically, demographically, culturally and ideologically, Singapore’s continued existence could only be ensured as part of the Federation of Malaysia The leadership had felt that it was only through the merger with Malaya that

6

See Turnbull (1977) esp chapter 8

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the problems created by Singapore’s small size, immigrant population and lack of natural resources were resolvable But its greatest challenge lay in the economic realm, and post-independence, the continued survival of the republic hung in the balance As Lee Kuan Yew argued, in his advocacy for the merging of Singapore and Malaya, in a political radio broadcast in 1961:

[2/4] [Malaya] is the hinterland which produces the rubber and tin that kept our

shop-window economy going … Without this economic base, Singapore would not survive

Post-independent Singapore thus found itself riddled with a range of economic and social problems Prospects of a common market with Malaysia were shattered, with Singapore facing the possibility of losing her former role as the financial, banking and shipping centre for the Malay peninsula (see Turnbull 1977: 303) Singapore’s entrepot trade, which had hitherto been the main lifeline of her economy, showed a pattern of decline Crucial events taking place around that time, such as the Indonesian Confrontation during 1963-6, the abovementioned separation of Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, as well as the complete withdrawal of the British military in 1968, also severely affected her economy (see Chen 1983: 7).On the other hand, the differences among Singapore’s immigrant population, comprising peoples of different race, colour, religion, language and culture, were potentially divisive, making the creation of a feeling of shared nationhood especially difficult (see Turnbull 1977:

The crisis discourse did not of course begin with the separation of Malaysia and Singapore Instances

of crises with the PAP in power or as an aspiring political party abound, but it is not within the scope of this thesis to explore these other crises The brief history of the founding o f sovereign Singapore is given here, not as a starting point from which to demarcate the beginnings of the crisis discourse, but as an illustration of how the crisis discourse, could, and indeed did, manifest i tself It appeared that the separation of Malaysia and Singapore gave the producers/ engineers of the discourse the grounds for the

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once, upon independence and beyond, the Singapore leadership and population found itself beset with crisis issues that threatened the republic’s very existence ‘Crisis’ in post-independent Singapore was a notion encompassing the varied economic, political and social problems faced by the new republic In the Singaporean sense, “crisis”

manifested itself in these early years as problems that threatened the state’s survival and continuity

2.2 CRISIS CONSTRUCTION

But the notion of crisis, which had its beginnings in these traumatic and critical times

in Singapore’s past, had, over the years, and in the process of Singapore's development, taken on a larger role It became no longer, and not merely, a concept to describe the troubled conditions of the republic’s beginnings and early development, nor a mere framework in terms of which an understanding of the republic’s past is possible In fact, as the political leadership became increasingly adept at turning

adversities into opportunities, the notion that is ‘crisis’ soon became a recurrent theme

in the Singapore political landscape Indeed, Barr, in his book, Lee Kuan Yew: the

Beliefs behind the Man, was thus prompted to remark that,

[2/5] [I]t is the hallmark of an ideological approach to politics for a leader to make

conscious use of problems and crises to drive the political situation towards an ideologically preferred end

(Barr 2000: 79)

Hence, while some crises, such as the premature closure of the British bases in 1968 and the oil crisis of the 1970s were genuine, and needed no exaggeration of the problems they posed to Singapore, others were less so – but were nonetheless, arguably, coated with the ‘veneer’ of crisis We find, therefore, that in many cases, both real and perceived threats, and ordinary developments in the course of state-

creation of the belief that the Republic was thrown into a sudden “crisis’, being as it was, suddenly left

to fend for itself

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building, were equally packaged and presented as crises, and events and conditions

that came in the natural course of development were sometimes disproportionately, sometimes subjectively, rendered potentially and fatally destructive to Singapore’s political, economic and social development It was, as Barr (2000) termed it, a “crisis-driven” model of development, where a whole range of issues faced by the new republic came to be dressed up as ‘crises’ and for which the state was impelled to deal with accordingly These included:

[2/6] [The need for] a defence force … because Singapore was ‘an Israel in a

Malay-Muslim sea’ … [The] fear that dysgenic fertility trends threatened to turn Singapore into an ‘anaemic’ society, [thus] necessitating the Abortion and Sterilisation Bills [in 1969] … The challenge posed by Chinese chauvinism, communist infiltration and ‘black operations’ justified strict controls on the press in 1971 [The uncovering of] more communist ‘black operations’ in 1976

…In 1978 the bilingual education system was deemed a failure which placed the future of the country at risk In 1979 the trade union empire of Phey Yew Kok had to be dismantled because it was becoming too powerful and threatened the well-being of Singapore Throughout 1980 trade unionists were told that they faced a leadership crisis which threatened their special relationship with the [People’s Action Party], and therefore endangered the stability and prosperity of Singapore In 1982 an all-pervasive campaign was initiated to introduce Confucian ethics into schools and most aspects of public and private life as an antidote to the threat posed by Western values …

(Barr 2000: 84) The propensity of the state for declaring a crisis ever so often has been described, in terms of the consequences of such an action, as “[giving] Singaporean politics a neurotic character’ (Barr 2000: 85), as well as giving Singaporeans the ‘feeling that

there is a permanent 8 sense of crisis’:

[2/7] [P]olitically Singapore is threatened with subversion from within and without;

economically, the situation is always precarious; the education system is constantly changed at all levels; expensive projects are begun and … rendered obsolete two years hence … [C]hange, construction, urgency are the keywords

But why? What is the ultimate purpose of all this activity, all this energy spent changing what has just been finished? Nobody quite knows, for the system seems to require that today’s solution is tomorrow’s problem

Perhaps it is important to ask then, what are the motivations behind imposing this

‘neurotic’ character on the Singapore state? It is obvious that the recurrent declaration

of crisis on the Singapore polity must serve some function That the ultimate end must surely be to ensure and secure Singapore’s continued independent existence, even if only in order to keep the incumbent ruling party in power longer9, rather than for dubious reasons, is beyond question

In terms of the processes of construction and the intended objectives, the technique of crisis construction has been compared to that of ‘moral panics’ (Hill 2001), which refers to the situation(s) where society is subjected to conditions or events that threaten its moral fabric In both, the element of consensus-building stands out as the key attribute and as Hill argues, the orchestration of crisis was a precursor to the orchestration of consent Hill’s argument finds some resonance in S Rajaratnam’s private statement (cited in Betts 1975: 141), as the-then minister addresses the issue of how the PAP intended to realise its objectives with respect to ensuring Singapore’s future The statement hints at the construction of crisis (‘raising the spectre of total disaster’) in order to effect an intended result (‘they will change’):

[2/8] And one of the things we can do to get a little further down the road a little

faster is to raise the spectre of total disaster as the alternative …Within this context, sooner or later, they will change

Additionally too, the repeated administration of ‘crises’ may be traced to, as the account in Barr (2000) suggests, the political thought of Singapore’s first prime

9

While this is not a position I wish to advance nor defend, it must be an obvious fact that political parties aim to, a mong other things, secure power in government, and on having achieved this, maintain their prese nce in government To understand the PAP, Shee’s (1971) study of the political party is illuminative The following quote is taken from his book, The People’s Action Party of Singapore 1954 – 1970: A Study in Survivalism: “The theme of survival … has been the central concern for the PAP

from its inception … the patterns of the Party’s struggle for survival since 1954 can be discerned … Second, from 1959 until the Separation (1965), the struggle for survival included not only the Party but also the government leadership Third, after the Separation, survival not only included the Party, but it also encompassed the entire Republic of Singapore” (Shee 1971: 23)

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min ister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who had, together with his political party—the PAP—led the country as the ruling party in government since Singapore’s independence In Barr’s study, the prime minister’s political technique may be attributed to his close

reading of Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History, a commonly read extra-curricular text

during Lee’s time at Law School In particular, Toynbee’s concept of Challenge and Response had great appeal for the leader, and Barr posits that this concept had motivated much of Lee’s political decisions, especially to those pertaining to crisis construction Essentially, Toynbee maintained that ‘civilisations are created and then continually evolve in response to a series of internal and external challenges’ and ‘saw progress as being driven by challenges to which a society must respond successfully, while an inadequate or erroneous response spells temporary or permanent stagnation,

or even the death of the civilisation’ (as explained in Barr 2000: 71)

If Barr’s analysis is accurate and credible, then the state’s recurrent use of crisis construction – the motivations behind this, and the intended consequences of this action – may be, at least in some part, explained An illustration of the influence of Toynbee’s concept is given as follows

Based on Lee’s alignment of thought to Toynbee’s thesis as well as his own later revelations on the subject, a different perspective on the circumstances leading to Singapore’s separation from Malaysia may be given In Barr’s account, it is apparent that Singapore was not so much ‘booted out’ of Malaysia, as the official version of the event recounts, than that Singapore itself wanted ‘out’ As it was later revealed, Lee had attempted successfully to ‘deceive’ his colleagues into believing that the-then Tunku “had unilaterally decided that Singapore must leave Malaysia” and that the Tunku’s decision was final, when in fact, Lee had, in the weeks before, prepared a proposal to secure Singapore’s secession from Malaysia Lee had put up this

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This episode, as analysed by Barr, [2/9] [the reference to Singapore being ‘booted out’ of Malaysia] enabled Lee to

base the ‘survival’ motif on an external challenge: the threat of being

‘squeezed’ The emotional power of such a message converted a mere exercise

in economics into a nation-building challenge Lee was able to use the situation

as an orchestrated Toynbeean exercise whereby a challenge purportedly threatened the country’s survival and required an effective response

and in Lee’s own words:

[2/10] Human beings always respond to a challenge Where there is no challenge,

there is very seldom more than ordinary performance

- Lee Kuan Yew, speech at the Delegates’ Conference of the National Trades

Un ion Congress, 2nd October 1966, in Prime Minister’s Speeches (as cited in

Barr 2000: 82)

For Lee then, if the population could interpret their new-found situation as a challenge,

it was his belief that this would spur the country on to progress and economic development The ‘emotional power’ stemming from the ‘survival’ motif would rally and mobilise both the rulers and the ruled into accepting ‘draconian restrictions and drastic changes in their lives’—which Lee believed were very much needed if Singapore were to survive—all in the name of the struggle for survival

Among the range of governance strategies employed by the state in Singapore,

it can be said then, is the recurrent use of the technique of crisis construction – its production, orchestration and management In addition, it has also been argued that plausibly, the application of such a technique orchestrates consent and directs society’s actions in the direction desired by its governors We look now at how this particular technique manifests itself in society

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2.3 MANIFESTING THE CRISIS

The technique of crisis construction – crisis production, orchestration and then, management – manifests itself in state narratives of national crises In the narrative of reproductive crisis for example, graduate mothers were targeted and had their patriotism tied to their inclination towards reproduction (see Heng and Devan 1995); in the narrative of religious crisis, presented, as Hill (2001) argues, in the form of a

‘moral panic’, people were made to feel the threat of political, economic or social instability, even chaos, brought about by particular, designated “condition(s), episode(s), person(s) or group(s) of persons” (see Cohen ([1972] 1987) The ‘panic’

then culminates in a series of policy initiatives aimed at countering the perceived threat posed by ardent religiosity In what follows, I review these two studies of Singapore’s state narratives of crisis as a precursor to a related study of my own

the level of reproduction among Singapore graduate mothers, Heng and Devan (1995) hold that,

[2/11] [p]ostcolonial governments are inclined, with some predictability, to generate

narratives of national crisis

(Heng and Devan 1995: 196) and that such narratives of national crisis serve, among other things, certain state-ratifying objectives:

[2/12] Typically, however, such narratives of crisis serve more than one category of

reassurance: by repeatedly focusing anxiety on the fragility of the new nation,

its ostensible vulnerability to every kind of exigency, the state's originating

agency is periodically reinvoked and ratified, its access to wide-ranging instruments of power in the service of national protection continually consolidated.1 0

Such narratives therefore, not only create in the governed the specific emotions – feelings of anxiety and powerlessness (both politically and otherwise) – intended by their production (and hence, as discussed above, spurring people on to action in the direction set out by the state), but also, in addition, give to the governing a certain legitimising of their power, where only they can, and in fact must, do something to right the situation:

[2/13] they who successfully define and superintend a crisis, furnishing its lexicon and

discursive parameters, successfully confirm themselves the owners of power, the administration of crisis operating to revitalize ownership of the instruments

of power even as it vindicates the necessity of their use

(ibid.) Hence, with reference to the narrative of the reproductive crisis,

[2/14] Crisis is unerringly discovered—threats to the survival and continuity of the

nation, failures in nationalism—when a distortion in the replication or scale of

a composition deemed ideal is fearfully imagined

(ibid.)

In Heng and Devan’s argument, the narrative of crisis played out as follows The narrative was first cast, as Heng and Devan report, “[I]n an aggressive exposition of paternal distress in August 1983”, when then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had

“levelled an extraordinary charge against the nation's mothers, incipient and actual—

accusing them of imperiling the country's f uture 1 1 by wilfully distorting patterns of biological reproduction” The charge was based on the claim that highly educated women were failing to produce babies at a sufficiently high rate, compared to poorly educated women who were perceived as reproducing “too freely”, and the issue was conveyed as a national crisis in becoming tied to the nation’s destiny (‘imperiling the nation’s future’)

The imbalance in reproductive rates between the two groups of women was a problem to the state and Lee because it was perceived that “graduate mothers produced

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genetically superior offspring, the ability to complete a university education attesting

to superior mental faculties, which would be naturally transmitted to offspring through genetic inheritance”

If not rectified, the imbalance would mean that “[w]ithin a few generations, the quality of Singapore's population would measurably decline, with a tiny minority of intelligent persons being increasingly swamped by a seething, proliferating mass of the unintelligent, untalented, and genetically inferior: industry would suffer, technology deteriorate, leadership disappear, and Singapore lose its competitive edge in the world”

Hence, measures must be taken “immediately” to “counteract the downhill slide” caused by “ ‘lopsided’ female reproductive sexuality”, or a “catastrophe of major proportions was imminent a scant few generations down the line”

According to Heng and Devan however, closer examination of the statistics alluded to by the-then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew revealed that the two groups of women – the “graduate” mothers and their converse, the “non-graduate” mothers – comprised respectively, largely Chinese, upper- and middle-class professionals; and in

a “stunning coincidence”, in the latter case, working-class Malay and Indian women – members, that is, of Singapore's minority racial groups While the Chinese majority was shrinking, both the Malay and Indian ethnic minorities were expanding

Underlying the narrative of reproductive crisis formulated in terms of mothers-not-reproducing/“non-graduate”-mothers-reproducing-too-freely is, really,

“graduate”-“[t]he threat of impending collapse in the social and economic order … [which] was covertly located at the intersecting registers of race and class” In other words, the reproductive crisis narrative was designed to not only redress reproductive imbalances

the contrary are surely raised by the fact that the ST published only 31 of the 101

letters received on the issue12 In an apparently “concerted drive to overwhelm public

opinion” (which must seem now, very plausibly, negative public opinion), government

speeches and statements repeated and expatiated at length the PM’s arguments, as the state went ahead with a proposed range of policies and incentives aimed at effecting the favoured demographic change

Hence it was that in the months following the pronouncement of the crisis, “the government moved with characteristic pre-emptive speed to launch a comprehensive system of incentives and threats, together with major changes of social policy, to bend the population in the direction of the Prime Minister's will”

These included offering “cash awards of S$10,000 to working-class women, under careful conditions of educational and low-income eligibility, to restrict their childbearing to two children, after which they would ‘volunteer’ themselves for tubal

12

As cited in Heng and Devan (1995), The Straits Times “defended its decision not to publish the remaining 71 letters” thus: “Sifting through the pile, one can detect some misunderstanding of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's message Most of the correspondents did not address their thoughts to the main issue: The better-educated segment of the population should be encouraged to have more children (than what they are having now) to bring about a more balanced reproduction rate Instead, they interpreted the speech as one more setback for the less intelligent in our society ” (A S Yeong, “What

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ligation”, as well as “increasing maternity charges in public hospital wards most frequently used by working-class mothers for those who had already given birth to their state-preferred quota of two children”

On the other hand, graduate women were enticed to have more children through “generous tax breaks, medical insurance privileges, and admission for their children to the best schools in the country”

Alongside these measures, “[C]abinet ministers began to exhort graduate women to marry and bear children as a patriotic duty”, and “two women's organizations accordingly proposed that women be required to bear children as a form

of National Service”

Other ‘narratives’ attending to the reproductive crisis include advertisements encouraging singles to marry and set up families, and even, getting right down to a possible cause for women in their 30s still being single, a campaign to get people to

express their feelings for each other (ST, Oct 6) By extending the state’s purview into matters as private as these, these efforts have prompted disgruntled letter-writers to the

Forum Page of The Straits Times Implicit in these letters is the issue of crisis

construction as felt by the common man-in-the-street, and extracts from two such letters given below show this They offer a glimpse at the extent to which the issue of (low) reproductive rates among women becomes a national crisis by reference to the fact that the issue is ‘intertwined with the destiny of a nation’, or that it constitutes a serious enough ‘problem’ for the Government to want to mount a campaign to ‘solve’

it, even though the ‘problem’ was defined on the basis of the results of only one survey

the Others Said: An Analysis of Unpublished Letters on the PM's National Day Rally Speech,” The

Straits Times [Singapore], August 29, 1983)

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[2/15] The personal and private affair of settling down with a loved one is now

intertwined with the destiny of a nation and we, the singles, have to bear the brunt of social stigmatisation What is wrong with being single?

(ST, 7th Oct, 2002) [2/16] We seem like a society obsessed with statistics and surveys A survey on single

women in their 30s was all it took for the Government to mount a campaign to get people to express their feelings for each other There is always this obsessive need to solve every problem, perceived or real … Are we so used to being told when, where and how we should express our feelings that we need external prods to do so?

(ST, 7th Oct, 2002)

appears to be a strategy of political governance in the Singapore state, but proceeding from sociological approaches to the study of deviance, Hill (2001) introduces the concept of ‘moral panic’ to the study of political governance in Singapore with respect

to the management of religion in the multireligious city-state

The concept of ‘moral panic’ was proposed by Cohen ([1972] 1987) in his

book, Folk Devils and Moral Panics In his study of the inappropriate and

disproportionate social reaction generated over the conflict between the Mods and the Rockers in 1960s Britain, Cohen’s analysis of the reactions of five broad segments of society—the press, the public, the agents of social control, or law enforcement, lawmakers and politicians and action groups—showed how, through their intervention, the youthful disturbances caused by rival factions at a seaside resort in Clacton, had turned from a relatively minor event (one mere speck in the ocean of youth violence cases) into one of immense proportions, (and thus) constituting a ‘panic’

Of the various theories of moral panics developed since Cohen’s time, it is the

elite-engineered model that finds particular significance in Hill’s (2001) study In this model, moral panics originate from an/the elite group in society which has immense power over all other groups (see Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994: 124) This model was

however, Hill argues, better articulated as the elite-sponsored model, thereby

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eschewing the problem of determining deliberate manipulation and conspiracy on the part of the elite for which, it is no doubt, difficult to establish Contrary to Goode and Ben-Yehuda’s assertion that “the elite-engineered model does not seem to work for most moral panics” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994: 142), Hill sought to show that, with the revised form of the model, this last model may well serve the concept of moral panics yet

In Hill’s analysis, the Singapore government’s management of religion in the late 1980s is understood as an exercise in the elite-sponsored construction of moral panics A number of core features of moral panics appear to feature prominently in the Singapore government’s handling of religious matters in this period In the context of this religious moral panic, Islamic fundamentalists, on the one hand, and Christians using the Catholic church and other religious organisations to form a ‘Marxist Conspiracy’, on the other hand, were first identified as the sources of panic This was then followed by a series of moves to build consensus and support for this view These included:

(i) the raising of spectres as a predictive device – which alerts the public to

impending disruption, (ii) the recurrent emphasis, in such periods, of the state’s precariousness and

vulnerability, (iii) the pre-emptive strike – the potentially draconian measures taken up by the

government for the protection of its citizens’ security in light of the potential dangers posed by the threat,

(iv) the validation through expert discourse – where the source and extent of the

threat is demonstrably and decisively concluded, (v) the search for consensus among the leaders and representatives of groups

deemed to be involved on an agreement that a problem exists and needs to

be addressed, and one might add, the subsequent dissemination of the unanimous, consolidated views of these groups and of the experts (mentioned in (iv)), and lastly,

(vi) legislation and policy outcomes to contain the problem are mooted, on the

basis of expert analysis of the problem and consensus over its necessity, and enacted

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2.4 THE DISCOURSE OF RACIAL CRIS IS

Having looked at two instances of the construction of crises – the reproductive and religious crises, we turn now to the construction of the racial crisis in Singapore society To understand the potential for racial strife, and correspondingly, the discourse

of racial crisis in Singapore, an appreciation of the racial context from her colonial past

to the present day is necessary

2.4.1 Singapore’s racial composition

Singapore society comprises, almost entirely, an immigrant population, most of whom come from diverse places of origin From an initial estimated population of about 150 persons on the island in 1819, it had risen to 97, 111 when the first Census of Population was taken in 1871, a figure that was boosted by colonial policies that welcomed and encouraged migrants to Singapore Where once the racial composition

of Singapore comprised a Malay majority, the influx of ethnic Chinese migrants soon

13

Religious Knowledge was also, thereafter, introduced into the secondary school syllabus and students

of every ethnic group and religion underwent two years of classes that familiarised them and inculcated

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altered the statistics Singapore has since then had a sizeable Chinese majority, a Malay minority (who has always constituted a fairly substantial figure, and to the present-day, has remained the second largest ethnic group in the state), a small Indian minority, and small groups of Europeans, Arabs, Jews, Japanese etc, or people of mixed descent, such as the Eurasians Singapore is thus one of the most ethnically plural societies

Apart from their highly distinct ethnic origins, the Singapore population is further differentiated in their cultural backgrounds, traditions, practices, languages and religious faiths These differences exist not only among the various ethnic groups, but also within the same ethnic group The ethnic Chinese community for instance, comprises Hokkiens, Teochews, Cantonese, Hainanese, Hakka, and Shanghainese It practises a range of religious faiths, from none to folk religion, Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity, and possesses different mother-tongues

Given the highly pluralist context, one might expect Singapore society to be constantly besieged by racial strife and thus, become one of the most unstable societies The fact is, however, that the opposite is true Having experienced only a handful of racial riots in its history, the republic has managed successfully to avert itself from the kinds of racial conflict that have caused turmoil in other societies

This is no doubt due to the success of efforts aimed at integrating the various races These efforts include pursuing the principles of multiracialism, cultural democracy and meritocracy, thereby implementing policy initiatives such as imposing

an ethnic quota on public housing estates; the introduction of National Education in the school syllabus; the programme of National Service, which brings together males of all ethnicities in national defence; the creation of GRCs where at least one of the members

in them an understanding, tolerance and respect for other religions

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running on the group ticket must be of an ethnic minority—thus ensuring minority representation in Parliament, the institution of ideologies which aims at “de-racialising” the ethnic groups, such as seeking their subscription to a set of “Asian Values, thus subsuming the various and varied groups under the “Asian” label, rather than encouraging their overt identification with their supposed ethnicities etc These are eminently rational moves made by the incumbent government to prevent racial fragmentation, divide and strife, in accordance with its ideologies of survival and pragmatism in order to hoist the country from the economic doldrums in the 1960s, and ensure future prosperity and progress for the city-state

But beyond these grand political and sociological designs that have stayed the boat on its course, how is the official discourse on ethnicity constructed? Given that, as mentioned above, the country has enjoyed relative racial harmony in the years since the racial riots of the 50s and 60s, how is a “racial crisis” in any sense of the term to be understood? In other words, what is a “crisis” if not that it involves danger to and even loss of, potential or not, life and limb, both in the literal and figurative sense, i.e to man and society at large, as the three racial riots in the past attest to?

As discussed in Chapter One, “crisis” in this paper is to be understood as an idea encompassing notions of “danger” and “decisive actions” In this sense, a “racial crisis” is to be understood as the condition to which society is subject to when problems relating to issues of race jeopardise the stability of the state The construction

of the discourse of racial crisis necessarily involves aspects that may cause panic, fear,

or insecurity within society, thereby legitimising and warranting state concern and action With this background to the idea of “racial crisis”, and more importantly, the discourse of racial crisis, we proceed now to fleshing out the aspects underlying the construction of the discourse

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2.4.2 Discourse of Racial Crisis: Aspects of its Construction

The following chapter describes the strategies employed in the construction of a sense

of crisis that attends Singapore society and which together form the primary bases for such a discourse

These strategies are the different aspects in the construction of the crisis I will use “aspects” in this thesis to denote the various means that afford the construction of crises, that is, in this case, the historical, geographical and human, that together lead to the overall discursive construction of the racial crisis

For the sake of clarity, this analysis is organised in terms of distinct aspects, but this is not to suggest that any one aspect manifests itself singly in any one material instance of the discourse, or that, in and of itself alone gives rise to the racial crisis

Rather, it is the case that these features function together, often playing and replaying

themselves in every textual instantiation of the discourse, and that it is through their occurrence and recurrence that the notion of a racial crisis is continually and forcefully reinforced

In a way, these aspects are also factors in that they come together in leading to

the consequences of their effect In other words, an aspect (as factor) on its own does not a crisis create; it is only through their coming together, each intimating, to some extent, potential danger but together, accentuating this potential even further, that the crisis, of which they are aspects/factors, is constructed

The discourse of racial crisis as explored in this thesis is seen as constituted by three main aspects, which are discussed in the following chapter These are namely, the geographical, historical and human aspects These aspects appear to manifest the chief resources in the discourse of racial crisis, and we look at each of these in turn for

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The Discourse of Racial Crisis: Main Aspects

3.1 THE GEOGRAPHICAL ASPECT 3.1.1 Size

The republic’s physical size of some 640km2 of territory was a factor of considerable concern for the republic’s rulers, upon Singapore’s separation from the Federation of Malaysia in 1965, and takes its place as almost the most objective and basic element that constitutes the discourse of crisis On the basis of this physical factor, it was not immediately or naturally thought that Singapore, small as she is, could establish itself

as a sovereign-independent entity, function and survive As the PAP leaders themselves had said, in arguing for merger with Malaya, an independent Singapore would not, and in fact could not “be viable politically, economically or militarily”14

Echoing the views of many a first-generation Singapore leader at that time, Vasil (1995: 18) writes:

[3/1] [Singapore’s separation from the Federation of Malaysia] represented a cruel

twist of fate for Singaporeans, … [as they] had fully subscribed to the view that the future of their minuscule15 island was irrevocably tied with Malaysia They did not contemplate an independent Singapore as an even remotely viable and realistic proposition

Whatever other reasons there might be for the belief in her unviability, it was the fact

of her smallness (‘minuscule’ in [3/1] above), as cited in Vasil above, and as we shall see below, in other instantiations of the discourse that appears to be the most formidable obstacle to her existence

14 “The Fixed Political Objectives of Our Party,” a 1960 policy statement of the Central Executive

Committee of the PAP, cited in Appendix 6 of Lee, Battle for Merger, p 171, (cited in Betts, 1975:

Within the discourse, the republic’s physical size implies an inevitable vulnerability that would always threaten the survival and continuity of the city-state

And perhaps no one knows this better than the republic’s first Prime Minister – now

Senior Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office – in whom, by virtue of his office, rested the responsibility of ensuring the republic’s continuity post-independence In reply to a question posed by an undergraduate on the “siege mentality” after his talk at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the Senior Minister said,

[3/2] Singapore’s small size and location mean[s] that it would never quite be able to

abolish or reduce its sense of vulnerability … It is in the nature of our geography… [There] are shock absorbers But your basic data has not changed

(ST, 18th March 1996) Here in [3/2], the republic’s physical properties of size and location are relationally attributed (“meant”) to the impossibility of eradicating the sense of vulnerability – as long as these properties exist, the sense of vulnerability cannot be removed In addition, in the second sentence, the inevitability of this sense of vulnerability, expressed through the relationally identifying (circumstantial) “is”, is pressed home In identifying the sense of vulnerability as being within the nature of our geography, a co-existent relationship is set up between the two entities, where both exists and must exist together, never one without the other This being the case, the sense of vulnerability expressed thus encourages the interpretation of Singapore’s survival as always tied to very delicate, very fragile, very perilous conditions and hence, creating

in the Singaporean the “siege mentality”, as referred to by the NTU undergraduate

In another reference, in [3/3] below, to ‘size does matter’, an MP sets up a direct semantic relationship between Singapore’s small size and her inevitable vulnerability with the use of the conjunction ‘because’, constructing the two entities as

a single structural unit, and implicating a cause-and-effect relationship between the two:

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[3/3] What are the lessons we can draw from [these] events? In a nutshell, it is this:

that Singapore, because of the smallness of her size1 6, is highly vulnerable to the external circumstances and happenings around us When others catch a cold, we may end up with a serious bout of influenza

- Mr Peter Chen, then-Senior Minister of State for Education, keynote speech at the launch of the Singapore Polytechnic National Education Lecture, 15th July

1998 National Archives of Singapore, http: stars.nhb.gov.sg/public/index.html

In a very small state that already, by dint of its size, is vulnerable, its ethnic diversity appeared to only compound the problems the newly-independent republic faced In these early years, the germination of a discourse of racial crisis may be approximated thus: it is founded upon the problems posed by the ethnic diversity of the population, interacting and potentially conflicting in a small space and the urgent need to formulate public policy so that the divergences in language, culture, religion and loyalties of the varied groups can be, to an extent at least, alleviated The following statement from Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo is telling in this regard:

[3/4] The [other big] challenge is the clash of cultures in Singapore Badly managed,

this clash can destroy us … In practice, however, there is always friction

When different cultures are in close proximity, there is invariably a lot of grinding and scraping, however much one lubricates the points of contact

- Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo Minister for Information and the Arts and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, Singapore International Chamber of Commerce's Annual General Meeting Luncheon, 4th June 1993 Speeches,

[3/5] With the attainment of independence, Singaporeans were conscious of being on

our own in an island without any natural resources and situated in what, after all, is not a very tranquil region of the world

In more explicit terms, as Vasil (1995: 21) documents, problems posed by a Chinese majority-Malay minority composition in a region of indigenous Malays were manifold, and had caused great concern among the PAP leadership:

[3/6] There was acute fear among Singaporeans and their leaders of their large and

powerful Malay neighbours … Singapore [thus] felt strongly threatened The PAP rulers knew that their policies … especially on ethnic issues, were being watched closely … They could not afford to pursue policies or take state action relating both to domestic issues and to their international relationships which were likely to incur the wrath of their neighbours They had to take into account the special sensitivities of their Malay neighbours …

As then-Prime Minister had said, [3/7] Singapore may find itself surrounded by a hostile sea of obscurantist and

xenophobic forces which will necessitate very dramatic measures for survival

- Lee Kuan Yew, as cited in Regnier (1987: 231) Hence, if not managed properly, Singapore’s multiracial composition in such a region could have meant, in the early years of her independence, that Singapore’s status as an independent sovereign republic could be easily undermined Public policy-making, it appears, had always therefore borne this in mind In the same vein, even after Singapore’s initial years of struggle were over, Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo warns:

[3/8] If democracy is the tyranny of the majority, which in Singapore would mean

the tyranny of the Chinese over the Malays and the Indians, society would come asunder and Singapore would immediately be in conflict with Indonesia and Malaysia

- Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo, Minister for Information and the Arts and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, The Africa Leadership Forum, 10thNovember 1993 “Feeding the Flame: Civic Society”, Speeches, 17(6), pp 50-

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In addition, the possibility of the population harbouring strong atavistic ethnic identification with, allegiance to, and bonds with ethnic groups of similar origins in the region cannot be dismissed In the early years for instance, the loyalties of its majority

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To put the point across more clearly, Brig-Gen George Yeo’s illustration of how the different ethnic groups reacted to external events involving members of their ethnic group is illuminating:

[3/9] …our multi-racialism also means that we do not always react in the same way

to external events and foreign pressures Take for example the way the local newspapers reported on the anti-Chinese rioting in Indonesia The Chinese press gave it full coverage The English press took a relatively detached approach The Malay press, in contrast, was awkward and played down the racial aspects This is to be expected because ethnic feelings run deep in any society Similarly, when many Muslims were raped and killed in Bosnia, the Chinese press did not take a strong stand even though its coverage of the atrocities was extensive When the new BJP government in India exploded five nuclear bombs, Hindus and Muslims in Singapore reacted in different ways

When Pakistan then exploded six bombs in response, the emotions of Hindus and Muslims in Singapore were again different Some Muslims were pleased that a Muslim country had finally produced the bomb Till today, the storming

of the Golden Temple by the Indian Army in 1984 is still remembered with outrage by Sikh communities all over the world including Sikhs in Singapore

- George Yeo, Minister for Information & the Arts, and Second Minister for Trade & Industry, speech at Sikh Community National Day Dinner, 22nd

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August 1998 National Archives of Singapore, http:

stars.nhb.gov.sg/public/index.html For the PAP leadership, Singapore, already vulnerable because of its size and location, becomes more so when her racial diversity is considered Racial matters appear to always bear the potential of danger and difficulty, and must therefore be closely monitored This point is evident as shown in the need for “eternal vigilance”:

[3/10] I have been asked many times … how we in Singapore have been able to

maintain racial and religious harmony There seems to be no major problems

My answer to them is: eternal vigilance We know the problems are never very far below the surface We have always to be careful

- Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo, Minister for Information and the Arts and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, Opening of the United Indian Muslim Association Literary and Cultural Conference, 25th July 1992 “Unity in

Diversity”, Speeches, 16(4) pp 105-108

and constant “worrying” with respect to issues of race (and language and religion):

[3/11] … in Singapore, we spend a lot of our time and energy worrying about

problems of race, language and religion and finding solutions to them [This is why] I call it an obsession

- Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo, Minister for Information and the Arts and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, The Africa Leadership Forum, 10thNovember 1993 “Feeding the Flame: Civic Society”, Speeches, 17(6), pp.50-

61

3.1.3 The Discourse Begins

With respect to the geographical aspect, Singapore’s size and location were important elements to consider in public policy-making And it is here that the discourse of racial

crisis arguably unfolds

As has been defined, “crisis” is an “unstable situation” of “great danger” and

“difficulty” (see section 2.1) For our purposes in this section, given that the designation of such a situation first receives attention by virtue of Singapore’s geographical size and location, it is in these geographical facts that the racial “crisis”

finds its first roots The racial crisis in Singapore thus finds its “beginnings” in the aspects of geography and the discourse of racial crisis “begins” the moment these

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This is so in two ways

Firstly, the fact that an “unstable situation” has been created by virtue of its size and location, and with respect to its pluralist composition is evident, as the data above showed And secondly, the objective geographical aspects that form the basis of the crisis necessitates that the ‘problem’ would always remain, and a natural, immediate or final response to the ‘problem’ would be impossible to envisage, so that the problem is really an ever-present crisis As Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo acknowledges: the issue of racial diversity and the resultant tensions must be tackled

on a “continuing basis”, [3/12] [To summarize], I have discussed the two big challenges which we have to

respond to on a continuing basis They are challenges we cannot avoid, the challenge of physical smallness and the challenge of cultural diversity

- Brig-Gen (Res) George Yeo, Minister for Information and the Arts and Second Minister for Foreign Affairs, The Africa Leadership Forum, 10thNovember 1993 “Feeding the Flame: Civic Society”, Speeches, 17(6), pp.50-

61

And hence it is that the geographical aspects, coupled with the republic’s racial diversity, and the vulnerabilities accruing from these aspects, lay the foundation (the

“beginnings”) for the discourse of racial crisis

Because the racial crisis can never be resolved, as aspects of geography are inescapable and immutable, they must at least be managed, to some extent In order to

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