Below are recordings from the BBC TV program ‘Peschardt’s People’ where I was featured. It was shown on international TV, including Singapore on 25 June and 26 June 2010.
Part 1 of 2
Part 2 of 2
I have always believed that the most important thing in my life is to leave a legacy, not just of material wealth, but of values, not just to my family but to all my readers, in Singapore and the world, for as long as my works are read. A huge ambition indeed!
And then something happened that gave this ambition new urgency and immediacy. In August 2009, I escaped a horrible death in the narrowest possible of escapes. I was waiting for a taxi by the roadside outside my condominium, to meet friends for dinner, when a sports car, rounding a corner, went out of control, spun crazily towards me, missed me by mere inches, and crashed into a tree beside me. Dazed, I picked myself up from the ground without a scratch.
Since then, in a near tragedy-turned-epiphany, I have been profoundly moved, both by the sheer good luck of it all, and the urge to waste no time in working on my intended legacy of values. They are simple values—of kindness, compassion, tolerance, a sense of humour, a zest for life, a passion for truth, goodness and beauty, and most of all, of always keeping faith with one’s beliefs and convictions, that is, of being one’s authentic self to the very end, warts and all!
And I will begin by sharing these values with you, the readers of my website, under the rubric of ‘Vignettes’. Since, in a less direct way, over the years, I must have conveyed similar values through my novels and short stories, this new endeavour, derived entirely from true experiences, may be said to be on a parallel track with my fiction.
I have written, and will continue to write, as long as I can, short, simple, from-the-heart articles and stories, based on a whole range of personal experiences, including recollections of my childhood and observations of current events in Singapore and the world. And they are exactly that and no more—personal reflections, with no pretensions whatsoever to any philosophical or literary purpose.
Indeed, they are little haphazard pieces, each standing on its own. They have no unifying, overarching theme, covering, instead, a wide diversity of unrelated topics, whether of religion or common superstitious beliefs, death or the amazing manifestations of the will to survive, scientific technology or the enduring power of traditions, human idealism or human faults, follies and foibles, all conveyed through simple musings and anecdotes.
They have no overall permeating mood, swinging, instead, from serious to light-hearted to playful, from gently admonitory to downright harsh and scathing, from wildly celebratory to unrelievedly gloomy. So one moment, I’m sharing with you my sobering thoughts on the meaning of life, and another I’m enthusing about the sheer pleasure of watching babies or eating a special home-cooked laksa or recollecting a most memorable romantic encounter!
In short, with the characteristic self-indulgence of a writer, I’ve given myself the widest possible ground for the free roaming of sense, mind, heart and spirit.
Despite its rather chaotic nature, I hope ‘Vignettes’ will have some interest for those of you who, like myself, continue to engage this very complex, often perplexing, but always fascinating thing called Life.
You will see a random excerpt of Vignettes each time you visit catherinelim.sg, or you may choose to read all available pieces using the links below.
The following is an excerpt from an article titled “Negotiating Boundaries: OB Markers and the Law” written by Mr K.S. Rajah, where my run-in with Mr Goh’s administration was analysed and the issue of OB markers commented upon.
The article is part of the book “Impressions of the Goh Chok Tong Years in Singapore” published by the Institute of Policy Studies and NUS Press Singapore. It is republished here with the permission from Mr K.S. Rajah and NUS Press.
Catherine Lim is a Singapore citizen and a well-known writer. In 1994, she wrote two articles that touched directly on Singapore’s politics. Her first article was “The PAP and the People: A Great Affective Divide”, followed by “One Government, Two Styles”.
The prime minister’s Press Secretary responded to Catherine Lim’s second article to say that novelists, short-story writers and theatre groups would not be allowed to set the political agenda from outside the political arena. He invited Catherine Lim “to follow the illustrious example of Jeffery Archer, who became an MP and later Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party to espouse his political beliefs”. The Press Secretary also identified the charges made in the articles and replied to them. The reply by the government caused a flurry of letters to appear in the Forum section of The Straits Times.
Jimmy Tan wrote that whispering complaints to the Feedback Unit was not the way to build a Great Society. Russell Heng pointed out that two articles would not set a political agenda. The writer had merely taken up Goh’s promise of a kinder and gentler Singapore. He noted that Goh was managing an important transition period and transition is never easy. He hoped history would honour Goh’s contribution.
Lim’s position was that she had presented a problem to engage interested and concerned citizens in debate that was informed, principled and free from rancour and stridency.
Goh was of the view that there was a distinction between expressing views on political issues and destroying the respect accorded to the prime minister “by denigration and contempt”. The debate then moved up to Parliament.
In Parliament, Dr Kanwaljit Soin asked the prime minister how concerned citizens would know what the out-of-bound markers were, and their limits. She questioned whether the markers would make citizens reluctant to speak up. The prime minister replied: “It is not possible to demonstrate the boundary clearly. Use your common sense”.
A decade later, on 7 December 2006, Catherine Lim wrote: “A tight control both of the political opposition parties and of members of the public who choose to criticise the government in the media remains a cornerstone of PAP policy”. She noted that what was true of the past 40 years of PAP rule was true of the present. She bemoaned the fact that while the population enjoyed good governance and the good life, PAP rule had a dismal record for freedom of the press, political debate and room for dissent. She wondered if apolitical citizens trained to accept the good life would fight the good fight or bend their knees to the insolent might of a tyrant. Her fire was directed at the parameters of political debate, which stipulated what would and would not be tolerated, and the OB markers that existed for both the tone and content of political debate by excluding any criticism of government conduct implying lack of competence, transparency, probity and disrespect.
On 23 December 2006, two journalists, Peh Shing Huee and Ken Kwek, wrote:
“OB Markers” has since taken a life of its own, firmly entrenching itself into the local political lexicon… The phrase refers to the topics which are “permissible” for discussion here… No one knows if they have crossed the line—until they actually do… writer Catherine Lim was judged to have done so in 1994 when she criticised the prime minister Goh Chok Tong’s governance.
Catherine Lim was not “judged” by a court of law to have offended against any provision of the law that she had improperly criticised the prime minister. No judge has said that the power of the legislature can be exercised other than under the articles set out in the Constitution and through Bills passed by Parliament and assented to by the President.
The following is a profile by Seth Mydans that was first published in the International Herald Tribune on September 16th, 2009, and republished in New York Times on September 19th, 2009.
Profile photo by Darren Soh for the International Herald Tribune
IT is the dress, she said, that catches the eye, the long silk sheath with the slits in the sides that offers what she calls “a startling panorama of the entire landscape of the female form.”
The dress is called a cheongsam, and the woman wearing it is Catherine Lim, 67, arguably the most vivid personality in strait-laced Singapore and, when she is not writing witty romantic novels or telling ghost stories, one of the government’s most acute critics.
In a light, self-mocking, first-person novel called “Meet Me on the QE2!” she describes what she calls the strategic power of the dress, bright and playful to the eye but not as benign as it seems.
“No other costume has quite managed this unique come hither/get lost blend,” she wrote in the 1993 book, which recounts her flirtations on a cruise ship with men who, in their masculine determination, look faintly silly.
The subject of her humor, she said, was not only the shipboard story, but also the government of Singapore.
Sometimes called a nanny state for its heavy-handed top-down control, Singapore might also be called a macho state, in which government warriors of social engineering and economic development command the citizenry. In Ms. Lim’s political analysis, these efficient, no-nonsense leaders are respected but not loved by their people, whose allegiance is to the good life the leaders provide, rather than to the leaders themselves.
This “great affective divide,” as she calls it, could deepen as a younger generation demands what some might term the more feminine qualities of the heart, soul and spirit. That view, which she first put forward 15 years ago in a pair of newspaper columns, still rankles among Singapore’s leaders, and its concept and vocabulary remain a framework for political discourse here today.
MS. LIM has established herself as a leading voice for liberalism, and when newspapers shy away from printing her more pointed views in this heavily censored and self-censoring society, she posts them on her Web site, Catherinelim.sg.
She continues to say things few others dare to.
On her Web site a year ago, she belittled new, looser regulations over Internet speech as “a shrewd balancing act, both to reassure the people and to warn off the critics.”
“For the first time in its experience,” she wrote of the governing People’s Action Party, “it would seem that the powerful P.A.P. government stands nonplused by an adversary.”
At a forum this month with Singapore’s most powerful man, Lee Kuan Yew, the former prime minister whose current title is minister mentor, she asked provocatively whether he would send in the army in the very unlikely event that the P.A.P. lost an election. (His long and intricate answer was that there were other ways to control an opposition government.)
“They leave me alone,” she said in an interview. “They probably say, ‘Oh, this woman is no threat.’ Everyone knows that I am on my own, that ‘this is a very difficult person who needs to be on her own.’ ”
She certainly does not behave like a threat.
She arrived for afternoon tea not long ago dressed not in a cheongsam but in her workout clothes, elegant in black tights, a scoop-neck white T-shirt, a polka-dot scarf and a pert round cap.
“So, what a world, what a world,” she said looking around, bright and wide-eyed. “But on balance, it’s a wonderful world. I’m so pleased to be alive at this stage.”
And then, in an animated monologue, the variegated ensemble that is Catherine Lim came tumbling out.
She talked of politics and science and mah-jongg and her adventures with men, of her atheism and her ruminations on death, which she said would bring perfect happiness through equilibrium and oblivion.
She talked of her childhood in Malaysia in a superstitious Hokkien Chinese family — the source of the ghost stories she has turned into literature — and her anglicization by nuns in a Catholic school who taught her to love the English language as well as the strawberries and daffodils she had never seen.
She talked of her grown daughter and son, a doctor and a journalist, and of her divorce in 1984 from a man who found her insufficiently submissive. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said.
She was reading up on science, she said — “I must be the only woman in Singapore who can discuss quantum physics a little bit convincingly” — when the idea for her next book came to her not long ago, a novel with existential undertones. “This is just to give you an idea of how volatile writers like myself are and how our minds go tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk like fireworks all the time,” she said.
It was just before her divorce that Ms. Lim began writing fiction, and when it was a hit, she quit her job as a university lecturer in linguistics. The 18 books she has produced have been published in a dozen countries, including the United States.
And then in 1994, a year after writing about her adventures on the Queen Elizabeth 2, she took Singapore by surprise with her hard-edged essays about the loveless relationship between the government and its people. The fuss that followed became known as the “Catherine Lim affair” and offered an object lesson in the brittleness and insecurity of the men, and just a few women, who hold power here.
IN a study published in March titled “Who’s Afraid of Catherine Lim?” a political scientist at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Kenneth Paul Tan, cast Ms. Lim’s duel with the government in Freudian terms.
An overbearing patriarchal leadership, he said, finds itself at odds with an outwardly benign, deferential woman whose feminine demeanor befuddles and unmans them. The government’s aggressive response to her essays about the “affective divide” seemed to confirm Ms. Lim’s assertion that it did not much care whether it was loved but was intent on being feared.
Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister in 1994, rose in Parliament then to defend his government’s honor, declaring, “If you land a blow on our jaw, you must expect a counterblow on your solar plexus.”
In a speech a few months later, also quoted in the pro-government newspaper The Straits Times, he was even more expressive, saying, “If you hit us in the jaw, we hit you in the pelvis.”
Really, Ms. Lim said in the interview, she likes men. But she seems to enjoy them in limited doses, as amusing playthings who must not be allowed to get out of line. “I would never remarry,” she said. “I will not even be in a commitment because I value my freedom so much.”
She added, in a conspiratorial whisper: “So I have dates. Some of them are more special than others. But that’s it.”
The flirtations and intrigues she described on the Queen Elizabeth 2 were mostly true, she said, “with a little bit of disguising.”
Since then she has become a professional lecturer on cruise ships, dressing up in her cheongsam and telling her stories about men and women and ghosts. “In one of my last cruises — this is so funny, and I love to regale my friends,” she said. “I was wearing the cheongsam, and I saw a row of four old men sitting in front.
“And later one of them came up to me and said, ‘You know, I wasn’t even following your lecture. I was only looking at your cheongsam legs.’ ”
Many Western women might find that offensive, but Ms. Lim just laughed at the memory. “Don’t you think that was cute?” she said. “I thought that was cute.”
On 2 Sept 2009, I was one of the guests at a dinner to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. During the dialogue session, I asked Minister Mentor a question about a certain possible, though not probable, political scenario that had intrigued me for years. Suppose a freak election took place; what would the PAP do? Would MM send in the army? By way of softening the rather controversial nature of the question, I made sure there was a friendly, humorous preamble. So I addressed MM thus: ‘Some years ago I was giving a talk to some British businessmen, giving my usual spiel about Singapore politics, civic liberties,etc. During the question and answer session,one of the businessmen raised his hand and said, ‘ I’ve a question, or rather a suggestion. Why don’t you give us your Lee Kuan Yew, and we give you in exchange our Tony Blair, with Cherie Blair thrown in?’ I replied, ‘Mr Lee won’t like your noisy, messy, rambunctious democracy.’ He said, ‘No matter’, and went on to remark that if there were but five Lee Kuan Yews scattered throughout Africa, the continent wouldn’t be in such a direful state today. After this light-hearted sharing, I have a question: Sir, in the event of a serious threat of a freak election, would you do the unthinkable, that is, send in the army?’
Reproduced below is the report in The Straits Times the following day on both my question (minus the preamble) and MM’s answer, exemplifying, once again, the hard-headed, no-nonsense PAP pragmatism, and the inimitable trenchancy of style that we have come to associate with Lee Kuan Yew:
AT YESTERDAY’S dialogue, writer Catherine Lim posed MM Lee this question: ‘Sir, in the event of a serious threat of a freak election, would you do the unthinkable, that is, send in the army?’ This is an edited extract from Mr Lee’s reply:
‘You look at our record and the moves we’ve made. Let me put it simply like this. First, we maintain a system which gives any opposition the opportunity to displace us peacefully. We allow the system: we’ve not interfered with the civil service, the judiciary, parliamentary procedures, the police and so on.
If you can win an election, so be it. If at some point we are not able to find a team which can equal an opposition team, on that day we deserve to be out. If we become corrupt, inefficient, can’t deliver, we’re out.
What if we have a freak election, as we may well have? Many voters say openly: ‘In my family, three of us voted for you but two voted against, just to let you know that we want an opposition voice.’ In that situation, you may have a freak result. That worries me.
So we’ve set in place a President with blocking powers. Any opposition that comes in will find that he cannot touch the reserves, otherwise you can promise the sky and spend the money. And all our hard-earned savings will go in five years.
Second, you cannot change the top officials without the President’s consent. Any raiding of the funds must be approved by the President who has a council of presidential advisers to advise him yes or no.
Now, why should we do all these if we expect to overturn an election?
We expect that if we are voted out, to stay out, and hope that within one term, that new government, incompetent and unable to deliver, will be out. And there’s enough core competencies and the funds to enable a fresh PAP government to revive the system.
I spent 15 years thinking about these safeguards and finally persuaded my younger colleagues that we needed these because they can’t guarantee that each time they will produce a better team than the opposition just because you’ve done so in the past.
I don’t see any problem in the next election, and probably the election after that. But if we don’t get a good team in the election after that and the opposition does get a good team together, we’re at risk.
One of the first lessons I learnt in politicswas from Harold Laski. He said if you don’t have a system that allows fundamental change by consent, you will have a revolution by violence. If we block all possibilities, we must expect violence. In that violence, eventually the army won’t shoot because you are in the wrong. That’s what happens in Africa, the army goes in and holds up the president and often shoots him.
If we had not these thoughts at the back of our minds, why do we do these things? Just to bluff the people? Doesn’t make sense. An army commander, air force or police, has to be approved by a committee and the President must agree. Why? Because we will appoint the commanders? No, because a stupid government will do the wrong things and when we return, we may find the whole machinery has collapsed, as often is the case. Simple.
