The following is a coverage by Fann Sim of my acceptance speech on being awarded the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ by the Online Citizen. It was first published in Yahoo! News on January 14, 2012.

---

One of Singapore’s best-known authors Catherine Lim said on Friday that the People’s Action Party (PAP) is incapable of reinventing itself.

Her view was in response to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s speech at a PAP convention last November where he said that the party has to reinvent itself to “build a new PAP for a new era”.

The 70-year-old was speaking at socio-political blog The Online Citizen’s (TOC) Awards Night where she was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award by Singapore People’s Party secretary-general Chiam See Tong.

Lim, who is a frequent critic of the government, is best known for her social commentary story in 1994, titled The PAP and the People – A Great Affective Divide, which sparked controversy with the ruling party. Since then, she has published numerous novels and political commentaries.

In her acceptance speech, Lim said that even if the party can achieve reinvention, what “watershed action of reinvention” is the party prepared to undertake.

“Reinvention would require the opening up of one crucial area that the government is determined to have tight control over. This is the area of political liberties — open debate, criticism, independence of the media, public assembly, street demonstrations for the cause, all of which are taken for granted in practising democracies.

“Over the years, the government had rather reluctantly made some concessions — allowing the speaker’s corner, relaxing some censorship laws, tweaking a rule here, tinkling with another law there, but never going beyond these small legal offerings. Singaporeans have no choice but to accept because there was nothing better,” she added.

Pointing out the case of the 16 political detainees who called upon the government in September last year to set up a commission of inquiry to look into the allegations said against them, Lim noted that the petition was promptly dismissed and no further action was taken.

Lim was referring to the allegations made against the 16 Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees who were detained for their involvement in “subversive activities which posed a threat to national security”.

Among the detainees were Barisan MP Chia Thye Poh who spent 26 years in detention and was one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners. Chia was a 1960s socialist intellectual and opposition MP who was accused of being a communist subversive, a charge he firmly denied.

“I thought that the government had missed a fantastic opportunity to show Singaporeans that it had the honesty and courage to face up its past excesses or to take responsibility for them. Or as the case might be, … stand by the principles on which it had acted,” said Lim.

“They’ve missed the opportunity to show Singaporeans what to me is the noblest quality that can come out of a conflict and that is the grace and the magnanimity to reach out to former folks in a spirit of reconciliation and amity,” she added.

Lim also added that there is a “PAP fatigue” among Singaporeans that is a result of PAP’s lack of nurturing Singaporeans politically, and failing to provide the proper environment for political education and growth.

“Ideally, as long as they don’t open up, and as long as political dissidents feel like they can be punished some other way. … then the so called transformation from the GE will be at best a partial one,” said Lim.

View full transcript of the acceptance speech.

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.

---

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.”

---

With regard to the ongoing—and very sensational!—controversy between the old and the new leaderships of Aware, Singapore’s best known women’s organisation, the Sunday Times asked for my views to be included in their feature, which appeared in their 26 April 2009 issue

---

Dr Catherine Lim, 67
Author and political commentator

‘On the personal level, I am a liberal, and hence emotionally take my stand with those who will support gays, lesbians, pro-lifers, etc. if I believe they – and indeed fellow human beings in general – are being unfairly treated.

But on the level of public opinion and judgment, I believe that personal emotions should be assiduously got out of the way, to leave room for only facts and considerations based on democratic processes and the due operations of law.

In this particular case of the Aware debacle, it is clear that the change of leadership was legitimate and democratic, although unusual, unexpected and even shocking.

My stand therefore is to let the new leadership prove itself. They have already stated that they are committed to the principles upon which Aware was founded. Give them time to prove this commitment.

If it turns out to be otherwise, that’s an issue that can be dealt with in its own time and place. But to judge the new leadership on suspicions and speculations is, to me, not quite right.

Singapore as a nation prides itself on being a pluralistic, inclusive and open society that readily adapts to changing conditions, which is why, for instance, a traditionally conservative government has recently taken a more relaxed stance towards homosexuals, since they contribute well to the economic and artistic life of society.

But it is still an ambivalent stand: The laws against homosexual behaviour, paradoxically, remain. This sending out of mixed signals has encouraged two opposing groups, the liberals and the conservatives, to see this period as the best and most opportune time to push their own agenda.

Currently, we are seeing the moral issue of homosexuality as the centre of the conflict between the old and the new leaderships of Aware.

In the future, other related moral issues such as abortion, stem cell therapy, euthanasia and so on are likely to emerge.

Again and again, I would like to reiterate the importance, when adjudicating on sensitive moral issues at the public level, to take into account all views (no matter how repellent) and, ultimately, to consider the good of the society as a whole.

This is never easy, and compromises will have to be made, but it is the whole nature of the democratic processes that as a society we have embraced.

I expect that after all the emotional venting, the old and new guard of Aware will simply calm down, take sensible stock of the situation and see what they should do next.

I certainly hope that the saga will not reach a stage when the Government will have to intervene. Oh dear no, that will be about the worst that can happen in a state where the people already depend too much on the Government to make decisions for them.

The worst possible scenario: Organisations cry help whenever they can’t resolve their problems, the Government comes in, solves the problem quickly in accordance with its policies, there follows a steady politicisation of all social, moral and cultural issues, and eventually civic society is permanently enfeebled.’

Reports by Jamie Ee Wen Wei, Nur Dianah Suhaimi and Debbie Yong

---

The following is a feature on me by a Straits Times journalist, Stephanie Yap, published on August 9th as part of the National Day special.

---

To writer Catherine Lim, the Botanic Gardens will always be a place that inspires great poetry—though, admittedly, not her own.

The energetic 66-year-old chuckles as she casts her mind back almost 40 years, to one of the trips she and her former husband made with their two children, Jean and Peter.

The family used to visit the 52ha park in the heart of town every other weekend, toting a bagful of bread to feed the ducks, fish and turtles.

“We were walking out of the gardens and there was this gorgeous moon. Jean looked up and said: ‘Moon, moon, shining bright, stuck in heaven like a cake’,” recalls Dr Lim, cackling with delight.

“My ex-husband was so pleased and excited that when we got home, he made her repeat it. He wrote proudly: ‘Jean Lim’s poem, at age three years, four months’.”

When the children got older, the family stopped going to the Botanic Gardens.

Jean, now 42, is a doctor in Hong Kong, while Peter, 40, is a journalist in the United States. Dr Lim’s former husband, George, whom she divorced in 1984, lives in Canada.

However, about 15 years ago, the writer started returning to the park on her own, and now visits about twice a month, enjoying a two-hour stroll in the evenings.

“I live in this little box in the sky, so it is absolutely refreshing to hear the chirping of crickets and other sounds you would never associate with urban life,” she says. She lives in a condominium in Newton.

“It never ceases to amaze me that in the midst of the city, you can be in the midst of a jungle, doing a little jungle walk. It is almost like a luxury to me.”

It is clear when you meet Dr Lim that she is an urbanite through and through.

She had mentioned over the phone that she would be wearing her exercise outfit, which turns out to be an off-the-shoulder black top with leggings, paired with a leopard print newsboy cap and a matching scarf.

The amiable writer is soon chatting away like an old friend as she steers you deftly along the most shady paths.

“Sometimes, I sit on the bench and look at the water. I feel a little bit too abashed to bring bread to feed the fish, but I think one of these days, I will do that.”

She nudges you playfully and gestures to a couple lying together on the grass.

“I once saw a couple with their limbs all entangled, rolling down a slope. Luckily, they were fully clothed. I remember I was so amazed, but they couldn’t be bothered,” she says, breaking into laughter again.

That amorous pair would not be out of place in the vast army of characters that Dr Lim has created over the past 30 years, from insensitive teachers and. suicidal schoolgirls in her debut short story collection Little ironies (1978), to her own philosophical, post-death self in Unhurried Thoughts At My Funeral (2005), a work of creative non-fiction.

Such a Singaporean literary icon is she that it can be easy to forget she was actually born across the Causeway, in the town of Kulim, Kedah, in then-Malaya. She immigrated to Singapore only at the age of 26.

“I did not choose to come here, actually. I got married to a Singaporean and he finally decided to leave Malaysia,” she says.

Both teachers, she and her former husband spent most of their time working to support their young family.

Still, Dr Lim has vague memories of family outings to the Botanic Gardens, Changi beach, Glutton’s Square and the old Robinson’s department store at Raffles Place which was destroyed by fire in 1972.

But she is not one to weep over the disappearing buildings in Singapore’s ever-changing cityscape.

“I am probably less sentimental than most. I am a pragmatist and I feel that sometimes these things have to go,” she says.

“The external surroundings to me are far less important than the inner landscape. It doesn’t matter if you tear down a building, but values must remain and must be preserved for younger people to be aware of.”

That said, one place she holds dear is Singapore itself.

“I love Singapore—there’s no question about that. This is the place where I am very happy,” she says, explaining why she has chosen to remain here while both her children live abroad.

“I want to see the tulips in Holland and the cherry blossoms in Japan. But after a stay of less than a month, I am only too happy to come back.”

Below is a feature on my first book, Little Ironies: Short Stories of Singapore, by a Sunday Times columnist, Stephanie Yap, published on August 3rd.

---

In the eighth of a monthly column featuring groundbreaking works of local literature, we look at Little Ironies, which exposes the cruel streak in human nature with humour and compassion

As the doyenne of Singapore writers, Catherine Lim’s trademark wit and keen observation is apparent in Little Ironies (1978), her first collection of short stories. Poignant and dark, they tend to focus on a single character’s thoughts and actions, with the full repercussions of the character’s decisions revealed in a surprising, but never outlandish, twist only at the end.

About the everyday life of adolescent Singapore, the book portrays a people who are just beginning to learn to straddle East and West, tradition and modernity. A lot of the colour and drama in the stories centres on the practice of Chinese traditions, and how these ancient rituals reflect eternal elements of human behaviour.

In The Father, a dissolute man buys food for the grave of the young daughter he has beaten to death, even as his still-living children starve. In Lottery, a woman becomes obsessed with drawing 4-D numbers from random occurrences at the expense of practicality and propriety.

In Paper, one of the most heart-rendingly ironic stories, a man plays the stock market with the aim of buying his dream house, which he lovingly envisions ‘from the aluminium sliding doors to the actual shade of the dining room carpet to the shape of the swimming pool. Kidney. He rather liked the shape’.

When the stock market crashes and his hard-earned cash and ‘paper gains’ go up in smoke, he dies of despair. For his funeral, his aged mother buys him a paper version of the house he had died for: ‘seven feet tall, a delicate framework of wire and thin bamboo strips… There was a paper swimming pool (round, as the man had not understood ‘kidney’) which had to be fitted inside the house itself, as there was no provision for a garden or surrounding grounds.’ She sends it to him in the afterlife by burning it.

In Lim’s stories, the best-made plans of mice and men are foiled by fate, as well as people’s own hypocrisy, selfishness or foolishness. Teachers are portrayed particularly badly in The Teacher and Adeline Ng Ai Choo, both stories about students who commit suicide, the warning signs all but ignored by their narrow-minded teachers who prefer to pick on their students’ shoddy grammar and poor marks.

And there is the age-old conflict between the old and the young. In Monster, an old woman clings to her ancestral furniture even as her daughter-in-law complains of the bugs they attract. The daughter-in- law shows the old woman some respect in her dying days only when she realises that the monstrous bed the old woman sleeps on could be worth a fortune as an antique.

Not that this depressing book makes you give up hope entirely on humankind. Lim’s humour and compassion shine through, especially in the stories which have an element of comeuppance or redemption.

In The Journey, a man who has risen from his ‘ulu’ village in Malaysia to become a prosperous businessman in Singapore discovers he has cancer. He ends up eschewing expensive treatment overseas to go back to his village, much to the horror of his Westernised wife.

The effectiveness of traditional medicine might be questionable but the love of the women who raised him is not.

Though Lim’s short story collection could be seen to represent Singapore at a significant juncture of its development, it is more than a comment on a particular society at a particular time. It is also a timeless portrayal of human nature: the self-centred actions that govern us, the easy cruelties we inflict upon one another.

Doyenne of Writers

Catherine Lim, 66, has published more than 10 collections of short stories, five novels, two poetry collections, as well as numerous political commentaries. She has received local and regional prizes, including three National Book Development Council awards, the Montblanc-NUS Centre For The Arts Literary Award and the Southeast Asian Write Award. Her short stories have also been used as literature texts for the O levels.

She was made a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2003, and in 2005 was appointed an ambassador of the Hans Christian Andersen Foundation in Copenhagen.

Born in 1942 in the town of Kulim in Malaysia, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Malaya in 1963. She received her PhD in Applied Linguistics from the National University of Singapore in 1988, and also attended Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley, in 1990 as part of the Fulbright programme.

She immigrated to Singapore in 1967 at the age of 26, where she has lived ever since. Originally a teacher, she later became a project director with the Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore and a specialist lecturer with the Regional Language Centre, teaching socio-linguistics and literature. She resigned to become a full-time writer in 1992.

She is divorced and has two grown children.

---

Little Ironies by Catherine Lim costs $14.91 with GST, available in limited quantities at Select Books (tel: 6732-1515, www.selectbooks.com.sg). It can also be borrowed from most branches of the National Library; the call number is SING LIM.