The Party is in a panic. A week before the General Elections, all the signs point to overwhelming support for the Opposition, and a shocking loss of seats for the Party in Parliament.

‘What shall we do?’ asks Minister-in-Chief. ‘We’ve never seen this sort of thing before.’

‘I have an idea,’ says Assistant Minister Number One.

‘We’ll instill fear in the people. Fear is the strongest emotion. It always works.’

‘How do you propose to do that?’ asks Assistant Minister Number Two.

‘Here’s how. Announce that the Party has foiled a terrorist plot to destroy the society completely. Not by bombs, but by something more deadly. Biological weapons. If the Party had not caught the plotters in time, every man, woman and child would be dead, or blinded, crippled and rendered sterile for life. Make the announcement just a day before voting day, and watch the people rush to cast gratitude votes for the Party!’

The meeting turns to see the reaction of Minister Advisor Supremo who is sitting at the far end of the table. He is shaking his head, in obvious contempt of the proposal.

‘With due respect to Number One, fear is NOT the most powerful emotion,’ says Number Two. ‘You know what is? Greed. Why don’t we do this. Announce tomorrow that if the Party wins, everyone’s pocket will bulge with cash. From our vast reserves. Watch the people’s eyes gleam with the dollar sign, listen to the clicking calculators inside their heads as they decide on how much to spend on upgrading their apartments or taking the family on a vacation in Europe!’

Minister Advisor Supremo coughs to draw attention to the look of disdain on his face that says, ‘How idiotic can you all get!’

‘Fear. Greed. There’s a third emotion that is far more powerful than either of these two.’ Everyone turns to look at Assistant Minister Number Three who says very slowly, ‘Sympathy. That’s what it is.’

‘Sympathy?’ echoes Number One, frowning. ‘ What do you mean?’

‘Sympathy? Have you gone all soft or what?’ says Number Two with a look of disgust.

‘Let’s talk seriously, we don’t have time to lose,’ says Minister-in-Chief wearily.

‘Never under-rate this emotion in a crowd,’ explains Number Three patiently. ‘When people are swayed by it, they are like putty in your hands. They will give every single vote to the Party!’

‘And, pray, how do you propose to whip up this marvellous sympathy for the Party among the thousands of people who are getting ready to vote for the Opposition?’

‘Easy,’ says Number Three, enjoying the attention he’s getting. ‘An assassination. Or rather, an assassination attempt. On no less than Minister-in-Chief.’

‘What?’

‘A single shot from someone in the crowd, as Chief is doing his campaign walkabout. Screams. Pandemonium. The assassin is caught as he tries to get away. Chief is on the ground bleeding profusely. Mrs Chief is kneeling beside his body, sobbing. The moment is captured by the TV cameras and flashed all over the world. The people are in deep shock. They keep asking, ‘How can this happen? How seriously hurt is Chief? Will he die?’ The least they can do is vote for his party.’

‘Our best marksman—do you think he is expert enough to do the job, that is, wound Chief only slightly, say, in the arm or thigh? Suppose he misses his mark?’

‘Maybe Chief can wear a bulletproof vest—it won’t show under his shirt.’

‘What do you say, Chief?’

‘Well, I’m ready to go along if it’s for the good of the Party. But are you sure this sympathy thing will work?’

‘It’s been tried before in some countries, and apparently works quite well,’ says Number Three, gratified that his idea is catching on. ‘We can count on the women. The tears will be streaming down their faces, and they will make their men cast sympathy votes too.’

Now everyone turns to look at Minister Advisor Supremo who suddenly stands up. By now the look of scorn and rage on his face is fearful to behold. He glares at every face turned anxiously towards him, and says, ‘Can’t I make you understand after all these years of advising you? Isn’t it obvious that the best thing to do is to 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.

Last year, after it was clear that the media no longer wanted to publish my political commentaries—or only very selectively—I decided to go online and create my own website for them. But being abysmally ignorant of all new forms of technology, I sought the help of a friend who put me in touch with Junjie, a graduate from NTU who is now conducting photography courses in Singapore. From that moment, it was all go! Once he understood my needs and preferences, Junjie set about conceptualising, designing and then setting up the website and has since worked to continually update and improve it. In the process, he was even prepared to conspire with the camera to accommodate my many vanities, using only those pictures that cleverly disguised my age!

I fear that with such helpful technological virtuosos like Junjie around, I will continue to be a ‘techno-bodoh’ among digeratis.

Emotional responses to the ‘little people’ term unnecessary

by Lin Junjie

I read with amazement some of the responses to Dr Catherine Lim’s letter on the Mas Selamat affair published on Wednesday.

Mr Ooi Boon Hock wrote in to your newspaper on Friday accusing Dr Lim of being “very patronising in describing the officers” and “really out of sync”.

Some have even asked Dr Lim on her website for her definition of ‘little people’.

It should have been clear that she had in no way meant to disparage the officers punished in using the term. I believe Dr Lim would also have classified herself as ‘little people’ when compared with top politicians here.

In any case, it should be noted that the Straits Times editorial published on April 24 wrote: “If it is determined there was only one weak link, at junior escort level, then the people should stop carping about why it is usually small fish that get fried.”

The issue at hand–that the buck had stopped at the wrong place–should not be lost in the flurry of emotional responses just because some people have chosen to misread Dr Lim’s letter.

Was I disappointed? Yes, very. In casting my latest political commentary in the rather provocative format of an open letter, I was hoping to elicit some response from the Prime Minister himself, especially on the very sensitive topic of the climate of fear and the absence of political liberties in Singapore. Whatever his response, it would have provided a useful starting point for discussion and debate among interested and concerned Singaporeans, on what I feel is a very important matter.

Why was there no official reaction? One can only surmise. But I think the main reason is this: the present PAP Government will allow open debate ONLY on those topics that have created a public hue and cry, such as the emotionally-charged issues of CPF, the casinos, homosexuality. (This concession is actually a step forward from the old dispensation under Mr Lee Kuan Yew, when public consultation was an unheard of thing, and policy decisions were strictly and purely top-down) The issue of political freedom, however, is too abstract, maybe even too elitist, and certainly too removed from the exigencies of day-to-day living in our down-to-earth, materialistic society, to ever fire up enough Singaporeans to force the government to pay attention and allow discussion ( all of which exactly suit the PAP leaders ) I expect this state of affairs to go on for many years to come.

So will I give up trying? At age 65, I can’t count on another 14 years of active political engagement through my lectures and commentaries. But obstinacy need not be a bad thing, and I suppose I’ll go on playing my role as ‘self-appointed Government gadfly’ for as long as I can!