Singapore Swing

by John Malathronas

  ‘Now, this is not really serious research. But I’ve noticed that one-party governments whether elected or not, tend to last for seventy years at most. It’s some king of magic number. The Soviet Union. The PRI in Mexico. The Kuomintang in China, then Taiwan.’

  So when is Singapore due a change?

  He thinks for a second and he bursts out laughing: ‘Good God, 2030.’

  I expected someone who corresponded to Private Eye’s image of ‘Spart’: one-issued, tunnel-visioned, humourless. I had not bargained for an individual who is warm, witty and very intensely human.

  ‘You can’t take life too seriously,’ he responds.

  Although middle-aged, he can convincingly cut two decades off his age; I tell him that. He chooses to ignore it.

  ‘Lee Kuan Yew – how old is he now? He had his eightieth birthday a few years ago and,’ he pauses ominously, ‘his father died around the age of a hundred. But physically he is frail. The change is visible. Of course, that doesn’t mean people are not frightened of him.’

  I wonder how many streets are they going to name after him when he dies.

  Alex laughs. ‘People will be confused! Look at how many Raffles places we have. The airport will go first.’

  The jokes underline one fact. For someone whose personal signature is all over Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew has kept a remarkably low profile: not even a stamp bears his portrait. Those who call him a dictator don’t know enough about dictatorships.

  Although now dubbed a ‘human rights activist’ by The Straits Times, Alex started as a gay activist. He is the intrepid Yawning Bread, the author of the website I discovered at Changi airport, who has been criticising the government for more than a decade: like my Singapore Paranormal Investigators, he’s another online character whom I just had to meet in person.

  I tell him that his blogs are extremely well-written.

  He thanks me with that permanent disarming smile. ‘I know the government reads them. And The Straits Times. To get story ideas.’

  I admire him. Not only because of his incisive commentary, but also because of his courage; this is Singapore, not Sydney.

  ‘It doesn’t take much courage,’ he says. ‘In the beginning my blog was more involved with gay issues. Over time, I have become more political. How many times can you write about gay marriage? After a while you’ve lost the public. But I suppose I’ve also changed myself. The entries were shorter in the beginning. They are longer now: more serious, less partisan.’

  Is he not afraid?

  ‘After ten years I think I know very well where the lines are. And because I think I know where the lines are, I feel safe that I won’t trip myself up. The most gratifying thing is that it’s not just me. Other people in the gay community watch what I do and use me as an example of what they can do. They say: if Alex can write that, then I can, too, lah. I hope that I function as some kind of catalyst, because the most vulnerable position for any community to be in is to have only one leader. If that leader disappears, then that’s it. In Singapore’s gay community there are many leaders now doing different things – though not necessarily in sync with each other.’

  He laughs again.

  ‘Singapore can be a fascinating little place. When I look around South East Asia, this bloody little city seems to be in the lead. Everybody wants to form his own gay group. We even have a gay, non-denominational church. They have no money, of course, so they operate out of a large room near a cinema that regularly screens low-brow sexually-titillating films. Halfway through their Sunday services if you excuse yourself to go to the loo, you are cruised.’

  Alex has long been the face of People Like Us, the country’s first – though not last – gay organisation. Unlike SPI they are unregistered. Singapore’s bureaucrats may be ready to embrace the paranormal but are terrified to regularise the habitual.

  ‘We applied twice for registration, but the authorities turned the application down. And in Singapore it is a criminal offence to be a member of an illegal organisation, a law from the time of the secret societies. But now with the AIDS epidemic, they need us. So a minister invited me – and others – for an informal chat. The day before, his PA called me to ask me what my name tag should say, so I told her. And when I arrived, there it was: “Alex Au, People Like Us”. There I was, a member of an organisation that is not supposed to exist, discussing AIDS measures with a minister. What do you call that?’

  Absurd?

  ‘I call it pragmatic. When they need us, they don’t care about the rules.’

  But the rules are there to catch them out, if ever the authorities want to.

  Alex nods sagely. ‘I’ll tell you something really absurd. I had organised a public poetry reading once, and we had to submit every word of every poem for vetting. Now, poets being flurry creatures, in the last minute some went, “I don’t want to read this poem, I’ll read another” or they changed the order or whatever. So we were concerned, because there were two persons at the back checking what was being recited. But did anything happen? No.’

  I abhor censorship.

  ‘You’ll like this, then. As you know Singapore retains the death penalty for several offences. Someone organised a play in December 2005 about the death penalty. They had the permit, they had weeks of rehearsals, everything. Just by chance, the opening night was the day after a very high-visibility hanging. I think it was a Vietnamese Australian who was caught smuggling drugs. So the MDA – Media Development Authority, how Orwellian is that? – withdrew the licence. But – and here the fun starts – they also tried to be helpful and expedited the approval of a new play that was written hastily, two days before it was scheduled to be performed.’

  Two days. Was that enough time?

  ‘That’s the point. They couldn’t. And they had sold tickets, they had committed themselves to renting the theatre space and so on. The playwright wrote a play about a father–son relationship within 48 hours but they had no time to rehearse it.’

  I fall over laughing – it sounds so comical.

  ‘Yes, it was funny. Every single line was whispered from the sides and the actors repeated it. Which served a different purpose: it was as if some unseen power was telling them what to say and what not to, which is what had happened in reality. So, a play about the death penalty was turned into another play about censorship.’

  How very Ionesco.

  ‘This was truly absurd, yes. But normally they are pragmatic in the way they do things. For instance, there was a case once of HIV transmission from mother to baby during pregnancy. Now, there is evidence from clinical studies that if HIV drugs are administered to a pregnant woman early on, there is a very good chance that the baby will be born virus-free. So they passed a law that every woman who shows up in a maternal clinic must be tested for HIV.’

  The means justify the ends?

  ‘Do you know how they dealt with the SARS epidemic? With a surveillance camera mounted in your home! It worked like this: I serve you a notice of quarantine that you must stay in your room for seven days. How do I check on you? Answer: I install a video camera in your living-room and, on unexpected moments, an officer who sits in an air-conditioned office miles away, dials you number: “Mrs Lim, please tell all six members of your family to come and smile.” They all parade in front of the camera. “Thank you Mrs Lim. Sorry for the disturbance.” Now the officer can call at any time. If you think the UK is bad with all these CCTV cameras on the streets, what do you say to that?’

  I don’t know. What does one do?

  ‘I don’t know either whether to defend it or not, but it worked. We were free from SARS.’

  The Singapore way.

  - 27 -

  The waiter has arrived and I can’t help noticing that fried carrot cake is on the menu. I chuckle: ‘It sounds like something the Scots could have concocted,’ I say to Alex and proceed to explain the toe-curling concept of deep-fried Mars Bars. I can tell he is bewildered.

  ‘It’s nothing like that,’ h
e protests. ‘It’s not sweet and there’s no carrots. It’s like a pancake with shrimps and radish. Quite tasty.’

  I am feeling brave, so I order it, along with char kway teow, a local dish of fried flat noodles with soy, chilli and prawns. The search for the perfect char kway teow in Singapore is akin with the one for the Holy Grail, what with everyone recommending this hawker stall and that; let’s give Raffles a try.

  Like two conspirators, we wait for the waiter to leave before we continue talking about Singapore’s reputation. ‘Singapore deserves a mixed reputation, and it gets a bad reputation,’ Alex says.

  I agree that it’s grossly undeserved. Some unfortunate decisions like banning the importation of chewing gum, were picked up heavily by the media. Guess what – we now have similar laws in London regarding littering streets with chewing gum: penalty £1000. Is Singapore leading the way? I ask in jest.

  Alex jumps on my comment. ‘Yes! Where did your mayor get the idea about electronic road pricing? Your Oyster Card– isn’t it based on our ez-link card? And didn’t Tony Blair introduce detention without trial?’

  Singapore has been branded as a preserve of intolerance, but what I see is different; there is a lot of tolerance in the city-state judging by its people and its leadership.

  ‘The problem here,’ he says ‘is that the PAP treats its direct opponents very badly. They were detained without trial, they have no voice in the mainstream media, they are hit with defamation suits… But it doesn’t mean that the government treats its citizens badly. The distinction is too fine for the Western media and it sells no papers. “Lee Kuan Yew as a tyrant” sells.’

  I agree. I have read a university thesis positing that Raffles is being brandied as the creator of Singapore and its previous Malay past expunged, because it makes it easier for the people to accept a one-man-leadership in modern times: Lee Kuan Yew’s. The idea might appeal in the confines of an academic ivory tower, but it makes no sense on the field. Just a short walk in town will demonstrate that Singaporeans have not averted their gaze from their pre-Raffles past – the opposite is true: excavations, exhibitions and plaques seek to shed light on its pre-colonial history, obsessively one might say.

  Alex looks at his hands which he keeps binding and unbinding together.

  ‘People email me and ask me “What shall I do at customs when I arrive in Singapore. What can I bring? What CDs? What DVDs?”’

  I snigger. I have seen my own books displayed in bookshops. I have seen some dissidents’ books, too. Travel guides warn you that if customs find any books in your luggage, they can charge you $75 – the administrative cost for the censors to read them for approval. Then, when you arrive, they wave you through.

  ‘Exactly. The point is, the laws are there and can be used to threaten you so you exercise self-control. They’re not really after you. They want the penalty to be there, so that you worry about it. They want you to control yourself so that they don’t have to control you, but the moment you free yourself from that worry, you are a lot more liberated.’

  There is one thing that can enhance Singapore’s reputation: its multicultural character and the success it has in race relations. Lee Kuan Yew tried hard to forge a sense of nationhood after the riots and the split with Malaysia, what with competitions to find a national flower and all, but he succeeded.

  ‘They tried very hard. There was a time – I would think something like the late 1970s early 1980s – when they decided they had to invent a National Costume.’ Alex falls back laughing. ‘The Malays had one, the Indians had one, the Scots had one, why the Greeks have one don’t they? So they decided that Singapore must have its own National Costume. And they came up with this Hawaiian shirt with orchids all over the place: utterly gaudy – so effeminate looking. It was sold in shops all over town. No one bought it. They all went bust.’

  I chortle.

  ‘They were trying very hard. I remember: the competition for the national flower and then came the national floral shirt. More like the great national embarrassment. Not one of their better ideas.’

  - 28 -

  The waiter arrives with our orders. I check the fried carrot cake. It looks like an omelette with prawns and white radish. It tastes fantastic and I’m a little disappointed; the only food whose reputation is deserved, must surely be the durian.

  I move to the subject of nationhood: Singapore seems to have succeeded where others failed dismally. Look at the Balkans and former Yugoslavia. They couldn’t stand each other –

  ‘…although they had to live together.’

  How very true. They were forced to choose, they had to belong. I mean, what makes a country? Can it be manufactured? Before partition Pakistan didn’t think of itself as separate from India.

  ‘You know the origin of the name Pakistan?’

  I thought it was the Land of the Pure.

  ‘Not quite. It is an acronym. They put together the initials of the Muslim provinces. “P” for Punjab, “a” for the Afghan areas of the region, “k” for Kashmir, “s” for Sind and “tan” for Baluchistan, thus forming “Pakstan”. The “i” was added in the English rendition of the name. The word also captured in the Persian language the concepts of “pak”, meaning “pure”, and “stan”, meaning “land” thus giving it indirectly the meaning “Land of the Pure”.’

  Alex sits back smugly.

  ‘They invented it! And you know what? Do you know there are Muslim Indians here in Singapore?’

  There are, in Farrer Park, around the Mustafa Centre.

  ‘Correct. Some of them are from South India and they still identify as Tamil, but most of them are from Northern India and their forefathers migrated before the break-up. But now they are starting to say: I’m Pakistani. How can that be? Your forefathers didn’t come from Pakistan ’cos Pakistan didn’t exist when your forefathers disembarked from the boat. That notion of Pakistani/ Singaporean: where did it come from? The concept would have been alien to their grandfather who came from “India”.’

  People are forced to identify.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Still, I come to Singapore and I observe how people of different races exist side by side in harmony. In order to make this explosive mixture – mainly the Malays and the Chinese – live together, an identity had to be forged – and was. How did they do it? By force? Did economic success bind communities? What will happen in a slump?

  Alex writhes in his seat.

  ‘We are generally civil to each other,’ he corrects me. ‘I don’t know if we live in harmony, but we are civil to each other. Have you tried to get a seat on an MRT train? Civility there goes out of the window!’

  I know, but by hook or by crook, the PAP have achieved something.

  ‘It is a question of practicalities, and yes there are many things that are wrong. But there are things that are very good,’ he concedes.

  I want to hear about those Singapore successes; maybe there are lessons to be learned for us in Britain. Many immigrants have arrived and very suddenly. We have a second generation of Muslims, some of whom are rejecting the values of the country they were born in. Plus we are crammed. Not as much as Singapore, but we are becoming more crammed, nevertheless. So guess what? The government is starting to micromanage the social relations – just like Singapore does. Has Alex heard of ASBOs?

  ‘What’s that?’

  They are Antisocial Behaviour Orders. If someone is behaving ‘antisocially’ then a magistrates’ court can order them not to approach a specific area. They impose a curfew. Some are extreme; one 17-year-old in Wales has been banned from the very street he lives in. So he can’t use his front door and is only allowed to use a footpath leading to the back of his house.

  Alex laughs. ‘That’s new to me. We haven’t gone that far yet.’

  I lean back, my mind spinning with theories. The more we grow in population and diversity, the more we seem to be imitating the ways of a country the Western press used to deride. Maybe there is no other way forward, bu
t Singapore’s.

  Alex sits up. ‘It may be politically incorrect to say that, but the reality is that people are not naturally nice to each other. Some degree of management has to be put in place until people learn to see the other person as the same kind as them. And I can tell you that we have such an example in Singapore’s history. When the Chinese migrants came here in large numbers – that would have been the latter decades of the nineteenth century, the early decades of the twentieth– people didn’t come here as Chinese. They came here as Cantonese, as Hokkien, Teochew and so on, because they spoke mutually unintelligible languages. They couldn’t even call a dish the same name. The city itself was ghettoised. There was a Cantonese area, a Hokkien area – here from the corner up was the Hainanese area – settlers from the island of Hainan. And if you were a Teochew straying into the Hainanese ghetto you were an alien. People used to identify themselves by the province.’

  He stops to drink some water. Alex doesn’t drink alcohol. He is not a teetotaller, but he’s not a great liquor fan either, avoiding it whenever he can.

  ‘After the overthrow of the last emperor, there was a surge of Chinese nationalism. The Chinese intellectuals said: “In order to make ourselves a country we need to unify these various provinces” – we are now talking mainland China. So they created the national language out of nowhere. The Mandarin you hear is a created language. It is based on the Peking high dialect. But it wasn’t spoken elsewhere like that– it was imposed. Because in the old days, when there was no technology, the Chinese communicated by letters, by script. People could read the words and they were the same everywhere. But if I read a letter aloud to you and I was Cantonese and you were Hokkien, you would not understand. Chinese script was perfect for running an empire: we don’t have to speak the same language as long as the same written character means the same to you and me. But to create a nation, they had to create a unified pronunciation – and they chose the Mandarin pronunciation of Peking – Beijing, see?’