Thursday, January 06, 2022

Freak Elections

 

This time last year (January 6, 2021) the world was treated to the sight of hundreds of people storming the Capital Building in Washington DC. America’s Congress came under attack and its legislators were forced to flee.  However, unlike September 11, 2001, the attack on the US Capital was not the work of a “Mad Freedom Hating Muslim” extremist hiding in the caves of Afghanistan. The attacks were committed by Americans, who were for the records, mostly the ones of European decent (You could say they were as mainstream as it gets).

Like the terrorist who flew the jets into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon, the people who attacked the capital had a grievance.  They believed that they had been robbed because the candidate they had voted for, former US President Donald Trump, had lost. As far as they were concerned, this was a fraudulent and freaky election and something had to be done about it:

 

Copyright Aljazeera – This is what happens in S***hole countries  

For a world used to America as a global champion of competence, these images were shocking. From 15 December 1788 onwards, America had been the global example of how to transfer power peacefully. Elections were held. The winner celebrated but more importantly, the loser conceded peacefully. As with the case of the 2000 election, disputes were settled through the court system rather than through mob violence.

In very simple terms, it was news when Goodluck Jonathan handed over power peacefully to Muhammadu Buhari after losing the 2015 election in Nigeria because it had never happened before. However, this was not Nigeria (a country which the then President labeled as an S***hole) but America. Nobody should have imagined that a losing candidate would ever “not concede” when the results were clear (Fox News was very clear that there was no evidence of voter fraud despite what Fox Commentators were trying to tell them) let alone bring the mob into the picture.

I will leave a more detailed discussion on what happened a year ago to the better qualified. I will however, argue that the then occupant of the White House had presented his case to his base of voters that his losing would be a “freak” election. His case was simple – it was inconceivable for him to lose in normal circumstances and any “freak” result would be the result of some nefarious plotting and therefore bad.

Now, here’s the interesting question, how would Mr. Trump get the idea of painting any election defeat as a “freak” and therefore bad event? Well, I guess many things are going to be said about Mr. Trump, but I will argue that there is a possibility that the great snake oil salesman got his ideas from a self-appointed Chinese sage who was enjoying a second career as an international consultant on how to build a nation.

Back in 2008/2009, Mr. Lee actually raised the possibility that military intervention might have been necessary in the event of a “freak” election which would see the People’s Action Party (PAP) lose power. Whilst were noises of discontent on the ground, Mr. Lee’s party was in no danger of losing power and even with the loss of four seats in the 2011 election, his party’s dominance remains absolute by most standards.

Furthermore, Singapore along with Malaysia remained unusual for the region because both nations had a history of keeping out politics. Singapore’s selling point to the foreign investor community was the fact that power was decided by the ballot box rather than by the generals unlike say Thailand, Indonesia or Burma.

So, why would Mr. Lee who had done so much to “sell Singapore” to the foreign investor community raise the specter of something that had never happened before? Was it even possible for the military to play a role in politics? An analysis of the specter of military intervention can be found at:

http://kentridgecommon.com/military-action-in-the-event-of-a-freak-election-result-a-contemplation-of-such-a-scenario/  

Mr. Lee did distance himself from the specter of military intervention when questioned about it by the author Catherine Lim. He even mentioned that the system did provide “opposition” parties with every opportunity to succeed and even mentioned that if the PAP deserved to lose because it got incompetent or corrupt, it would deserve to lose.

A more comprehensive report on Mr. Lee’s remarks can be found in the following report:

https://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20090904-165691.html

Whilst the 2 September 2009 remarks did distance Mr. Lee from raising specter of the possibility of military intervention, it was very clear that he believed that a “freak” election result meant “non-PAP” government and the automatic assumption was that it would inevitably be incompetent – as was very clear in his remarks several months earlier:

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2008/06/27/lky-one-freak-election-result-is-all-it-takes-to-wipe-spore-out  

As a rule of thumb, Singapore’s elections are as certain as death and taxes. The electorate has shown that it does want the government run by the PAP but it wants the government to understand that it is ultimately responsible to the electorate. So, for years, the electorate kept Mr. Low Thia Khiang in Hougang and Mr. Chiam See Tong in Potong Pasir despite the best efforts of the government to unseat them. However, in 2011, the electorate showed that even with two unshakeable opposition politicians, the PAP wasn’t listening to its bosses and so, they sacked the PAP team in Aljunied and gave Mr. Low’s Worker’s Party the seeds of being an actual effective opposition voice.

What happened? Once again, much has been said about the 2011 election but what is clear was that whilst the people still respected Mr. Lee as an elder statesman, they were tiered of the “self-serving sermons.” A party that had done so much to build the nation should have remembered that the way to ensure that a “freak” election would no happen would be by ensuring that the voters would never have a reason to create one. Scaring voters with talk about a “freak” election backfired because instead of focusing on why one would take place, they focused on the negatives of what would happen if they were not in power.

In all fairness, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew did many good things for Singapore and it was good that he was able to share much of his wisdom with the world. His success in the shape of a shinning Singapore was his calling card. However, while it is ironic, if Mr. Lee’s greatest contribution to the world might come from his last disappointment where politicians get the idea that scaring voters away from kicking them out of power backfires, thus forcing them to do their jobs to ensure that the voters will not have a reason to remove them.

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