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:
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:
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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