Nonsense to link success with
Asian values, says Tang
Straits Times. Nov 30,1997
BY Shahiron Sahari in Sydney
LAWYER Tang Liang Hong told a forum on political dissent yesterday in Sydney that it was wrong to say the current Asian economic crisis was due to bad Asian values, just as it was "political nonsense" to give credit to Asian values for the region's success.
He said "Asian values" were so vague that it was very convenient for governments in the region to use the concept to justify their actions.
Asia's economies were successful over the past 30 years, he added, because of hard work and not any "political nonsense".
He said Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew could not alone claim credit for Singapore's economic success, noting that Japan, Korea and Taiwan did not have someone like Mr Lee and yet were successful.
"Singapore was always ahead of the rest of south east Asia," he said. "People got together and worked hard to build the country."
He was speaking at the forum at the University of Technology. The two-day event was organised by the Singapore and Malaysia Human Rights Association. He said the use of legal suits was a means of ensuring there would be no opposition or dissent, just like the constant re-zoning of constituencies, the Group Representation Constituency concept and detention without trial under the Internal Security Act.
He said the People's Action Party (PAP) had improved and perfected its method of crushing opponents, and the latest was the legal process.
"They want to claim the moral authority to rule Singapore," he said, adding that Singapore's ministers "must not be seen to have done any wrong" so they could be accorded the status of junzi, Mandarin for "Confucian gentlemen".
The result was that, "with very few exceptions, all right-minded individuals feared to come forward to offer themselves as opposition candidates ... and yet, the opposition votes keep rising."
Mr Tang now lives in Melbourne. The 40-strong audience included students, working adults and immigrants from Singapore and Malaysia.
The other presenter yesterday was Father James Minchin. The author of No Man Is An Island, a book on SM Lee, said Singapore's means of internal control was built around two principles.
One was establishing order. The other was inculcating a receptive ethos among the people, with the Government managing most affairs in the lives of citizens.