Time for Singapore shake-up

Mr Gomez is suggesting that a good dose of political development is vital for the process. Like all medicines, it might be uncomfortable for Mr Goh to swallow but in the long run he may find it was all for the best. Mr Goh made a public diagnosis of Singapore a couple of years ago and announced that for the long-term health of the city state it needed to become a successful international city -- and to do that it had to import foreign professional talent.

On a similar theme this week, Mr Goh said foreign talent was needed to help grow the economy, create jobs through investments and expertise, and strengthen international competition. His comments came after an emotional debate in which some Singaporeans, especially graduates and professionals, have been expressing fears that foreigners could take their jobs in an environment which has seen the tripling of the unemployment rate in the past year to 4.3 per cent.

Mr Gomez agrees with Mr Goh on the need to make Singapore a "global" city but they part company when it comes to one of the ways of achieving it -- reform of the political system.

"The need for reform is not just to reduce the hegemony of the ruling party but it is necessary for prosperity in the future," said Mr Gomez, senior researcher in the German-funded Friedrich Naumann Foundation regional office in Singapore.

"If we want to be an international city in arts and finance, we must have a liberal framework for that kind of activity."

"For our prosperity we must keep Singapore progressing in all things, not just economically. It must be in politics and culture as well so that development is holistic."

A Singaporean born and bred, Mr Gomez, is a graduate in politics from the National University of Singapore and the University of Essex.

In Perth to address a seminar organised by the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University, he said the first step in the political reform process must be to have an open discussion in Singapore rather than continuing the clampdown on freedom of expression which forced those with different ideas to conduct the debate overseas.

Mr Gomez, who expresses his views in a moderate way, has found that even he cannot get his articles on political reform published in the Straits Times newspaper. He has sympathy for the recently imprisoned dissident, Chee Soon Juan, who resorted to breaking restrictive regulations on freedom of speech.

"Calls for Dr Chee to pursue policy changes through the elctoral process is an untenable proposition," he said.

The reason Dr Chee had to try to open the debate was that the electoral process was deficient, he said.

Mr Gomez uses a telling statistic to support his argument. In the 1997 general election, 35 per cent of valid ballots cast for the opposition translated into just 2.4 per cent of the seats. That demonstrated that those in political disagreement could not even record the depth of their opposition to certain laws much less change them.

"The first past-the-post system is clearly not representative of the citizens -- that is clearly the continuing problem for politics in Singapore," he said.

Further proof lies in more statistics. From 1968 to 1984, the ruling People's Action Party won 100 per cent of the seats. In the four general elections since 1984, the opposition contested slightly less than 50 per cent of the seats. Although an average of 30 per cent of voters cast their ballots for the opposition, non-opposition candidates received between 1.2 per cent and 4.9 per cent of the seats.

Those sorts of figures cast doubt on the alleged political apathy of Singaporeans but demonstrate the gerrymandering.

When asked whether Singaporeans were, in fact, politically passive, Mr Gomez says that any such assessment had to be looked at in the context in which the general population did not have access to politically critical information even from a local professional analyst like himself.

There are 700,000 foreigners in Singapore, which has a population of 3.7 million, but they have no say in how the place is run.

Mr Gomez has some suggestions on how the overseas residents can be given a stake in the city -- a move which could be one of those that could help retain and attract the best people.

Mr Gomez suggested extending to certain foreigners some limited political rights such as a form of permanent residence and the right to vote in, for example, the local body elections -- as happens in other countries.