Appendix A (Authoritarian Theory)

 

a.             Story of Authoritarian Theory

When Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type in the 1400s, making mass production of the written word possible, authorities were enthusiastic. Early print­ers produced Bibles and religious tracts, which were consistent with the values of the intertwined institutions of state and church. It did not occur to anybody that the new invention might be used for heretical or traitorous purposes. Later, occasional tracts appeared that challenged the authorities, but their threat was easily dismissed be­ cause, even in the early 1500s, printing was still mostly in Latin, which could be read-only by the ruling elite. Most common people were unable to read even their native language, let alone Latin. The printed word seemed an unlikely vehicle for the foments of popular revolution.

 

Within two generations, however, the comfortable relationship between the au­thorities and the fast-growing printing industry changed, and authorities clamped down. What happened in England was typical. In 1529, after Dutch tracts that chal­lenged royal authority began showing up in England, King Henry \/Illoutlawed im­ported publications. He also decreed that every English printer must be licensed. Printers caught producing anything objectionable to the Crown lost their licenses, in effect being put out of business. Remaining in the government's good graces brought favours. A license guaranteed a local monopoly and a lock on government and church printing jobs. Henry VIII's clampdown, a turnabout in official  attitudes toward the press, was triggered by major social and political changes that were occurring in England:

 

I.  Literacy was increasing. More common people were learning to read. It became apparent that wider literacy increased the possible effect of seditious and  heretical ideas on the general population.

 

    II.          A mercantile class was emerging. Merchants and tradespeople were accumulat­ing modest wealth, which permitted discretionary time in their lives and the lives of their families. This mercantile class, not needing to work from dawn to dusk to survive, had sufficient time to contemplate matters of state and religion and things in general. These were people who read, and a sense was developing among them that their interests as a group did not always coincide with the Crown's.

 

   III.          Parliament was developing as an expression of the popular will. Mercantilists found Parliament could be a powerful forum for challenging the Crown's policies, and they began using it to those ends.

 

  IV.          Printers were becoming bolder. The growing volume of material produced by the young printing industry included more political books and tracts, some disturbing to the Crown. The Crown perceived the threat as being all the worse because printed words were more frequently in English, not Latin, which dramatically increased their potential to stir up the masses.

 

Frederick Siebert, a scholar on the authoritarian English press, describes the main function of the mass media in an authoritarian system this way: "To support and advance the policies of government as determined by the political machinery then in operation." Siebert's phrase "then in operation" points out how fickle an author­itarian system can be. In 1530, when England under Henry VIII was still a Catholic state, a man was executed for selling a book by a Protestant author. Only 50 years later, after the government had rejected Catholicism, a printer was executed for printing a Catholic pamphlet. In an authoritarian system the media are subservient to gov­ernment and adjust their content to coincide with changes in government policy.

 

Through human history, more people have lived in authoritarian political systems than any other.

 

b.    Authoritarian Control

Censorship is usually thought of as an authoritarian method to control the mass media, but censorship is labor intensive and inefficient. Other methods include li­censing, bribery and repression.

 

I. CENSORSHIP. Authoritarian regimes have found numerous ways, both blatant and subtle, to control the mass media. Censorship is one. The most thorough cen­soring requires that manuscripts be read by government agents before being printed or broadcast. To work, prepublication censorship requires a government agent in every newsroom and everywhere else that mass media messages are produced. This is hardly practicable, although governments sometimes establish elaborate censorship bureaucracies during wartime to protect sensitive military information and to ban in­ formation that runs counter to their propaganda. Even democracies like the United States and Israel have required reporters to run battlefield stories past censors.

 

    II.         LICENSING. Authoritarian governments generally favor less obtrusive methods of control than censorship. Henry VIII introduced licensing, that limited the printing trade to people who held royal patents. The mechanism for bestowing these licenses rested with the Stationers Company a printers' trade association. Royal patents were available only to association members, and membership was tightly controlled.  To stay in the Crown's favor, the Stationers Company expelled members who produced forbidden materials, in effect putting them out of business.

 

Four hundred years later, Nazi Germany used a more complex system. Under the guise of improving the quality of news, entertainment, and culture, Joseph Goebbels. the minister of propaganda and public enlightenment, established guilds to which "cultural workers" were required to belong. There were "chambers," as these guilds were called, for advertising, film, literature, music, the press, radio and theatre. The chambers could deny membership to cultural workers whose work did not qualify. As Nazi anti-Semitism became frenzied, the chambers shifted their membership cri­ terbia to exclude Jews. Membership in the press chamber, for example, was limited to third-generation Aryans.

 

The Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. who came to power in 1936, employed rigid licensing. News organizations could hire only people listed on an official regis­ter of journalists. To be on the list required graduation from one of Franco's three­ year journalism schools, which wove political indoctrination into the curriculum. The success of the schools, from Franco's perspective, was further assured because the ad­ mission was limited to students who were sympathetic to him.

 

   III.         BRIBERY. Germany's "Iron Chancellor," Otto von Bismarck maintained an immense fund for bribery of editors, which kept much of the German press of the 1860s on his side. The practice is institutionalized today in much of the impoverished Third World, where journalists, earning barely subsistence salaries, accept gratuities on the side for putting certain stories in the paper and on the air.

 

Bribery can also occur when a government controls supplies that are necessary for the media to function. Franco cut newsprint deliveries to a Spanish newspaper in the early 1960s after several pro-monarchist articles appeared. In Mexico, a country with no newsprint manufacturing plants, PIPSA, a quasi-governmental agency, allo­cates imported newsprint. The goal, purportedly, is to ensure an even stream of pa­per to newspapers and magazines. In practice, however, a correlation exists between articles unfavorable to the regime and either interruptions in paper delivery or the de­livery of inferior paper. The publisher of a slick magazine gets the message quickly when PIPSA claims that it can supply only rough pulp. This is subtle bribery: Publi­cations that play ball with the regime receives a payoff in supplies essential for doing business.

 

  IV.         REPRESSION. Authoritarian rulers are at their most obvious when they arrest media people who challenge their authority. Execution is the ultimate sanction. Al­though such extreme action usually comes only after not before, an article critical of the regime appears, it still has a chilling effect on other journalists. To learn that a fellow journalist was dragged away in the middle of the night for writing a critical article is mighty intimidating to other journalists who are considering similar pieces.

 

c.   Nature of Truth

Authoritarian media systems make sense to anyone who accepts the premise that the government, whether embodied in a king or a dictator, is right in all that it says and does. Such a premise is anathema to most Americans, but a mere 400 years ago, it was mainstream Western thought. King James VI of Scotland, who later became King James I of England, made an eloquent argument for the divine right of kings in 1598. He claimed that legitimate kings were anointed by the Almighty and thereby were better able to express righteousness and truth than anyone else. By definition, therefore, anybody who differed with the king was embracing falsity and probably heresy.

 

The authoritarian line of reasoning justifies suppression on numerous grounds:

I.Truth. Truth is a monopoly of the regime. Commoners can come to know it only through the ruler, who, to King James's thinking, has an exclusive pipeline to the Almighty. Advocates of authoritarianism have little confidence in individuals.

 

    II.         Falsity. Challenges to the government are based on falsity. It could not be other­wise, considering the premise that government is infallible.

 

   III.         Stability. Without a strong government, the stability necessary for society to func­tion may be disrupted. Because challenges to government tend to undermine sta­bility and because the challenges are presumed to be false to begin with, they must be suppressed.

 

To the authoritarian mind, mass communicators who support the government are purveying truth and should be rewarded. The unfaithful who criticize are spreading falsity and should be banished. It all makes sense if King James's divine right theory is correct. It was no wonder that sedition was a high crime.

 

An inherent contradiction in authoritarianism is the premise that a ruler is uniquely equipped to know the truth. Experience over the centuries makes it clear that monarchs and dictators come in many stripes. Regimes have been known to change in midstream, as in Henry VIII's change of heart on Roman Catholicism. A fair ques­tion to put to authoritarian advocates is whether Henry was right when he was a Catholic or later after he had rejected Catholicism.

 

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Appendix B (Soviet-Communist Theory)

 

a.             Story of Soviet-Communist Theory

The German philosopher Karl Marx who wrote in the mid-1800s had the idea that humankind was evolving toward a perfect state. As Marx saw it, people would eventually be living in such perfect social harmony that they would not even need gov­ernment to maintain social order. The process, he said, might take a long time-cen­turies perhaps-but the evolution was inevitable. In the interim, Marx called for governments to recognize the inevitability of history and adopt policies to hasten the evolution toward the perfect state. The mass media, he said, should be the government's partners in facilitating these undeniable historical processes.

 

In the early years of the 20th century, many Russian revolutionaries, intent on overthrowing the authoritarian regime of the czars and modernizing their country, espoused Marx's ideas.

 

In 1917, when the Bolsheviks replaced the provisional government set up after the abdication of Czar Nicholas II, they established a political system inspired by Marxism, and it became the prototypical communist state until the collapse of the Soviet Union in1991. Although the Soviet Union's successor states have moved away from the communist model the media system of the former Soviet Union remains the best way to understand how the media are designed to work in China and other re­maining communist states, such as Cuba.

 

b.    Unified with Government

Authoritarian and communist media are structured differently. Most authoritar­ian systems are rooted in capitalism. The mass media are owned by people whose business is to make money, and the profit motive is a major factor in deciding what goes to print and what is put on the air. In general, authoritarian governments inter­fere only on issues that directly affect the government's ability to stay in power and maintain social order. Most of the time, the media in authoritarian states operate in­dependently of government.

 

In communist countries, the economic structure is socialist. Unconcerned about profit, communist media people choose to provide coverage that furthers the gov­ernment's ideological goals. In fact, media decision-makers usually are government officials chosen because they are in tune with Marx's central idea on the inevitabil­ity of historical processes. When the Soviet Union was in full flower as a communist state, for example, the editors of the leading publications all were high officials in the Communist Party. One media scholar called this system akin to having the vice pres­ident of the United States editing the Washington Post.

 

In practice, communist governments and media often fall short of their ideolog­ical mandate and appear authoritarian. Still, Marxist roots show through. A Polish journalist who defected to the United States when Poland was still a communist state gave this account of a gang rape he covered: "The story did not appear in its origi­nal form. The details of the incident were heavily toned down, as they would have marred the image of happy and idealistic youngsters building socialism." In an au­thoritarian system, by contrast, ideology would not be a factor in deciding how to report such a story.

 

Also unlike authoritarian systems, communist media criticize the government. Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, the media were loaded with stories on official bungling and inefficiency, though usually at a low level, such as a factory com­missar who was looking the other way at warehouse thievery. Typical was "Bring the Parasites to Account," a Pravda story on chronic production shortages, which were blamed on bad managers. Soviet newspapers and magazines invited readers to be whistle-blowers. The accusations were investigated, and the resulting stories were in­ tended to discourage practices that were retarding the arrival of a perfect state.

 

Off-limits in the communist media, however, was criticism of a Marxist ideology, which was accorded the sacred respect that ultimate truth deserves.

 

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Appendix C (Libertarian Theory)

 

a.             Story of Libertarian Theory

An English writer; John Milton, was the pioneer libertarian. In his 1644 pamphlet Areopagitica, Milton made a case for free expression based on the idea that individ­ual human beings were capable of discovering truth if given the opportunity. Milton called for a marketplace of ideas in which people could choose from the whole range of human ideas and values, just as shoppers feel and examine a lot of fruits and veg­etables at the produce market until they find the best. Milton's marketplace of  ideas was not a place but a concept. It existed whenever people exchanged ideas, whether in conversation, letters or the printed word.

 

Milton was eloquent in his call for free expression. He saw no reason to fear any ideas, no matter how subversive, because human beings would inevitably choose the best ideas and values. "Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?" he wrote. Milton reasoned that people would gain confidence in their own ideas and values if they tested them continually against alternative views. It was an argument against censorship. People need to have the fullest possible selection in the marketplace if they are going to go home with the best product, whether vegetables or ideas. Also, bad ideas should never be ex­cluded from the marketplace because, no matter how obnoxious, they might contain a grain of truth that makes them worth considering.

 

Milton acknowledged that people sometimes err in sorting out alternatives, but these mistakes are corrected as people continually reassess their values against competing values in the marketplace. Milton saw this truth-seeking as a never-ending, life­ long human pursuit, which meant that people would shed flawed ideas and values for better ones over time. Later libertarians called this a self-righting process.

 

 

Appendix D (Social Responsibility Theory)

 

a.             Challenges to Libertarian Theory

The novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair raised questions about the integrity of newspapers in his novel The Brass Check, published in 1919. Sinclair offered a look inside an imaginary newsroom in which powerful interests could bribe their way into print. He outlined how newspapers could abuse their freedom.

 

The doubts that Sinclair planted about the news media grew. Many Americans were bothered about one-sidedness in newspapers, especially as consolidations re­duced the number of competing newspapers. Orson Welles' 1941 movie Citizen Kane, based on newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, further undermined public confidence in the people who controlled newspapers. So did the quirkiness of other prominent publishers, such as Rohen McCormick_ who turned the Chicago Tribune into a campaign vehicle for simplified spellings such as "thru" for "through," "frate" for "freight" and "buro" for "bureau." McCormick was always quick to defend his eccentricities, as well as the Tribune's blatantly right-wing news coverage, in the name of a free press. Americans, imbued with libertarian idealism, were hesitant to challenge McCormick and other media barons,  but there were grow­ing doubts by the late 1940s about whether modern society provided a proper environment for the marketplace of ideas. These doubts concerned basic libertarian assumptions:

 

I.Truth. Are people capable of distinguishing truth? In their enthusiasm about hu­man nature, libertarians assumed that people are all involved in a lifelong quest for knowledge, truth, and wisdom. There was evidence aplenty, however, that many people couldn't care less about the great questions of human existence. People might be capable of sorting truth from falsity in the marketplace of ideas, but many do not work at it.

 

    II.         Diversity. Are media diverse enough? Libertarians imagined a world of so many diverse publications that there would be room for every outlook. In the mid-20th century, however, some people saw a reduction in media diversity. In a shrinking of the marketplace, U.S. cities with several newspapers lost papers one by one to the point that in the 1940s, few cities had more than two newspapers. Only three broadcast networks dominated radio coverage of national and international affairs.

 

   III.         Independence. Libertarianism assumed that truth-seeking individuals exchange ideas in an unstructured, freewheeling marketplace. As governments,  corpora­tions and other institutions picked up public relations skills, however, the media experienced varying degrees of manipulation, which detracted from their role as the vehicles of the marketplace of ideas. Also, the reliance of U.S. media on advertising means that media whose coverage was not attractive to advertisers were squeezed out of existence.

 

  IV.         Access. The libertarian notion of all citizens engaging in great dialogues through the media seemed naive to some people. Few U.S. newspapers published more than a half a dozen readers' letters a day, and the reduction in the number of cities with multiple newspapers had further devalued newspapers as a vehicle for citi­ zen exchange.

 

b.    Story of Social Responsibility Theory

Doubts about some libertarian assumptions took firm shape in 1947. U.S. mag­azine tycoon Henry Luce had given a grant of $200,000 to an old college friend,  Robert Hutchins, to study the U.S. mass media. Hutchins, chancellor of the Univer­sity of Chicago, assembled a group of scholars. The Hutchins Commission as it was called, issued a bombshell report that expressed concern that the news media were becoming too powerful. The commission cited the growth of newspaper chains. To Luce's dismay, the commission also seemed concerned about the power of magazine groups like his own Time, Life and Fortune. The commission said the news media needed to be more responsible and specifically called on the press to provide:

 

I.A truthful, comprehensive and intelligent account of the day's events in a context that makes them meaningful.

 

II.A forum for the exchange of comment and criticism, including contrary ideas.

 

III.A representative picture of society's constituent groups, including blacks and other minorities.

 

IV. Coverage that challenges society's goals and values and helps clarify them.

Luce was livid. He had established the commission to blunt criticism that his own magazines were one-sided and too powerful. His plan backfired. The commission raised serious questions about U.S. news media practices that Luce and other media barons had defended in the name of freedom of the press.

Robert McCormick, the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, mounted a tirade and commissioned a book to rip the commission's report apart. Newspaper trade associ­ations went on record that the republic was best served when nobody was looking over the shoulders of media people. Freedom of the press, they argued, was at stake when government or anybody else, including a private group of eggheads under Robert Hutchins' direction, tried to prescribe what the press should do.

 

Despite the negative initial reception, the Hutchins Commission's recommenda­tions have shaped how the most respected U.S. news organizations go about their work today.

 

I.LOCAL AUTONOMY. One Hutchins Commission's concern was that  consoli­dated ownership resulted in one-minded coverage and commentary. At the time, Hearst's newspapers coast to coast carried mandatory editorials from the chain's headquarters, including Hearst's own quirky editorials, which were sent to his edi­tors with the order "must run front page." U.S. newspaper chains today, with rare exceptions, do not issue directives on content to their individual newspapers, and it is the same with most other media organizations. Chain ideology seldom extends beyond a commitment to exploiting opportunities for profit.

 

     II.         BALANCED   COVERAGE  AND  COMMENTARY. At the time of the Hutchins report, many U.S. newspapers blatantly used their whole editorial page, and sometimes their news columns, to advance one point of view to the exclusion of others. Front-page political coverage in McCormick's Chicago Tribune might as well have been written by the Republican National Committee. Today, almost all U.S. newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations label opinion articles clearly. Most newspapers carry a greater variety of views on their editorial pages. Many solicit contrary views. Larger newspapers have added a page opposite the editorial page to accommodate more views. These op-ed pages also provide room for more letters from readers. The increased space for commentary and the greater diversity would please the Hutchins Commission.

 

   III.         MEDIA  CRITICS.  Today, the U.S.  news media face more external pressure to be responsible than they did before the Hutchinsreport. Leading media monitors in­clude the Pulitzer School of Journalism's Columbia Journalism Review, the Society of Professional Journalists' Quill magazine, the University of Maryland's American Journalism Review and Brill's Content.

 

Since the 1947 Hutchins Commission recommendations, several news councils, comprising disinterested people who review complaints against news media perfor­mance and issue verdicts, have come and gone. The news councils don't have any le­gal authority, but their reports, which are usually reported widely, encourage accuracy, fairness, and balance through moral suasion.

 

Also, numerous media critics and advocates have established media watchdog organi­zations whose diversity spans the ideological spectrum. Among them is Accuracy in Media, Fairness and Accuracy in Media, Media Watch and Project Censored. These groups issue newsletters, maintain web sites, write letters of protest and testify at public hearings.

  IV.         OMBUDS. In 1967 Norman Isaacs, executive editor of the Louisville Courier­ Journal and Times, created a new position, called ombudsman, to solicit readers' re­actions to the paper's coverage, to confer with newspaper decision-makers on problems and to write corrections and commentaries on newsroom practices as an independent voice. Establishing such autonomous in-house critics was unthinkable before the Hutchins report. Today ombuds, as they're coming to be called, are not uncommon at major newspapers whose newsroom budgets can accommodate free­ ing a seasoned journalist to represent reader interests. About three dozen U.S. news­papers, about 2.3 percent of the total, have full-time ombuds.

 

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Appendix E (Background of PAP)

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• Early developments: 1955–1959

       First elections

o   2 April 1955, the first local election was held in Singapore under the new Rendel Constitution, which provided for a partially elected government. 

o   Of the 32-seat Legislative Assembly, 25 were to be elected. 

o   The Legislative Assembly general election was the PAP’s first political contest, and its aim was to gain enough seats to become an effective opposition. Out of the four PAP candidates fielded for the election, three won, including Lee for Tanjong Pagar. The Labour Front emerged as the leading political party by winning 10 seats, and hence the party’s David Marshall became Singapore’s first chief minister.

o   The PAP also contested the City Council election on 21 December 1957. The election would form the first fully elected council – the decision-making body for matters such as public health, housing, and electricity. The PAP won 13 of the 32 seats; as the leading party, its treasurer Ong Eng Guan was appointed the first mayor of Singapore.

 

• The early struggle against the radical left

o   The alliance between Lee’s moderate camp and the left-wing members led by Lim and Fong proved to be an uneasy union fraught with tension, given the ideological conflict. At the outset, Lee and his group had made it clear to Lim and the other leftists that they upheld moderate political values and supported change through constitutional means. The latter, however, were said to have communist links and lean towards violence to achieve their aims, notwithstanding the common goal of both sides to be free of British colonial rule. With Lim’s clout among the Chinese-educated union members and students, he rallied many left-wing supporters to the PAP’s cause.

o   At the fourth party conference on 4 August 1957, six left-wing members were elected to the 12-member Central Executive Committee (CEC), the PAP’s highest decision-making body, while only five out of the eight that Lee had expected to be re-elected were voted in. The PAP attributed the outcome to a smear campaign conducted by the left-wing camp against four of the outgoing members. Although Lee and Toh retained their seats in the CEC, both refused to take office as they did not want to “become a shield for the pro-communists”.

o   The leadership change, however, was short-lived. In the same month, then Chief Minister Lim Yew Hock launched a series of anti-communist mass arrests starting from 21 August, under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance (present-day Internal Security Act). About 35 people were detained in the first swoop, including five of the newly elected left-wing members of the PAP’s CEC and 13 PAP branch officials. The arrests subsequently enabled the moderate faction to regain control of PAP.16

 

• Key developments: 1959–1965

·       Elected to power

o   After three rounds of constitutional talks (also known as the Merdeka talks) held in London, Singapore attained the right to internal self-government, following which a general election for the first fully elected government was held on 30 May 1959.

o   The PAP contested all 51 seats. Its election manifesto, titled The Tasks Ahead, outlined the party’s five-year plan to address acute problems faced by Singapore. The manifesto covered a series of policies and programs, such as attaining independence through the merger with the Federation of Malaya, low-cost housing, the strengthening of education, as well as the development of industries and thus improved employment opportunities for the local population.

o   By capturing 43 seats, the PAP won the election and formed the first government of the self-governing state of Singapore on 5 June 1959. The nine-member cabinet consisted of Lee as prime minister, Toh as deputy prime minister, Goh (finance), Ong Pang Boon (home affairs), Yong Nyuk Lin (education), Rajaratnam (culture), Ong Eng Guan (national development), Ahmad Ibrahim(health) and K. M. Byrne (labor and law).

o   The left-wing PAP leaders, including Lim and Fong, who had been detained previously were released on 4 June 1959 as a condition for Singapore’s self-government.

 

•        The big split

o   On 22 and 23 July 1961, 13 left-wing PAP assemblymen, including Lim and Fong, were expelled following their abstentions during a vote of confidence called by Lee in the Legislative Assembly. Besides not showing faith in the government, they were also deemed to have dissented from PAP government policies and acted against the party’s interest. Prior to the expulsion, Lim and his group of left-wing trade unionists had demanded the abolition of the Internal Security Council (present-day Internal Security Department) as a prerequisite for a merger with the federation – a demand tantamount to an open confrontation with the PAP. In addition, Lim and his group had also spurred PAP’s left-wing supporters to shift their support away from the PAP during the Anson by-election held on 15 July 1961.

o   The expelled assemblymen then formed a new political party – the Barisan Sosialis – on 29 July the same year. At this point, the Barisan membership also included 22 former PAP branch officials who had been dismissed from their posts. Consequently, the PAP was left with a single-seat majority in the Legislative Assembly: It controlled 26, while the Barisan held 13, out of a total of 51 seats.

 

•        Merger with the Federation of Malaya

o   In November 1961, the PAP published the white paper on the merger, which sought a merger with the Federation of Malaya as a means to independence and to ensure Singapore’s economic survival. However, the proposal was met with resistance in the Legislative Assembly: The Barisan Sosialis and other opposition parties opposed the conditions of the merger laid out by the PAP. Despite the resistance, the PAP successfully pushed forth its proposal for Singapore’s merger with the federation. A referendum to seek the people’s consent on merger was held on 1 September 1962. Seventy-one percent of the population opted for merger in accordance with the terms spelt out in the white paper.

o   Singapore officially joined the Federation of Malaya to form the Federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. Lee called for a snap election held on 21 September 1963 in which the PAP fought against the Barisan Sosialis. The PAP centred its election campaign on the achievements of its government in the previous four years – such as the construction of 24,000 public-housing units, expansion of educational facilities and the development of the new Jurong industrial estate, as well as Singapore's independence through merger. The PAP presented itself as the representative of the Singapore state, while the Barisan Sosialis largely relied on its appeal among the Chinese masses, especially the Chinese-educated, as a movement dedicated to the Chinese language, education, and culture. The PAP garnered 47 percent of the votes and returned to the office by attaining 37 out of 51 seats, while the Barisan won 13 seats.

 

•        Separation

o   Singapore’s merger with the federation was accompanied by many challenges. Disagreements ranged from the development of a common economy to Singapore’s contribution to the federal treasury. The PAP advocated equality of races with a “Malaysian Malaysia”, while UMNO maintained its position of having racialized policies for a “Malay Malaysia”. When the PAP sent a team of candidates to contest in the 25 April 1964 Malaysian general election – in which it won one seat – the participation was viewed by the Malaysian central government as an attempt by the PAP to intervene in federal politics. Subsequently, in May 1965, the PAP organised the Malaysian Solidarity Convention with another four opposition parties in Malaysia to promote a “Malaysian Malaysia”. Singapore eventually separated from the federation when a bill favouring the split was passed by the Malaysian parliament on 9 August 1965.

 

• Key struggles in the early decades

o      When Singapore attained self-government in 1959, unemployment was widespread and its population growth rate was one of the highest in the world.

o       At the time of independence, Singapore’s economy was suffering. Trade with Indonesia, a key trading partner, had been significantly reduced as a result of the Indonesian-Malaysian Konfrontasi, which lasted from 1963 to 1966. Another setback for the economy was the withdrawal of British military forces from Singapore between 1968 and 1971.7 Prior to the withdrawal, 10 percent of the local labor force had been employed by the British, and British military expenditure had accounted for some 20 percent of Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP).

o       The lack of proper housing was another pressing issue. The majority of the population was living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, and Singapore’s urban district then was one of the world’s most congested slums.

o        Ethnic tension was also a key challenge in Singapore, having experienced outbreaks of ethnic violence such as the Maria Hertogh riots in 1950 and the communal clashes of 1964. In addition, with a long history of the predominance of transient migrants, the majority of the Singapore population possessed little sense of belonging to the new nation.

 

• Overcoming early challenges and nation-building

o        The PAP had begun to address the pressing domestic issues such as unemployment and housing after it formed the government of the new self-governing state of Singapore in 1959. Following Singapore’s unexpected independence, the PAP government was quick to further develop and implement a host of economic and social policies so as to build up the new nation and to ensure the country’s long-term economic and social survival.

 

•  Economic policies

o   When the PAP government came into power in 1959, its immediate economic task was industrialization. The objectives were to reduce unemployment and Singapore’s reliance on the declining entrepôt trade. The Economic Development Board was established in 1961 to promote industrial development.

 

•   Governance

o   Meritocracy is a key governing principle adopted by the PAP government. It is applied to the civil service and armed forces, government-linked companies and education. The PAP leaders believe that meritocracy helps the brightest students rise to the top and contributes to the establishment of a corrupt-free and efficient civil service. Such a system of rewards and opportunities is seen to be crucial in maintaining social harmony in Singapore’s multiracial society.

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• Multiracialism

o   Following Singapore’s independence, maintaining racial harmony and stable intra-societal relations were crucial for the peace and development of the new nation. To manage Singapore’s ethnic diversity, a key social policy established by the PAP government was multiracialism. The policy entails recognizing all ethnic groups as distinct and of equal status in terms of language, religion, and culture, and it is backed by strong sanctions against the use of inflammatory racial or religious utterances. The PAP government also established Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil – languages of the three major ethnic groups in Singapore – as the country’s official languages. English was also designated as an official language to serve as the common language of communication among Singaporeans and with the rest of the world.

 

•   Education

o   Since Singapore’s independence in 1965, the PAP government has introduced a series of education policies to support national integration and nation-building. To meet the needs of the country’s industrial development drive at the time, primary education was expanded and subsidized for all Singaporeans. All students followed a similar education structure, which focused on the teaching of languages, science, mathematics, technical skills, and moral values. Large expenditures were also made by the PAP government to improve the education infrastructure and quality of teachers.

o   The PAP introduced the bilingual policy for primary and secondary levels in 1966. All children were required to learn two languages: English as the first language so that they would have access to better opportunities in the global economy, and their mother tongue to preserve each ethnic group’s cultural and language distinctions. This policy also follows the aforementioned principle of multiracialism.

 

•  Population

o   As Singapore was one of the most densely populated countries in the world at the time of independence, bringing population growth under control was deemed necessary for the country’s economic progress. Antinatalist measures introduced by the PAP government from 1965 to promote two-child families included monetary incentives and disincentives, family planning services and large-scale public campaigns. The measures were highly successful: The total fertility rate fell below the replacement level in 1977 and continued declining from then on. Consequently, the problem of a declining population base emerged. In 1987, the government announced the shift towards a pronatalist stance: Families were encouraged to have three or more children if they could afford it.

o   The PAP government also imposed tight immigration restrictions until the 1980s. The restrictions were relaxed thereafter, as the government sought to augment the local population with new immigrants in order to increase the talent pool and workforce.