December 12th, 2006
WHEN CATHERINE Lim first wrote in the Straits Times in 1994 to describe, in typically grandiose style, what she called the great affective divide between the government and people, she was quite figuratively shot down in a barrage of criticism. Some argue that the real source of Ms Lim s insidiousness was to cleverly tuck somewhere the suggestion that despite the freshly installed premiership Singapore was returning to Lee Kuan Yew s stick-and-stick authoritarianism . But even that being considered, Ms Lim s article could hardly be said to be malicious; not when she was padding it with praise after compliment.
What was neither praise nor compliment still was some of the most biting criticism that the government received in years, however, and then prime minister Goh Chok Tong slammed it as disrespectful of authority . Or was it?
It just wasn t the kind of shamelessly effusive praise that the Straits Times brand brings to mind. Ms Lim s phrase survives well today, like catchphrases of the establishment s most notable critics do (Cherian George s alliterative calibrated coercion is another favourite), but when she speaks of an affective divide it implies both sides have to share the blame and responsibility – it is as if she was talking about a tiff between spouses, which is no way to approach the topic when there is a distinct class hierarchy in Singapore.
In most modern societies the prevailing wisdom among people is that the government works to serve the interests of the people rather than vice versa, but there is a very different approach locally, one almost like master and servant.
The PAP government chooses what the popular agenda should be: nation-building , which sounds fair enough until you realise that nation-building is a concept that it alone has the power to define.
It took a mere five years for the pro-government Straits Times to free up another couple of column inches for her next effort. It was timed to coincide with another suggested pay raise for ministers, which today are known to be pegged to the three highest private sector salaries across several different sectors – an unusual benchmark to say the least.
Ms Lim went back to her tried and tested catchphrase and suggested that the disaffection was returning. The arguments on both sides have basically remained the same, she said. Catherine Lim may have been perched squarely on the fence, but so too have hers.
But there was a rather major concession, one that perhaps persuaded the Straits Times to publish her column in the heat of the debate: she had apparently climbed down from a perch on the fence and was now, at least apparently, supporting the government.
The praise was even more unrestrained as usual. Mr Goh, she decided, was launching a new dispensation, which, in its emphasis on trust, understanding and caring, was a marked departure from the past , although the reaction to her comments only five years ago were arguably lacking in understanding and absolutely hard-hitting.
That was hardly enough. She even took her pick from one of the government s many PR campaigns, the Singapore heartbeat , and called it touching , like any patriot should – an utterly mad rambling. To complete it all, this: The Prime Minister s vision clearly found resonance in the hearts and minds of the people.
What followed was a sincere attempt on both sides to give substance to the vision. Mr Goh was, and is, as well-liked a politician as you will get in Singapore, but not near enough to merit the type of writing that you might find in one of North Korea s newspapers. It would have made weird reading for liberal, internet-going Singaporeans, but the more salient point is that it could hardly have been the proudest moment in Ms Lim s illustrious career.
There was no fall-out this time, and the response was conspicuous by its absence. A minister, however, wrote in to reserve the government s right to stifle dissent. I do not agree that such dissent dims the vision of Singapore 21, or that managing dissent is manipulative, he wrote, writing about this Singapore 21 thing as if people were supposed to know what it means.
IT WOULD be gloriously naïve to regard Catherine Lim s chops at being a North Korean propagandist as her genuine opinion without sound justification. This is a writer of elaborately-plotted books, and Ms Lim herself takes great delight in deconstructing her characters quite literally to the death. This is someone who has clearly and rightly decided that because people only remember when you criticise the establishment – or allude to it – so you might as well go all the way, especially when it is useful legal protection.
Where Catherine Lim s business starts is basically in between lines, such as the faint suggestion in 1994 that earned her the well-publicised rebuke the first time around.
Read Catherine Lim s books, however, and it becomes apparent that there is a place in her world for morally perfect characters like the one she speaks of in her columns. The Teardrop Story Woman sums her work up excellently.
It describes the life and love story of one Mei Kwei, a victim to a cocktail of Chinese superstition, incest and a family of people who practically define asshole , and whose heroic moral fibre holds firm in the face of a romance with a religious man she can never consummate. It is excellently written, as is most of her work (her willingness to explore taboo sexual themes alone makes it an enthralling read for any impressionable adolescent), but Ms Lim is shown up by her characters one-dimensionality, although in fairness it is a problem shared by Philip Roth, possibly the best American novelist alive today.
(It is not improbable that Catherine Lim might list Roth as a key influence.
Roth, too, enjoys writing about sex, in particular Portnoy s Complaint, a partially autobiographical novel in which the protagonist explains at great length about his masturbatory escapades, like wanking into the family dinner. Contemporaneously funny and touching, it is to be of the 20th century.)
In the local establishment, it seems Catherine Lim can find kindred spirits.
This is a country, they always tell you, that came through against all the odds, and even today it stands alone as a curious anomaly in a world where authoritarian states are invariably impoverished by self-serving dictators. Its charm lies, like Mei Kwei s herself, largely in how it defies expectation and popular wisdom. The Catherine Lim position is to posit that Singapore s leaders are the firm opposites, but there is a reason why she is first a writer of books and second a political critic: it is founded on old feelings and old sentiment.
The tight political control is motivated not by megalomania, greed or corruption but their very opposite: a genuine concern for the welfare of the society, she writes, but views like these are hard to substantiate when junior ministers get paid more than the US president, and this is a party that announced its own pay raises in the middle of an economic downturn.
Enough has happened in the intervening years to determine that the PAP deserve to be firmly embedded in the hazardous grey areas between the morally perfect angels that their supporters claim they are and the decrepit, stinking dictators their cynics insist on associating them with. Is it a surprise that the only era in the Singapore story untouched by Catherine Lim is today s – the internet generation?
It is difficult to answer that question. She might not want to sully her impression of the establishment, but it is just as probable that she is just coming to terms with the times. Or both.
Catherine Lim, therefore, remains quite an enigma as far as her political career is concerned. She is not much of a political critic – given a more rebellious streak, she could have ended up as the Singaporean Ann Coulter – but she revels in her mystic as she rises above the petty quarrels between the rabidly pro-establishment and the rabidly anti. Recently she hailed prime minister Lee Hsien Loong as possessing smart power , a free compliment given that Mr Lee is still relatively unproven as a statesman, but not before a sneaky taunt at the PAP for spectacularly screwing up their electoral PR campaign.
But there may be an end to it. In spite of her efforts her impression has been sullied to the point where she raised the frightening but possible scenario of a PAP member using his political position for personal gain. And, having meditated silently as the internet spawned a generation of shockingly critical bloggers, she has come to terms with the times.
The leaders now recognise*, even if grudgingly, that the need for freedom of expression, the impulse to challenge, is a natural and permanent aspect of the human condition, found in every society, at every period in human history, she says, sounding suitably like a woman converted.
Notes * The real significance of this sentence is that whereas just five or six years ago the one and only reason for political discussion at all would be for nation-building , the new, America-imported idea is that one should not desire freedom of expression as a means to an end, but to embrace freedom of expression as it lends society vibrancy, which is understandably utterly deficient in Singapore. Whether the establishment will cede to it is a different thing altogether.
If you saw things from their perspective, you probably wouldn t.
Completely, absolutely unrelated Court documents reveal that Microsoft s Windows development chief James Allchin wrote an e-mail to Microsoft s heroically proportioned CEO Steve Ballmer in 2004, saying that the company had lost its way and, more revealingly, that .
Also This should be TSFT s last post for a while, with army conscription on the way.
We are accepting reader contributions, and would like somebody to take care and write for the blog in the meantime, so feel free to contact us at tsft.blog at gmail dot com.
Sorry, but your whole point being?
It is one thing to say that one is sitting on a fence. It is quite another to say that one does not have an opinion.
And insofar as Catherine Lim has always been able to have an opinion without the protection for identity from pseudonymity, what do you as a blogger have to offer?
Just as it is one thing to say that A is not B and therefore one s point is either truth or untruth, if you can imagine a far better future without sitting on the fence and professing a likeness for either side, then why do you not say it clearly?
For the whole thing about Catherine Lim or not, rests on your own prejudice towards all forms of authority:
That authority must necessarily be bad. That to be in power means to be power-hungry.
And for such a facile point of view, why are you not Catherine Lim, ie. trying to mediate between the two fields of opinion that the fence so divides?
Not being very nice on what my farewell post, are you?
That authority must necessarily be bad.
This is a figment of your imagination.
That to be in power means to be power-hungry.
Well, I admit to this particular bias readiliy. And while you might deride my sweeping generalisation as just that, it does happen to work well in the Singapore case.
You seem to think that I hold the establishment in contempt because of what they do.
But you re wrong. I don t think acting in your own interests is wrong; in fact I think it s absolutely normal.
I can see where you re coming from, but for practical purposes such rigour is useless.
If you want such needlessly philosophical quarrels, try Singapore Angle.
If, however, you re going to prove to me that there are truly altruistic people in power – you only need one good, solid example to blow my ill-founded presumptions to dust – don t try the local government. I ve seen enough, I really have.
if you can imagine a far better future without sitting on the fence and professing a likeness for either side, then why do you not say it clearly?
Because this blog entry isn t about that: it humbly tries to explore the thinking of a woman, an effort which, as you imply, peters out hopelessly. I know – everybody I asked predicted the same outcome.
And, to address your penultimate question: And insofar as Catherine Lim has always been able to have an opinion without the protection for identity from pseudonymity, what do you as a blogger have to offer?
Nothing, and I m pretty smug about it. You seem to think that people should blog, you know, to serve as a public service vehicle.
There are quite a number of blogs that are happy to do that, so why come here? First of all, I m 18 and in no position to tell anybody what to do. Second, I m fascinated with Catherine and that s that.
So don t talk about what I can contribute: I owe nobody anything. As for why this blog is anonymous: it shamelessly rips off the Economist, right down to the political affiliations. This blog doesn t exist as a front to criticise the government like a coward; it exists because it is a homage to the form and style of one of the finest news magazines around.
That s why it s written in third person, by the way. That s why there are no bylines. That s why this blog doesn t try to clamber up the fence.
Some of you will think it s needlessly presumptuous bullshit, of course, and you won t necessarily be wrong either.
For me it s treading into the unknown. My own instincts are towards Catherine-style fence-sitting – I m an agnostic, and of the weak variety at that.
When I try to model my writing on the Economist it means I have to abandon the middle road, and it s a nice little rush. Shits and giggles.
Notice how I don t say it s for other people.
Because it isn t! I didn t write this for anybody s benefit.
I write about Catherine Lim exclusively because I admire the fact that she has taken her middle roadedness to an extreme: while people go middle road in the Straits Times or in the local blogosphere to mask whatever prejudices they actually have, Catherine Lim is middle road because she really is ambivalent, and ambivalence is no crime.
You know why?
Because nothing will change, which brings us back to my vulnerable, fallible, and utterly flawed thesis about those in power always lusting for more. There s a good reason why America s now tightly-entrenched democracy rose from the ashes of the battlefields: because people don t just lovingly, responsibly, altruistically pass their powers from one person to another.
The world has never worked that way, oskar.
Ahhh Then I must apologise for my intrusion.
Sorry, oskar is the worst kind of person to strangers.
But so long as the stranger can effectively trash him, then oskar maintains friendly respect for Stranger.
Anyway, have a nice time in NS.
I don t mean that as a sarcastic comment.
As far as I was then 18, I went in wanting to meet people vastly different from myself.
And thus, I had a really good time.
Because nothing will change, which brings us back to my vulnerable, fallible, and utterly flawed thesis about those in power always lusting for more.
There’s a good reason why America’s now tightly-entrenched democracy rose from the ashes of the battlefields: because people don’t just lovingly, responsibly, altruistically pass their powers from one person to another.
I would believe that despite all else (for I readily agree with whatever you ve said so far) that hope must still be maintained.
Sorry, oskar is someone who wanted to be an artist (and still wants to) but he got derailed by conservative parents.
I couldn t even do push-ups BEFORE I entered NS.
Just remember: Make yourself useful.
I had Ah Bengs who d respect me for doing what I could do well, ie.
admin, even though I was in a combat vocation.
Just be nice to people as you d like to be treated and the Ah Bengs or whoever will be nice to you.
And when you re nice yet others aren t, well, the Ah Bengs stood up for me.
Catherine Lim is middle road because she really is ambivalent, and ambivalence is no crime. You know why?
Because nothing will change, which brings us back to my vulnerable, fallible, and utterly flawed thesis about those in power always lusting for more.
There’s a good reason why America’s now tightly-entrenched democracy rose from the ashes of the battlefields: because people don’t just lovingly, responsibly, altruistically pass their powers from one person to another. The world has never worked that way, oskar.
To realize this at the age of 18 is truly unusual and remarkable.
Singapore will need an external event like what happened to Suharto post 1997 before democracy can finally take root.
In the meantime, I guess opposition parties like WP as well as Catherine Lim serves as a Zion channel to satisfy Singaporeans who still think we are living in a democracy.
Thanks - this post will serve everyone who s interested in Catherine, the enigma (moi included) well.
Wrt to your comment on altruism in politicians.
Wasn t it some utlitarian theorist who once eschewed that the key motivation to serve public interests actually stems from the pursuit of one s self-interests?
While I agree with the above statement to a large extent particularly in times of relative peace and prosperity, I still harbour the idealistic hope that there are those amongst us who will answer to higher calling.
These are the people we will have to count on should there be harder times to come.
So tsft, being a widely read and intelligent iGeneration Singaporean, what would you be expecting from the ruling elites of Singapore?
News RSS