The Internationalization of Singapore Politics

Summary

Singapore's periodic conflicts with the foreign media and human rights groups took a significant turn during 1995, when an opposition leader's willingness to fraternize with the government's critics abroad highlighted the external domain's relevance to domestic politics in an altered global environment.

Though the dominance of the People's Action Party (PAP), which has ruled the country since 1959, remained unchallenged under Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, this development could have important implications in the longer run for the city-state, whose remarkable economic success has been accompanied by a marked degree of official control over the terms and parameters of political discourse and contestation. Its significance lay in its backdrop, a wave of demo- cratization, working its way through the post-Soviet world order which has seen a number of authoritarian countries in Asia liberalize politically in recent years. Interventions by foreign human rights groups, the media, and sometimes politicians, increasingly meshing in with the United States' desire to police the political morals of the world, have encouraged the process. Though the actual extent of their contribution to change is debatable, their activities have accentuated the process of liberalization which attests to a trend towards political globalization running parallel with the economic, both being based on American values and leadership triumphant in the contest with the Soviet Union. This trend pro- vided the context in which Singapore's political arena and its judicial institutions came under intensified external pressure during the year. While the scrutiny was not new, what lent it a certain weight in Singapore politics was the opposition's response to it. Central to that response was the controversial readiness of Chee Soon Juan, who is secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), to utilize external forums in his pursuit of political goals within the country. It is perhaps not overstating the case to see that linkage as marking a stage in the internationalization of Singapore's politics.