Taking offence again

What PM Lee could have done

The problem with defamation suits is that they represent asymmetrical power at its worst: the monetary and personal costs of fighting the case in court are disproportional given that the government has close to unlimited resources. In that sense, the mere threat of a lawsuit is a sufficiently large deterrent to shut down most commentators regardless of the merit of their statements, because people individually have much less to gain and much more to lose in court. Defamation suits are far from the only means by which the government can engage and reason with dissent. PM Lee could have had his press secretary publish a letter to clarify the facts publicly, and let the facts do the work. He could have spoken up against claims he perceived to be untrue in an interview or a speech. He could have easily drawn attention to the accounts themselves to prove the accusations wrong, if they are indeed so. Any of these responses would have lent his attempt to facilitate a ‘national conversation’ more credibility; instead he chose to do what would only convince the public promises of reform and engagement are, once again, mere gestural political tactics.

Some habits die hard

To understand this uniquely-PAP habit of suing for defamation, it is instructive to go back to an interview between Lee Hsien Loong and Charlie Rose in 2010:

LEE HSIEN LOONG:  We are very sensitive.    

CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me about the sensitivity.    

LEE HSIEN LOONG: The whole of our system is founded on a basic concept of meritocracy.  You are where you are because you are the best man for the job and not because of your connections or your parents or your relatives. And if anybody doubts that I as prime minister is here not because I am the best man for the job but because my father fixed it or my wife runs Temasek because I put her there and not because she’s the best woman for the job, then my entire credibility and moral authority is destroyed.  I’m not fit to be where I am. And it’s a fundamental issue of fitness to govern.  First you must have the moral right, then you can make the right decisions.  It’s a basic Confucian precept.    

CHARLIE ROSE: Only when you have to moral right can you make --  

LEE HSIEN LOONG: Then can you govern and make the country right. And in Singapore people expect that.  So if there’s any doubt that this is so, and people believe that I’m there because my father fixed it or the whole system is just make-believe, then the system will come down.   It’s not tenable. If it’s true, it better be proven and I better be kicked out.  If it’s not true, it better also be proven to be not true and the matter put to rest.    

CHARLIE ROSE: So if some journalist writes about nepotism and you think it’s not true --  

LEE HSIEN LOONG:  Well, then we sue him!   (LAUGHTER)  

CHARLIE ROSE:  Yes, you do.

What we can distil from the above conversation are many long-held assumptions held by the establishment, for whom PM Lee happens to be the spokesperson in this interview.

The contradictions of meritocracy as the basis for political legitimacy

The first among these is the assumption that political legitimacy comes from “being the best man for the job”. When PM Lee speaks of the “moral right” to govern, he is referring to the moral authority of a government that confers it political legitimacy. In the case of Singapore, the basis for this moral authority and political legitimacy is meritocracy, a principle that has been enshrined as the only viable principle of governance, repeatedly justified on the grounds of our “unique” vulnerability and resource scarcity.

Appealing as it is as a principle, meritocracy is, to quote Amartya Sen, “essentially underdefined”. It is nothing more than “the preferred view of a society” at a given point in time. The merit of actions, and derivatively that of persons performing those actions, cannot be judged independent of the way we understand the nature of a good society. To the extent that the incumbents maintain ideological hegemony over what constitutes “merit”, or hamper public deliberation on what constitutes good society (by means of petty defamation lawsuits, for instance), the internal contradictions of meritocracy as a principle of governance will persist to engender instability to that very idea.

In democratic elections, the people are given the power to decide what counts as “merit” and who possesses it. Insofar as the PAP’s claim to meritocracy is not reflected in its approach to inter-party competition and competitive electoral processes, any claim that its elected leader is “the best man for the job” opens itself to questions and skepticism from the public. Such double standards further weaken the justifiability of meritocracy as a principle of governance.

The upshot is this: assumption that political legitimacy can rest almost entirely on the principle of meritocracy is a questionable one. More than that, it has inspired among our political leaders a sort of hypersensitivity to dissent that is quite uncalled for. This acute sensitivity is perhaps best expressed by PM Lee himself in the interview: “…if anybody doubts that I as prime minister is here not because I am the best man for the job… then my entire credibility and moral authority is destroyed.” From the establishment’s point of view, it follows that any doubt of the incumbent’s political legitimacy, especially those that question the incumbent’s personal “moral right” to govern, cannot be tolerated.

The tenuous nature of PAP’s political legitimacy

When it comes to defending its political legitimacy, the PAP appears to be guided by a simple, in fact simplistic, political calculus: If limiting freedom of expression is what it takes to keep its legitimacy secure, it is that which must be done. If it can prove an attack on its moral reputation is untrue, it would go to the courts to make that point. In doing so the government loses as it wins.

As Cherian George pointed out in a recent article, defamation law was never a convincing test of truth. When a defendant loses a defamation suit, it merely implies a failure to substantiate allegations to the satisfaction of the court, not necessarily that what was asserted were untruths. Discerning Singaporeans will not be convinced, solely on the result of a defamation suit, of the falsity of Alex Au’s claims against the official account. On the contrary, in trying to defend its legitimacy through such blunt weapons as defamation suits, it has demonstrated an intolerance that reminds Singaporeans once more that nothing has changed post May-2011.

If the accusations were untrue, this government has also lost the opportunity to demonstrate a clearer perception of truth produced by “collision with error” [1] within the space of public deliberation. To wield the defamation law against unsubstantiated attacks each time it arises betrays insecurities that draw our attention only to the tenuous nature of the PAP’s political legitimacy.

What the PAP needs: an immunity to taking offence

What the establishment should come to realize is that political legitimacy comes not just from the moral reputation of political leaders, a meritocratic system, and consent expressed through regular elections. Political legitimacy comes from public reason and democratic approval, the latter of which will be granted only if the public believes that the establishment earns its electoral mandate under conditions of genuine, unfettered discourse. Trust and social capital do not come from government-led “national conversations”, much less from the reactive wielding of the defamation law.

Without a more tolerant stance on what constitutes permissible speech, this society’s ability to direct its own future through meaningful contention with itself is unnecessarily stymied. It is time the establishment realizes that control of the media, restriction of political discussion to political parties, cooptation of civil society, and uneven access to information and resources between political parties… are all inimical to the long-term political legitimacy it is trying to secure.

Discursive participation and deliberation must proceed on the basis that no one should be penalized or excluded for expressing views that might challenge or even offend the establishment. To this end, the least that our political leaders can do is this: develop an immunity to taking offence. In Rowan Atkinson’s (our dear old Mr Bean) words:

We need to develop our immunity to taking offence, so that we can deal with the issues that perfectly justified criticism can raise. Our priority should be to deal with the message, not the messenger… If we want a robust society, we need more robust dialogue that must include the right to insult or offend… the freedom to be inoffensive is no freedom at all.

And if this is too much to ask of the PAP, the day will come when people stop asking for change – which, by the way, is precisely what we are starting to see.

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[1]: “… the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” – JS Mill, On Liberty (1869).