Impressions of the Goh Chok Tong Years in Singapore

37 Liberalising Culture

436 37 Liberalising Culture CHUA BENG HUAT In 1989, Lee Kuan Yew announced that, after 31 years as prime minister, he was stepping aside to make way for a younger person. He also let it be known that his successor, Goh Chok Tong, was the choice of the latter’s contemporaries in the Cabinet. Goh became prime minister on 28 November 1990 and, as Goh himself suggested, it was a“non event”.1 Goh joined the PAP in 1976 and was elected to Parliament in the same year.By then this had become the typical recruitment method for new People’s Action Party (PAP) electoral candidates, a procedure that bypasses and neglects the party organisation.2 What was exceptional was his immediate appointment to political office, first as the Senior Minister of State for Finance; next, as Minister for the new portfolio of Trade and Industry; then as Second Minister for Defence; in addition to the position of Second Minister for Health; and, in 1984, returning as the Minister for Defence as well as doubling up as Deputy Prime Minister. He had thus rotated through all the politically significant ministries, each time rising up in Cabinet rank and the party hierarchy. Such a meteoric rise could not have been achieved by being a contrarian in Lee Kuan Yew’s Cabinet. Indeed, the second generation ministers have had to demonstrate their ability as a team, to live by the PAP’s operating principle of making tough decisions regardless of their popularity with the governed. By the time Lee moved sideways to become Senior Minister, the new team had already taken enough tough decisions to convince him that they could do the job of governing Singapore. For example, in the face of an economic downturn in the mid-1980s, the new team demonstrated its resolve by cutting employers’ monthly contributions to their employees’ Central Provident Fund (CPF), the compulsory social security savings for all wage earners, from 25 per cent to 10 per cent of the monthly wage, in order to reduce wage, and thus production, costs. Since then, the rate of employer’s contribution has become a tool in the regulation of wage and production costs. The toughest political decision taken by the team was the 1987 detention of a group of young people without trial under the Internal SecurityAct for an alleged Marxist conspiracy to overthrow the government. The detainees included social workers and lawyers from a LIBERALISING CULTURE 437 Catholic organisation and some theatre practitioners who were sympathetic to the plight of Filipino domestic workers. The case was so thin that there was scant public support for the government’s action; indeed, Straits Times journalists voiced their scepticism publicly at a later date, without any response from the government, let alone repercussions.3 A minor character in this saga was the First Secretary at the US Embassy, E. Mason Hendrickson. He was expelled from Singapore for interfering with local politics because he was in active contact with the defence lawyers of the detainees.4 In Goh’s words, “If American diplomats behave as if they have a missionary right to roam all over Singapore, including off-limit areas, whether such behaviour is official US State Department policy or not, then we have no choice but to cut down their diplomatic staff strength”; he added, however, “if the US understands our sensitivity and respects our wish to be ourselves, we can remain close friends”.5 This “standing up” to the US demonstrated the resoluteness of the Goh administration in the defence of Singapore’s national interests, even at the risk of displeasing one of Singapore’s most important allies. The PAP government maintains that being a small country, Singapore should stand firm against all outside interference, lest it be seen as weak and easily bullied, and thus risk all bargaining positions in international affairs; the covert activities of outsiders meddling in domestic politics are labelled “Black Operations” aimed at taking down the government. The Hendrickson incident also recalled for the Singaporean public an earlier instance in 1965, when Lee KuanYew stood up to the US by disclosing that the CIA had, in 1960, tried to bribe a Singapore Special Branch officer in order to obtain state secrets. When the US State Department denied the charge, Lee released to the press a 1961 letter of apology from then Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. This incident enabled Lee to state categorically that “I am the only chap...