Enter citizen awareness

Saturday May 9, 2009
Enter citizen awareness
INSIGHT DOWN SOUTH
By SEAH CHIANG NEE

A lightning takeover of the women’s rights organisation Aware by an anti-gay group and its subsequent ouster was a lesson well learnt.

SINGAPORE is in the process of rapid transformation, and one of the biggest changes is of its people.

At the moment the citizens are undergoing a crucial test that will determine whether collectively they can manage sensitive conflicts when Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is not around.

What has kept stability has been Lee’s overpowering presence and a reticent – but pragmatic – population bent on chasing after the dollar.

The New Singaporean, richer and better-informed, may be a little different.

Two things are likely to happen when the 85-year-old Lee leaves.

First, a new, articulate breed will emerge that is more passionate about fighting for what they believe in compared with their reticent parents.

The second could be a sharper division of emotional issues, such as religion, race and class that could also pitch the old against young, conservatives against liberals.

Add to the list the intrusion of 1.5 million foreigners here with little shared values.

Any of these could develop into a national crisis in future that tough laws may fail to control.

A little example was the recent Aware saga, concerning Singapore’s 24-year-old women’s rights body.

When it let loose some highly-charged anger that subsided only six weeks later as a result of a members’ vote – not by government intervention – the nation sighed with relief.

“This was the first real step towards a civil society,” said a young IT programmer.

The quarrel stirred religious emotions that could have flared into a wider conflict. It was like a trial run for the post-Lee era.

Trouble started in late March, when a group of fundamentalist Christians, all from one church, staged a lightning takeover of the women’s rights organisation.

It was supported by their pastor, who appealed from the pulpit for his flock to go out and support their “sisters in Christ” in their anti-gay offensive in Aware. He later publicly apologised for it.

The predators had wanted to change the organisation’s stance of tolerating or accepting gays to one of condemnation for sinning against their faith.

Other Christians were drawn into the fray, which prompted an appeal from the National Council of Chur­ches to all Christians to stay out. School­teachers were similarly advised.

Hundreds signed up as new members in a noisy meeting to vote out the fundamentalists.

The Malays and Buddhists were particularly concerned that fundamentalist Christians had stealthily taken over a secular, multi-religious body in Singapore.

The activists were not all ordinary people. They included prominent lawyers and academicians.

What transpired was a useful lesson for all, including the younger leaders who are assuming a greater role in government.

Caught unawares by the crisis, the government adopted a hands-off stance, but was believed to have worked to encourage an ouster of the unwelcome group.

However, it gave the losers something to cheer about.

The education ministry suspended Aware’s sexuality programme for schools that earned the wrath of the Christian group because a portion of it allegedly referred to gays as acceptable.

It is possible that the state intelligence will now monitor the church and its activities.

The government’s handling was a sharp contrast to what Minister Mentor Lee would likely have done.

He would probably have summoned both sides as well as the church pastor to his office, read them the Riot Act, and made them face the press to announce a settlement.

(In 1987, his government detained a group of Catholic activists, including lawyers, under the Internal Security Act for allegedly promoting a Marxist-type liberation theology.)

“Leaving them to settle things within Aware and not using threats to resolve differences augurs well for a civil society to develop,” a young professional said.

The same tolerance may not be extended to politics, particularly when dealing with opposition dissidents – not when Lee is the mentor.

The nation’s potential cracks were also on the mind of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on May Day.

He warned that society was facing three potentially divisive areas – Singaporeans versus foreigners, the gap between the haves and have-nots, and race and religion.

Political commentator Simon Tay put it this way. The Aware saga showed that Singapore is no longer a vertical society where citizens are linked only to the government.

Now a horizontal dimension is added to it in which “citizens form different groups that express their own interests and beliefs and act independently of the government”.

This new equation, he said, will mean less government, freeing it to focus on core national issues like security.

A forum letter stated: “I’m glad the government has refrained from using the ISA or the Religious Har­mony Act (which forbids the use of religion to further a political agenda).”

The emergence of a more involved citizenry – passionate and diversified – could be an asset, analysts believe, but only if sensitive differences are kept within check.

Monica Lim, who runs a communications consultancy, said: “I do not want my children learning that, as Christians, they have the right to impose their beliefs on others via underhand tactics.”

So after all the acrimony, something worthwhile has emerged, summed by the observation that Singaporeans now have a better understanding that while diversity is acceptable, a divided Singapore is not.

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