Mr Brown and the case of rights vs rice

11 Jul 06
Singapore Democrats

For those who wonder why the SDP spends so much time and effort talking about human rights, your answer came in the form of the Mr Brown episode.

In materialistic Singapore, many question the wisdom of championing for human rights and whether these values resonate with the average Joe. Can you eat civil liberties? How does freedom of speech bring you the next paycheck? Can protests make you rich? – are some of the cynicism expressed whenever the idea of democratic freedoms are raised.

Such political myopia has gotten many a society into trouble.

With the economy running away with the rich leaving the poor poorer, people want desperately to voice out their hardships and rectify the imbalance. But through what avenue? The elections are designed to let the PAP tell the people how powerless they are, civil society is all but dead, and the media…well, just ask Mr Brown. The writer’s essay touched a raw nerve in the Government because it expounded on familiar kitchen-table issues albeit in a manner with tongue firmly in cheek. The Government swiftly responded with its routine one-two counter-punch. One consisted of the usual rebuke that politics should be left to wise men in the PAP and two was the more lethal move of removing the writer’s and/or dissident’s means of communication.

The upshot is that there will be no more discussion, or in this case fun-poking, of the cost of living in Singapore in the press. It was like plucking out the only blade of grass that grew out of the hot, dry desert sand.

But this is PAP at its vintage worst. It deprives society of the means to discuss and debate issues that reflect the views of the people. Once this is done it proceeds to paint the picture it wants the people to see – in this case Singapore as a veritable island of milk and honey, no matter how far removed this is from reality.

Can you see now how freedom of speech fits into the equation? Without political rights, including freedom of the press and the right to free expression, Singaporeans cannot talk about issues that directly affect their everyday lives. Without these rights how do Singaporeans like Mr Brown draw attention to the unfairness of the PAP’s economic policies and perhaps change them?

It is true that pocket-book issues are usually the main factors that go into deciding which party voters pick. But this makes sense only in a democratic system where votes really count. In an undemocratic society, talking about pocket-book issues are meaningless when free speech and a free press don't exist.

Look at it this way: In a nomadic, agrarian society that practices subsistence farming, people are constantly foraging for food and shelter. To them political rights don't matter very much. In modern societies, however, one doesn't just up and go to another spot to set up camp and grow crops. People depend more and more on systems and community organization for their livelihoods.

In such societies, there will inevitably emerge a ruling class that will seek to dominate those around it. For the dominated, remaining focused on food and shelter to the exclusion of protecting their right to have a say in how society is run is to invite exploitation and, ironically, eventual deprivation of one’s basic necessities.

Wanting financial security without protecting one’s political rights is like wanting to eat rice without having the fire to cook it. Seen this way, does it make sense to say that rice is more important than fire? Would the cynics, having seen the latest Brown-out, continue to insist that human rights are just airy-fairy concepts that don’t affect our lives?

While we may not be able to eat democracy, the rights that it brings will put the meaning of human into “human beings” and, in the process, keep us alive.