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Scifi fans may recall Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net (1988), which features the "Singaporean Anti-Labour Party", who sound an awful lot like the Chinese ta

Scifi fans may recall Bruce Sterling's Islands in the Net (1988), which features the "Singaporean Anti-Labour Party", who sound an awful lot like the Chinese tangping movement. The irony is that Singapore has loosened up a bit in the 40 years since, with the (actual) opposition Labour Party gaining a toehold in Parliament and various government campaigns to encourage arts and creativity (with varying levels of success), while in China the very concepts of political opposition or not being a busy worker bee are clearly anathema.

eynsham 5y ago
Do you mean the Workers’ Party? It doesn’t really fit the term ‘Labour’ since the NTUC is pretty much entirely government-controlled. And yes, from ~1980-2020 we’ve gone from no opposition to over ten opposition MPs and multiple opposition GRCs(!) but it is also worth pointing out that from 1963-1980 parliament went from 37-13 (PAP-BS) to that. If one buys Thum Ping Tjin’s analysis, elections since the 1980s have become more unfair even as the opposition’s share of the core has increased.¹ > The first of the two turning points was in the 1950s, specifically 1954–57, when the increasing demands of the people of Singapore for self-determination meant that universal suffrage could no longer be denied by the colonial government. In response, the colonial government kept the vote generally fair but sought to limit voters’ choices of candidates through anti-democratic legislation and regulation, like detention without trial and the infamous “subversives’ clause” of the 1957 Constitutional Agreement, which prevented anyone arrested (but not necessarily convicted) for subversion from running in the next election. This policy was then continued and amplified by the People’s Action Party (PAP) government, using lawsuits, harassment, arrests, and other measures, until the 1980s, when the will of the people for wider representation and greater accountability in Parliament became inexorable. > Up to that point, voter choice was restricted by limiting their choice of candidates. However, from around 1984–1991, a second shift took place, in which legal and regulatory changes made the elections less fair, and qualitative factors were introduced to discourage voting against the PAP. The elections were fundamentally redesigned to maximise electoral outcomes for the PAP. That is the situation which remains today. 1: https://newnaratif.com/a-brief-history-of-elections-in-singapore/ https://newnaratif.com/a-brief-history-of-elections-in-singa...

eynsham 5y ago

Do you mean the Workers’ Party? It doesn’t really fit the term ‘Labour’ since the NTUC is pretty much entirely government-controlled. And yes, from ~1980-2020 we’ve gone from no opposition to over ten opposition MPs and multiple opposition GRCs(!) but it is also worth pointing out that from 1963-1980 parliament went from 37-13 (PAP-BS) to that. If one buys Thum Ping Tjin’s analysis, elections since the 1980s have become more unfair even as the opposition’s share of the core has increased.¹ > The first of the two turning points was in the 1950s, specifically 1954–57, when the increasing demands of the people of Singapore for self-determination meant that universal suffrage could no longer be denied by the colonial government. In response, the colonial government kept the vote generally fair but sought to limit voters’ choices of candidates through anti-democratic legislation and regulation, like detention without trial and the infamous “subversives’ clause” of the 1957 Constitutional Agreement, which prevented anyone arrested (but not necessarily convicted) for subversion from running in the next election. This policy was then continued and amplified by the People’s Action Party (PAP) government, using lawsuits, harassment, arrests, and other measures, until the 1980s, when the will of the people for wider representation and greater accountability in Parliament became inexorable. > Up to that point, voter choice was restricted by limiting their choice of candidates. However, from around 1984–1991, a second shift took place, in which legal and regulatory changes made the elections less fair, and qualitative factors were introduced to discourage voting against the PAP. The elections were fundamentally redesigned to maximise electoral outcomes for the PAP. That is the situation which remains today. 1: https://newnaratif.com/a-brief-history-of-elections-in-singapore/ https://newnaratif.com/a-brief-history-of-elections-in-singa...