4 ms·
Singapore is a strange outlier among successful democratic countries. There's always stories that are untold. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Ch
by seanlinmt 4mo ago
Singapore is a strange outlier among successful democratic countries. There's always stories that are untold. For example,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lim_Chin_Siong?wprov=sfla1
Operation Spectrum untracing the conspiracy' https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS https://share.google/2mRpZk3RGaYUKCRXS
- zorked 4mo ago"He was one of the founders of the governing People's Action Party (PAP), which has governed the country continuously since independence" Very democratic country.
- hirako2000 4mo agoCompetitively authoritarian, so, democratic. If Singapore isn't a democracy then the U.S is a dictature.
- zuzululu 4mo agoMerit remains the foundation of its ruling style, the other, whatever suits the mood of the ruling power behind democratic labels and institutions that ultimately have violated its own constitution. People throw out the word democracy like they know what it is.
- roenxi 4mo agoI have no idea and probably not, but it is a bit more complex than that. There isn't any particular rule saying that the only functional democratic model is multi-party democracy. One could imagine a successful democratic model with one party allowing diverse internal factions, for example. It is really hard to get a read on China, but their success raises some interesting questions of how exactly their internal party decision making is set up. That being said, I would assume that a one party state isn't very democratic. It'd be an unstable democracy.
- itsthecourier 4mo agobeen in China for decades, benevolent dictatorships allow long term planning, elections every 4 years favor short term decisions, populism and waste a huge percentage of time in after elections and pre-elections China and Singapore showed democracy is not necessarily the most productive way to run a country
- Pay08 4mo agoA country shouldn't be a factory. It doesn't need to be "productive".
- claw-el 4mo agoThe election happening once in a while helps ensure if the long term planning is still aligned with the population, because, new people will be born and some others will ‘age out’, the original long term planning might no longer represent the voice of this new set of population.
- Pay08 4mo agoFrom what I've read (and this may very well be outdated), Singapore is generally democratic, but the PAP does such a good job of running the country that people don't vote for other parties.
- roenxi 4mo agoYeah we've heard that before from people who turned out to be filthy liars. Not saying it is impossible, the Singapore numbers are borderline plausible, but if the leading party gets more than 60% of the vote I'm going to assume shenanigans unless I've seen some pretty strong evidence beyond what a propaganda department would put out. People don't agree with each other all that much. Opposition can literally just converge to the PAP positions over time. Or internal factionalism causes a schism and leads to 2 parties forming from one overwhelming ruling party. In political settings there are enormous incentives to set up roughly 50-50 coalitions.
- 4mo ago
- thisislife2 4mo agoAs the article points out, Lee Kuan Yew did not believe that democracy meant that his (or any other party in power) should also help opposition parties politically thrive. While such political philosophies can be abused by authoritarians (and Lee was an authoritarian) in a democracy, I do see the wisdom in it. For example, Nehru - India's first Prime Minister - invited even some opposition leaders into his Cabinet as his party got an absolute majority in the first election post-independence. That was a rare departure from the convention of a Parliamentary Democracy, where only members from the ruling party or coalition form the Cabinet. Nehru however wanted to promote democratic values in India and since his party didn't really have an opposition, he invited some into the Cabinet to ensure their voice would have prominence in the media and the public. But he later abandoned this practise because the political ideological differences made this untenable in practise.
- zuzululu 4mo agoDid you know Philippines adopted American style democracy and were much more wealthier than Singapore and other Asian countries? How do you think Philiippines compare now to Singapore as a result of its "democracy" ?
- epolanski 4mo agoIt's not really a proper democracy, the same party has ruled since the founding of the country. There are severe restrictions on speech, assembly, press and important legal and political barriers for the opposition parties. It is very easy to land in front of a tribunal for defamation or similar for expressing dissent or accusing the government of corruption. The truth is that Singapore has been lucky that Lee Kuan Yew and most of his successors have been good bureaucrats and politicians. That makes the ruling party also somewhat popular. Lee Kuan Yew has been an astonishing nation builder and an extremely brilliant man with a huge sensibility for politics and understanding the world. But it's still a system that's waiting for the wrong people to be put in charge and test the limits of their "democracy".
- itsthecourier 4mo agoTrump is testing the limits of USA democracy every day, just from the top of my mind: top lieutenants worth 5%+ ownership in Thether holding company, Ivanka's husband with the Saudis, Ivanka herself in the ONU, shameless plugs of crypto tokens and cards in the podium after elections, pardons for criminals democracy failed America
- epolanski 4mo agoWinner-takes-all democracies all suffer of the same issue. There's a reason why every single democracy to turn authoritarian in the last 60 years has been presidential or semi-presidential. The only parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian since the 60s has been Sri Lanka, there's not a single other example.
- verve_rat 4mo agoI think you'll find America failed democracy.
- chillacy 4mo agoI think a reading of Roman history shows the failure modes of a senate so often that I wonder if it was ever supposed to work more than a few hundred years.
- 4mo ago
- killingtime74 4mo agoIt's not a democratic country. If it was then so is China and North Korea. They hold elections too
- decimalenough 4mo agoSingapore has been described as a "managed democracy". There are genuinely free elections, and there's an actual opposition, but the government/ruling party (they're largely inseparable at this point) exerts a heavy hand to ensure they keep their supermajority. One of the big questions of Singaporean politics is what would happen if there ever was a "freak result" (in LKY's words) and the opposition won a majority, since thanks to the first past the post voting system further exacerbated by mandatory "group representative constituencies" the winner always wins big and coalitions or minority governments are not an option.
- claw-el 4mo agoIn comparison, another country considered to be a ‘flawed democracy’ also have governments exerting a heavy hand in redrawing the election map (even getting to Supreme Court) to ensure they keep their majority.
- shellfishgene 4mo ago"Over the following decades, Lee built a strong government that was backed by a competent and virtually corruption-free civil service..." This part of the history, only mentioned in this one sentence, is the most interesting and relevant for other countries, and is really what sets Singapore apart from other countries in the region.
- Der_Einzige 4mo agoThe idea that Singapore isn't corrupt is one of the biggest lies of all time. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m7xrd2z0o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62m7xrd2z0o https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/10/spanish-couple-detained-singapore-protest-valencia-football-club-owner https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/10/spanish-couple...
- ImJamal 4mo agoI don't think you know what the definition of corruption is. According to Merriam Webster the definition is: > a: dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers) : depravity > b: inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (such as bribery); the corruption of government officials > c: a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct the corruption of a text; the corruption of computer files > d: decay, decomposition; the corruption of a carcass As far as I can tell the law was passed by the legislature, the police enforced the law, they weren't bribed to not enforce it or to enforce it. Seems like the whole system worked correctly, legally and without corruption of any kind.
- filoleg 4mo agoOk, I will bite. What does detaining someone over an unlawful (per the written law) protest have anything to do with corruption? Corruption involves bribes, selective enforcement of the law, unethical favoritism when it comes to legal decisions, "favors", etc. Your links just describe people participating in a protest that was against the law on the books, and then that law being enforced upon them. You can call that specific law unfair, undemocratic, authoritarian, etc., but what's the corruption angle here?