Govt refutes author's claims over public trust
PUBLISHED ONJune 14, 2014 3:53 AMByTham Yuen-C
SINGAPORE - The Government has refuted author Catherine Lim's claim in an open letter to the Prime Minister that Singaporeans no longer trust it.
The level of trust remains high, it said, as it has done much to improve people's lives, including addressing problems of income inequality, slowing social mobility and the middle-income squeeze in a "sustainable and responsible" way.
An international trust barometer has also found that a considerably higher proportion of Singaporeans trust their government than do people in the United States, Britain or Hong Kong.
The Government's response came in a letter from Singapore's Consul-General in Hong Kong Jacky Foo to the South China Morning Post after it reported on Ms Lim's open letter to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
In the letter posted on her blog last Saturday, Ms Lim said the people of Singapore "no longer trust their government, and the government no longer cares about regaining their trust".
It was shared widely on social media, and some news outlets picked up the story.
Mr Foo pointed out that this was not the first time Ms Lim had made such assertions about the relationship between Singapore's Government and people.
In his letter, published in the Hong Kong newspaper yesterday, he said that in 1994 too, she had "spied a great affective divide" after what she saw as the People's Action Party's poor performance in the 1991 General Election.
The PAP had won that election with 61 per cent of the vote. Ms Lim had written about the "affective divide" in a commentary published in this newspaper.
Mr Foo said that since 1994, the PAP had "taken Singapore through a number of serious crises relatively unscathed". These include the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the outbreak of Sars in 2003 and the 2008 global financial crisis.
It also won four further general elections by "healthy margins". "But still Ms Lim continues to regularly bemoan a collapse of trust and respect for the Government," he said.
He cited the Edelman Trust Barometer in which 75 per cent of respondents in Singapore said they trust the Government. That was compared with 37 per cent in the United States, 42 per cent in the United Kingdom and 45 per cent in Hong Kong.
In her open letter last weekend, Ms Lim said the present breakdown of trust was more serious than what she had described in 1994, and had "reached crisis proportions".
As evidence, she cited recent "high-visibility, high-risk" forms of protest, such as the vandalism at a Toa Payoh Housing Board block which had anti-PAP graffiti sprayed on a wall near the rooftop.
In addition, she said, the Government's use of the defamation suit is also seen by Singaporeans as "the very cause of the erosion of trust", even if it is a "legitimate instrument... to seek justice and redress".
Mr Lee recently commenced legal action against blogger Roy Ngerng, who alleged in a May 15 blog post that the Prime Minister had misappropriated Central Provident Fund monies.
Mr Lee sued after an earlier letter of demand to get Mr Ngerng to remove the post, apologise and pay damages was not complied with fully. During negotiations between both sides, Mr Ngerng re-asserted his claim in other blog posts and videos online.
In an apparent reference to that incident, Ms Lim warned in her letter that "in the highly charged atmosphere of the new Singapore", using the defamation suit would "surely damage the PAP cause further".
The lack of trust, she said, had led people to disregard all the good that the Government had done since the 2011 General Election.
Ms Lim lamented this state of affairs, saying: "I have to say that I am somewhat dismayed by the pure vitriol of your more extreme online critics who gleefully twist everything that you say and do to serve their cynicism."
Responding, Mr Foo said emphatically that Ms Lim was wrong to suggest the defamation suit against Mr Ngerng would "further erode trust".
"On the contrary, Mr Lee acted because the Government prizes integrity as the ultimate source of the trust it enjoys," he said.
He explained that if a leader just stood by when accused of criminally misappropriating money from the state pension system, he would "engender mistrust in his honesty and leadership". He added that a person who wanted to make such accusations should have basis for them and not be "gratuitously lying".
In countries where lies and false accusations dominate public discourse, he noted, people have a low opinion of politicians and little trust in their government.
Mr Foo also pointed out that while not all is perfect in Singapore, the Government had done much to improve people's lives.
For example, he said, the Government had openly acknowledged the problems of income inequality, slowing social mobility and the middle-income squeeze that other developed societies are also experiencing due to globalisation.
He added: "It has done much to overcome them, and is doing more in a sustainable and responsible, not populist, way. That is why trust in government in Singapore remains high."
This article was first published on June 14, 2014.
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