ST: Left, right, or just more of the middle?
Soh Yi Da
Left, right, or just more of the middle?
Singapore Govt may have shifted its stance, but fundamentals unchanged
AFTER this paper ran an interview with Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam last week, a long-time friend of mine texted me out of the blue.
He said that he didn't know that the Government had become socialist. "When did that happen?" he mused.
He was referring to Mr Tharman's comment that the Cabinet has shifted in its thinking to become "left-of-centre".
Mr Tharman, in a wide-ranging interview with The Straits Times, gave an insight into this change.
"If I compare our thinking in Cabinet, or the weight of thinking in Cabinet, when I first entered politics about 11 years ago, I would say the weight of thinking was centrist but there were two flanks on either side of it," he said.
"There were some who were a little right-of-centre, and there were some a little left-of-centre.
"Now I would say the weight of thinking is left-of-centre. You still get diversity of views in Cabinet, but the centre of gravity is left-of-centre."
One businessman remarked to me in a casual chat that the comment explained why the Government seemed to be less friendly to businesses in recent years, and kept a tough stance on its foreign worker policy.
On the other hand, political scientist Derek da Cunha told The Straits Times that he did not think the Government has shifted in economic policy.
For instance, he said that the Government continues to believe in the importation of foreign workers to support the economy.
So has the Cabinet shifted left or has it not?
The problem in trying to decipher what "left" or "right" means, is that both terms are loaded.
Being on the left of the political spectrum generally indicates belief in ideals such as socialism, equality and state assistance for individuals. At the extreme end of the left stands communism, while liberals have been known to occupy various points on the spectrum, from free-market liberals on the right, to social reform-minded liberals further to the left.
Right-wing politics, however, encompasses everyone from religious zealots to supporters of big business to strong believers in free market principles.
Clearly, such "left" or "right" labels are imprecise. What's more, whether one is left or right depends on who is saying it.
If you are a communist, everyone else might be a right-wing fascist. Whereas if you are a religious radical, anyone who wears shorts is an immoral liberal.
This problematic nature of such labels is one reason PAP leaders have refused to be drawn into discussing ideology, stressing that what is more important is being pragmatic about governance.
Still, if one looks at the majority of the social policies rolled out in recent years, there has been an undeniable shift in both its tone and objectives.
When Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took over in 2004, he made building an inclusive society one of his priorities.
Since then, the Government has been slowly shifting its stance away from a model that gave primacy to self-help, to one where the state is more willing to provide assistance to get people back on their feet.
The prime example of this is Workfare, a cross between state welfare and self-help.
The state essentially now supplements the pay of low-wage workers, in an implicit recognition that the market does not always pay fair wages to such workers. In turn, workers have to work in order to get the assistance.
But those expecting decisive moves towards the left-of-centre Nordic model of social welfare are likely to be disappointed.
While Mr Tharman did say that the Cabinet has shifted, one needs to watch and read the entire interview to understand that the core principles of PAP's governance have not changed very much.
For one thing, he put a very strong emphasis on the idea of sustainability regarding any further increases in social spending.
No dipping into reserves, he stressed, even though he revealed that the Government was open to drawing more of the income that is generated from investing the reserves.
But above all, keeping the economy healthy and competitive to put jobs on the table, is, and always has been, the main plank of PAP's approach to governing.
"So economic policy is not irrelevant to the type of society we want, because we are a society that still has aspirations to move up," he said.
So while Singapore might have moved to the left of the centre, it is clearly nowhere near the centre-left of the Nordic political world. The key difference here is where the centre lies.
As National University of Singapore sociologist Tan Ern Ser notes: "The PAP has changed policy-wise, though the fundamentals remain largely unchanged."
So if the Government is not intending to move sharply away from its current set of policies, why did Mr Tharman, who is known for his carefully worded public remarks, say that the Government has shifted to the left?
To be clear, he was probably describing the moves that have already been made in recent years as a shift to the left.
But one other answer is that it is about positioning and framing in terms of public perception.
Arguably, the middle ground today is a lot more diverse than what it was, say, 20 years ago. And many more educated voters than before are likely to be left-leaning.
By identifying itself as a left-of-centre party, the PAP is reclaiming more of the middle ground that the opposition Workers' Party has been moving to occupy.
From before the 2011 General Election, the WP has consistently positioned itself to the left of the the PAP.
It has never really completely disagreed with the PAP over major issues, such as ministerial pay or population targets.
It was, instead, content with suggesting tweaks that are different but not so far from the original policy that they could be described as radical.
By now describing its policies as more "left-of-centre", the PAP probably hopes to edge WP even more to the left and increasingly out of the middle ground.
Will it work? Much will depend on whether the PAP can deliver policies that are seen as being more liberal than they used to be, while keeping true to its fundamental tenets.
Indeed, while people have focused on whether the Government is shifting left or whether it remains to the right, in truth, the real battle is aimed at securing as broad a swathe of the middle ground as possible.