The optics of power and the myth of meritocracy.
Singapore has long been considered, in Southeast Asia and beyond, to be a bastion of Liberal Values.
Primarily, this narrative is in terms of economic prosperity and business friendliness: think of the Tory refrain of “Singapore-on-the-Thames”, the rallying image of a rejuvenated London, awash in all the halcyon gold of its colonial ports. So often are the names of Singapore and the PAP invoked when discussions of double capital G Good Governance that the city-state has practically become synonymous with the neoliberal/libertarian fantasy of a state where the free market runs free, and the streets are paved with gold.
However, there is a distinct social slant to this narrative as well. Singapore is often ranked amongst the “best places” to be queer, liberal, left-leaning, or otherwise marginal in all of Southeast Asia. In spite of Singapore’s chequered, eugenicist history of social policies, there is still a persistent image that Singapore, at least relative to its regional peers, is one of the “best” places to be an “outsider”, as attested by the existence of articles like Queer in the World’s article on Singapore as a travel destination that “offers something for everyone!”
And certainly, this narrative is a precious resource for Singapore, equal or superior to any of its physical resources or assets. Of the 1.64 million expats living in the country (who bring with them foreign investments amounting to up to 24.7% of Singapore’s entire GDP), no-small number of them can be said to have been attracted by the story of Singapore. The story of a meritocratic, just, fair society, where the cream rise to the top and the crop is well cared for. Where you’re free to be who you are and do as you please, so long as you don’t try to enact too much change.
This is without considering the positive effect of that reputation on Singapore’s position in the global order: think of the 2018 summit it hosted between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, or even the oft-repeated anecdote that Deng Xiaoping’s liberalising reforms were inspired in no small part by the PAP and Lee Kuan Yew. The popular political “image” of Singapore has lent it tremendous soft power and diplomatic cachet, far and beyond the weight class its territory or population would otherwise afford it.
Singapore and the PAP enjoys one of the most ephemeral and precious of resources that a government can have: a good “reputation”. A reputation not only of wealth, but fairness and justice. A reputation that no less a figure than Lee Hsien Loong declared was “a matter of survival” for the island nation.
None of this “reputation” stopped them, on April 27 2022, from murdering a mentally disabled man.
Nagaenthran Dharmalingam was not the first person to be executed by Singapore for drug trafficking. Nor was he the first Malaysian. Nor was his crime, arguably, the lightest. Still, his case attracted worldwide attention and condemnation for the confluence of tragedies that make up his story.
With an assessed IQ of 69 (below the threshold for an individual to be considered intellectual disabled), an ADHD diagnosis, and behaviour described as being more akin to a “five-year-old child” than a 34 year old man, Nagaenthran was the perfect image of a victim. His crime: the smuggling of 42.72 grams of diamorphine across the Causeway (barely 3 tablespoons), was a trivial act that barely surpassed the threshold for mandatory execution. A plea for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment was denied on account of the prosecution psychiatrists deeming him insufficiently intellectually disabled.
From the date his death warrant was signed in November of 2021, public outcry against the judgement was fierce and global. Commentators from as far away as the UK and the US (political arenas generally positively predisposed towards Singapore) called for clemency for Nagaenthran. Beyond the expected Malaysian diplomatic overtures to spare one of their own citizens, Nagaenthran’s story caught fire with an global community of human rights organisations & spokespersons, roundly condemning his death sentence as a miscarriage of justice.
A list, in no particular order, of those who spoke on his behalf:
- The United Nations Commission on Human Rights
- Amnesty International
- Human Rights Watch
- The Delegation of the European Union to Singapore
- Stephen Fry
- Richard Branson
These collective calls fell on deaf ears. On April 27 2022, thirteen years after his initial arrest, after having been permitted a few final hours with his weeping mother in the basement of the court, Nagaenthren Dharmalingam was hung from the neck until dead.
Let it not merely be implied. The execution of Nagaenthran was an unjust and cruel act. It was, by every moral definition of the term, murder: an unjustifiable killing of an underserving victim.
Even the harshest proponents of capital punishment will agree that the haphazard execution of an intellectually disabled man for the crime of carrying three tablespoons of heroin across a bridge, and subsequently being declared “not stupid enough to be spared”, is a horrifying waste of human life.
And from a purely pragmatic, realpolitik standpoint, neither was the move an ideal one.
What, exactly, did this murder accomplish except to tarnish Singapore’s reputation of social justice and fairness? Who, exactly, was chomping at the bit to proudly declare this execution a just and worthy act? Even K. Shanmugam, Minister of Law, could only muster a limp-wristed apologetic about the supposed sanctity of the “rule of law” which must permit “no special exceptions”.
But nothing about “rule of law” states that the first judgement of a court must always be adhered to. Justice should be blind to the privileges and circumstances of the accused, and attempts to subvert and mislead it. Justice should not be blind to context or circumstance.
There were multiple avenues for the Singaporean government to intervene, well within the confines of the rule of law to change their initial judgement. Whether by presidential pardon, judicial appeal, or even the commuting of his sentence to the still harsh, but at-minimum not-murderous sentence of life imprisonment.
It is easy to imagine an alternate scenario where the PAP benevolently intervened to issue a presidential pardon, to much international and political acclaim. One imagines President Halimah Yacob in an austure tudung and ceremonial dress, letter of pardon in hand and the words of reprieve on her lips to demonstrate that in Singapore, “the quality of mercy is not strained”. Such a move would surely have won them much international accord and bolstered their precious “reputation”: as a fair, just, progressive, and Liberal values for all of Asia to admire.
So why didn’t they?
There is a common narrative that the PAP is able to govern so-effectively in Singapore because it is able to rise above the noise of public opinion: and that it can forge ahead with the “correct” path regardless of any misguided or short-sighted opposition, with no care for its public appearance and image.
This is, of course, nonsense. The PAP is, in truth, deeply conscious and insecure about its image. The country’s permissive defamation laws, which have been described in effect as being an unofficial arm of government censorship, are proof enough of this.
The 6 hour public castigation and harassment of historian PJ Thum before the Singaporean parliament, for the crime of criticising Lee Kuan Yew’s Operation Coldstore half a century post-hoc is the finest example in recent memory. The PAP will not — cannot — stand even the lightest hint of questioning that hits even remotely home.
The truth is this: above and beyond its reputation for wealth, its reputation for acceptance, tolerance, justice, and fairness, there is one reputation that the PAP must maintain above all costs. The reputation of invulnerability and inviolability.
Singapore’s society and rhetoric has been shaped, through the intervening six decades, to be about “meritocracy”. The cream rises. The smart and quick thrive. Anyone who has the will and skill to see themselves at the top of the pile can, and will. And atop the talented pile, at the apex of that exalted ladder, there sits your man: the PAP.
The PAP’s legitimacy: it’s entire rhetorical justification for its continued one-party rule and apparatus, is based on the idea that it, and only it, is the best and only party that is capable of ruling Singapore. Not merely by dint of history or popular mandate, but in some sense, the indescribable gestalt whole of the PAP, which has transcended the confines of political and social structure to become something more.
The PAP’s errors can be admitted. Mistakes can be confessed. But only when the pageantry of such serves to ultimately strengthen and reinforce the party’s underlying inviolable status at the top of the pile, when it serves the narrative of the PAP’s magnanimous “merit”. Cogs in the machine may be condemned and discarded, but the whole is beyond reproach.
To pardon Nagaenthran, (or Abdul Kahar, or Datchinamurthy Kataiah, or any other victims caught in bear-trap of Singapore’s murderous system), would have been an admission that none of this is true. It would shatter the grand illusion of PAP exceptionalism, and reveal the truth for all to see.
The PAP is not, after all, the bastion of Asian liberalism and the ideal society to which all others should aspire, but only a political party, shaped by political interests and the greed of ambitious men (and the occasional woman). They are not the inviolable, implicit kings of Singapore atop enlightened thrones, they are flesh and blood, and prone to all the weaknesses therein.
Singapore is, not after all, exempt from the forces of global history and driven to ever increasing prosperous heights by its combination of cultural-genetic destiny , but a nation which has been shaped, used, and abused by its corporate masters, like all others.
None of the PAP’s leaders could accept this outcome. So Nagaenthran needs must die.
