Consensus and Fragmentation: Reforming Parliament for our Evolving Democracy
By Murali Pillai
On 2 September 2020, I delivered a speech in the 14th session of the Singapore Parliament during the motion to thank the President for her address setting out the Government’s agenda for this term.
In my speech, I focussed on some proposals for Parliamentary reform that, in my view, will make MPs and the Government more accountable to our voters and strengthen our evolving democracy.
In my speech, I drew from the wisdom of Pericles, the leader of Athens who delivered a speech referred to as the Funeral Oration over 2000 years ago during the Peloponnesian war between between Athens and Sparta.
What struck me was the relevance of the points he made despite the passing of so many centuries since.
It is humbling to realise that we, in our modern society, do not have the monopoly of good ideas to advance our nation and secure a better future. In many ways, we are merely rediscovering what our forefathers already knew and more importantly, practised.
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Mr Speaker, Sir, with your indulgence, I wish to make some prefatory remarks before embarking on my speech. First, I wish to thank Bukit Batok SMC constituents for giving me the privilege of representing them once again as their Member of Parliament. I will do my best in this role.
Second, I wish to place on record, my own thanks and best wishes to Members of Parliament who have served in the Thirteenth session of Parliament and have stepped down. I purposely did not use the word “retire” because I believe they will always continue to be involved in Public Service, in one way or another.
Last, I wish to congratulate the newly-elected Members of Parliament from both sides of the House, the class of 2020, who just emerged from the political baptism of fire in form of the General Elections. I look forward to engaging them on issues that concern Singapore and Singaporeans.
Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to give two specific reasons for rising to speak in support of the Motion. First, I would like to thank the President for sharing with us some hard truths and for jolting us into a new age for policy-making.
The trajectory of the world has changed. The winds are no longer in Singapore’s favour. A small city-state, reliant on global trade and openness, we are now confronted with closed borders – not just due to COVID-19 but to rising nationalism and populism. These are strong external forces over which we have no control.
A second change lies in our internal politics. In our country, there is a change towards a more contested, less conciliatory form of politics. And this can be to our good – as Members of Parliament, we must get used to the rough and tumble of politics, become resilient and engage in robust and searing debate. I, for one, have been drawn to the edge, and spoken out against what is acceptable and what is not. All of us in politics must grow the skin of a rhino as well as the heart of a lion. But, no need for talons, please.
These forces within Singapore are those we can influence, debate and in the end, decide upon.
A Pattern to Others
To help us in making this decision – on what kind of politics we want in Singapore – I thank the President for describing who we could be, if we were to realise the best of ourselves. She calls us to find “common purpose” and to find strength in our diversity. This is the aspiration towards evolving our own model of democracy, where differences do not tear the social fabric, or polarise and fragment. We have today before us, a chance to forge our own path, but this will not be easy as the hon Leader of the House cautioned us earlier this week, “Unity in diversity is not a given.”
About 2,500 years ago, in another time, another place, Pericles, a leader of Athens, a small city state, urged his people to find their own way in an uncertain world. He said, “Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are a pattern to others rather than imitators ourselves. A community of people who follow not only a written law, but a social and moral code, which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.” How profound and relevant these words are to our circumstances, even after all these years!
Knowing these two truths – the large changes in the world and in Singapore, and an aspiration of what we could be, the question remains, how do we get there?
An Imperturbable Democracy
Katherine Graham, the former publisher of the Washington Post, said, “News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.” Agreement, collegiality, friendliness, all these make poor headlines. The truth is most of the time, all Members of Parliament in this House agree. This is an uncontroversial outcome. Most times, the Workers’ Party agree with the Bills introduced. Such agreement is boring and almost never makes the news.
Even on the relatively controversial issue of Ministerial pay, the Workers’ Party agreed with the outcome although the process in arriving at the decisions – “top down” compared to “bottom up” – were different.
Consensus is as boring as contestation is exciting. But I see consensus as being perhaps the most important outcome of our work here. So, I do not think we should be perturbed if anyone were to say that Singapore’s parliamentary proceedings are boring. Consensus and the negotiation of shared interests are key aspirations of our democracy. But consensus is not a matter of sweeping hard truths under the carpet but a process of contestation, persuasion and resolution.
The outcome of this process – decisions and agreements – are sticky and legitimate. This would require Members of Parliament to have a deeper understanding of the policy considerations behind the Bill. To help them, the First Reading of any Bill, which is currently rather formulaic, can be put to better use by the Minister by giving Members a non-specialist understanding of the issues at play, how they impact the ordinary lives of Singaporeans and how the Bill proposes to address these concerns.
This has been already been done by the New Zealand Parliament and has much to commend for itself. In this way, Members of Parliament will be better prepared to debate the Bill during the Second Reading which happens on a separate occasion.
Today, the Second Reading of the Bill comprises largely Members of Parliament reading out their speeches when their turn comes. They have little time to react to what has been said by their fellow Parliamentarians. They obviously will not be able to consider what will be said later by other Parliamentarians.
I suggest that Parliament make available the option of lodging our speeches to be taken as read, and made public to all. This also puts them up to public scrutiny while, at the same time, creating a more efficient process. Having done this, time in this House should be spent on genuine debate and points of clarification or disagreement. We will be able to avoid repetition of points that waste valuable time. The Minister should feel free to berate Members who try to debate without having read his speech.
Through this process, it would then be easier to assess the full diversity of views expressed by all Members, ascertain, as a matter of record, where the consensus lies and the points of disagreement, if any.
This will also hold Members to account, and for our constituents to see if we do, indeed, put our time and attention to Parliamentary matters or whether we are simply going through the motion.
I would like Parliament to also invest in a new IT system to make it easier for any member of the public to hold Members of Parliament to account – to check the attendance of any Member, to find the number of Parliamentary Questions or PQs asked, the number of times spoken on Bills, Budgets, Committee of Supply debates, Motions and so on.
This information is already public and can be obtained today, but not without some effort, including manual counting. I urge such records to be made available more easily with an online search platform.
There should also be a Parliamentary record of the outcome of Members’ proposals which the Minister has agreed to study.
The Hansard is replete with examples of frontbenchers providing holding replies without the ability to check whether there have been any updates. Members of the public reading the Hansard will not be able to tell whether the loop has been closed.
We should also entrench a practice of expressly acknowledging Members in Parliament should their proposals by accepted by the Government. This, too, should be accessible by members of the public.
Of course, it could takes years for results to be seen. For example, my lobbying for a simplification of probate processes that leverage on technology, which, I am happy to note, found its way into the Addendum to the President’s Address issued by Minister for Law, has taken three years. But I am sure I speak for many others when I say it is far better late than never!
Another call I would make in relation to accountability is for the Civil Service to publish and present in Parliament a paper regularly stating the number of letters it and Statutory Boards receive from Members of Parliament petitioning on behalf of their constituents on a per constituency basis. The paper should indicate the percentage of the substantive responses to the Members of Parliament which are made within the time period stipulated in the Government Instruction Manual. I do not think this is a laborious task as there exists technology that can be harnessed to generate such reports.
One may ask what has this got to do with Parliament? In response, let me highlight what the UK Cabinet said in a memo issued in March 2016. “The right of MPs to take up constituents’ cases and other issues directly with Government is an important part of the democratic process and underlines the accountability of Ministers to Parliament.”
Voters are maturing, more demanding, and very rightly so, in terms of what they can and should expect from all of us in this House. They are also discerning, attentive, rational and fair. They hold all of us up to high standards and see beyond political colours to the real impact we make on their lives.
Not only that, the proposals that I have suggested will ensure that our constituents have access to such information to make informed political choices and decisions.
Pericles highlighted the importance of an informed citizenry in the same speech I quoted from. He said: “Here, each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well. Even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics…We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say he has no business here at all”. That was 2,500 years ago and this passage has not lost its relevance.
How do we know if we have succeeded as a people? The key test is this: are we proud of ourselves as a people? Or do we hold what we have in contempt? Do we want to build upon what we have done, or do we want to tear down our structures and start from scratch? These are not false choices. They are hard questions which we need to ask ourselves because they will define us, not just for this political term, but for the rest of our lifetime.
If we succeed, we would have built a democracy strong and imperturbable.
Our politics may not be full of sound and fury. Chairs and fists may not fly in this Parliament – at least I hope so – but our steady, even-keeled politics will ensure that we, as a nation, will be able to withstand fierce winds and firestorms and so secure our future.
Mr Speaker, Sir, Singapore today is at a place and time where there is wide agreement on many principles, but a great contestation in the application of these principles. For example, we value multiculturalism, but the process of achieving it must no longer be a matter of quiet tolerance but of open debate.
This is not easy. There are many amongst us still not used to debate, let alone robust contest. There are many in the silent majority who have views not expressed on social media, but held no less strongly for that. There are those who prefer not to have to fight for our views, but to hope that these views are self-evident. But I wonder whether this hope is in vain.
Often, we take to “the streets” online, by setting up petitions on causes and let brute numbers speak in place of reason with no chance of reaching consensus or – using the words of the hon Leader of the Opposition – engaging in “reasoned conversation”. This is a poor shadow of democracy.
I think it is time that we – just like during Pericles’ time – as a nation, set a social and moral code under which we should not flinch from actively defending our views and values and also understand an opposing point of view, and debate and discuss these views. We should do so respectfully with an open mind, always with the hope that the other side has something to teach us.
In the end, whether we succeed in persuading one another to a common view or not, we would have built a stronger shared understanding and promoted mutual respect. In the end, if we agree to something, it is an active, not a presumed, consent. It is a process that grants legitimacy to our actions and makes our decisions binding.
The President gave some valuable advice on how to live in what can appear to be very fraught times. She paints a new vision and exhorts us to a new mission: “The new generation of leaders and Singaporeans will have to form bonds and connections afresh…They have to continue to deliver effective and sound government, while accommodating the growing diversity of views. And they have to foster a more open spirit in our society, even as we strengthen the common cause holding us together as Singaporeans.”
I thank President Halimah for reminding us of who we really are and for writing the first page of our new term. The rest of the book – we must write together, all of us in this House, and everyone outside.
Once again, we, a people of many races, cultures and religions, all of us Singaporeans, must come together to find strength and common purpose. I support the Motion.
