Garry Rodan

The development of a regional human-rights commission in Southeast Asia constitutes a fresh battleground where competing views are playing out. As in the past the main interlocutors on the side of cultural relativism are Singaporean leaders and officials, but this time, opposing voices within Southeast Asia have grown louder and more self-confident. Singapore's leaders continue to spend more energy challenging or dismissing the universality of human rights than identifying and seeking to protect culturally and historically specific versions of those rights. This is because of the ruling People's Action Party's rejection of concepts of citizenship rights that are threatening to an acutely elitist authoritarianism and the restrictive nature and basis of political accountability that define the regime. Nevertheless, the Asian Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights has necessitated the domestic institutionalization of civil society consultation on human rights that hitherto didn't exist in the city state.

For Singapore, 2008 has been a bumper year for legal actions and decisions against the international media and political opponents of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP), underlining the government's resolve to keep political comment and expression within tight limits. Yet in his August National Day Rally Speech, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also announced a watering down of restrictions on political uses of electronic media and outdoor protest rallies. While these may seem like divergent patterns, political change around the edges has long been a feature of the PAP'S approach to preserving the political system's fundamentals. PAP leaders would not likely dispute that. More difficult for them to concede is the extent to which PAP political battles and system tinkering are shaped by the strategies of Singapore Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan. But while Chee may exert an influence over the PAP'S political agenda, there remain serious obstacles to broad domestic appeal.

THE NOTION THAT the Internet poses an inherent threat to authoritarian regimes has waned in influence since the mid-1990s, as the political impact of net activists in China and elsewhere has fallen well short of early expectations. Cherian George delivers another assault to that politically naïve and technologically determinist proposition. Yet he does so through analysis of some of the more successful attempts in Singapore and Malaysia at harnessing the Internet to challenge institutions aligned with authoritarian regimes...

SINGAPORE’S vast array of government-linked companies (GLCs) has enabled it to manage the process of globalization with remarkable stability and effectiveness. Indeed, it’s fair to say the city-state is a rare contemporary case of successful state capitalism. Increasingly, however, the economics and politics of the GLCs’ gatekeeper role have started to conflict. And as GLCs internationalize and the city-state’s markets are exposed to more intense market pressures, tensions will continue to rise.