greetings my name is Kenneth paan and it's my great pleasure to offer you some tentative ideas about the emergence of authoritarian populism in Singapore Singapore has long enjoyed an international reputation for political stability social cohesion economic wealth and International connectedness on so many measures including GDP per capita economic competitiveness low corruption passport strength Port Airport Airline high education and several others Singapore ranks among the top in the world and is much admired and even copied by others its success has been mostly attributed to the pro business and globally oriented policies of a sophisticatedly authoritarian government often acknowledged as clean meritocratic and technocratic the long ruling people's action party or papap operates within a Westminster system that is in effect a one- party dominant State having won an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats in general elections that are held regularly and that confer upon the incumbent significant systematic Advantage political legitimacy in Singapore is however principally a matter of the state's ability to meet the basic physiological and security needs of its citizens at a very high level of satisfaction and holding the Monopoly on how this is to be understood and explained in the public public discourse since the 1990s some of the most trenchant liberal criticisms of Singapore's practice of democracy freedoms and human rights have been increasingly eclipsed by a neoliberal celebration of the Singapore model of governance that so many including Elites in the liberal West seem to want to emulate the P government prior itself on being able to pursue even unpopular policies that it regards as necessary for Singapore's long-term interests taking seriously what its first prime minister Lewan Yu described in realist pragmatist terms as hard truths the papap and its supporters use the word populist contemptuously to accuse its critics and opponents of political posturing that irresponsibly and manipulatively panders to the demands of Ordinary People characterized as selfish ignorant and shortsighted the papap government makes hyperbolic assertions about how any Divergence from its rational policies and strategic principles will lead to the ruin of Singapore almost as a reflex action they dismiss as too easy overly sentimental uninformed technically unsound or financially unsustainable any Bonafide policy Alternatives that challenge its Orthodoxy in and out of parliament but many of such policies actually do point helpfully to the unmet needs of those singaporeans as well as other marginalized Iz communities who have fallen behind or are systematically disadvantaged in this National success story in this short presentation I would like to argue that in Singapore populism is still mostly a derisive term of party political rhetoric regularly weaponized against the ruling party's opponents regardless of the merits of their argument however it has become somewhat self-fulfilling as the extremely uncompetitive nature of general elections and the worsening perception that ordinary singaporeans have of their leaders quality of life and personal prospects have created conditions that are conducive to the emergence and spread of authoritarian populism of which early signs are already apparent a mere 734 square kilometers Singapore has a population of about 5.9 million of which only 3.6 million are full citizens as a post Colonial multiethnic nation state and a Cosmopolitan Global City Singapore presents itself to the world as a city of opportunity but to its own people as a nation that lacks severely at the heart of the Singapore story its official nation-building narrative is a vulnerable nation of profound deficiencies that must open itself to the world to gain access to desperately needed resources and opportunities whose success no matter how rapidly achieved and glittering will always be fragile this narrative Narrative of Perpetual anxiety of course feeds naturally into propagandistic justifications for why the papap must continue to lead and to do so with enormous even unchecked power in the survivalist decades following National Independence in 1965 the papap government's developmental agenda was chiefly to attract foreign capital by offering favorable tax Arrangements infrastructure a pro business environment and an educated but lowcost local labor force to achieve this the government neutered the labor unions while urbanizing industrializing and socializing the population into an obedient resource Tethered to the aspiration of middleclass living and a dependency on the state that such an aspiration would entail after the mid1 1980s the government became more technocratic but retained its authoritarian character finding new and more sophisticated modes of political and social control it Justified its policy choices which were fast becoming policy formulas using the language of neoliberalism and nigeri realism such policies which included the payment of political and public service leadership salaries that were by by far the highest in the world seemed like they were Guided by a kind of Market fundamentalism but the language of the market was for the most part merely a fig leaf for what was really the concentration of power in the hands of a much less meritocratic but just as self- congratulatory Elite by the mid 2000s the government was starting to accelerate the liberalization of its immigration policies not withstanding alarmingly low birth rates these policies have led to a sharp rise in Singapore's total population and a decline in its proportion of citizens there have been two main flows of immigrants into Singapore the larger often referred to as migrant workers is mainly made up of South Asian men providing manual labor in the construction Marine Shipyard and Manufacturing sectors and Southeast Asian women who work as livein domestic helpers there are regular reports in the local news of migrant worker injuries deaths abuse and discrimin ation perhaps reflecting a dominant view laced with a touch of xenophobia racism and snobbery of Migrant workers as a cheap and exploitable resource not worthy of equal rights and dignity the smaller flow of immigrants often referred to as foreign Talent is made up of foreigners and with skills and experience that Singapore requires immigration policies and foreigners have come to occupy a rather central place in the public imagination they come to mind when thinking about higher Urban density and pressures on the city's infrastructure when coping with a sense of displacement that singaporeans might feel in their own City and in terms of job opportunities and when identifying the causes of income and wealth inequalities putting it simply an increasing pool of Migrant workers puts downward pressure on the wages of the poorest singaporeans while the increasing presence of foreign talent and the super rich pushes up the salaries of top earning singaporeans this widens the income gap so that on average Singapore's Genie index which of course measures income inequality is significantly higher than the oecd average as the Gap widens there is an expectation that social Mobility will be reduced in an increasingly dysfunctional meritocracy to counter these views the government often presents statistics in ways that suggest the problem is not so serious in reality though the lived experience of inequality especially in a dense wealthy increasingly expensive Global City like Singapore is not so easy to trivialized by technocratic slights of hand especially when it intersects in a complex way with inequalities of identity involving race gender sexuality class and age groups Singapore has become one of the most expensive cities in the world World median wages have been increasing at a very slow rate over the last couple of decades leading ordinary singaporeans to express constant worry about the cost of living a recent report found that the top five issues of importance to singaporeans were cost of living salaries and wages housing affordability jobs and the increase in goods and services tax the same report also identified costs salaries housing and GST as areas in which the government was perceived as underperforming in one of the wealthiest cities in the world there are visible signs of not just relative but also absolute poverty but no official calculations of a poverty line or enthusiasm for a minimum wage policy instead the government has installed a progressive wage model that is sectorally targeted and very slow and modest in its adjustments traditional State Welfare is available but not so easy to obtain welfare programs seem to be designed with a high tolerance for inequality and a very pessimistic view of human Nature's propensity to abuse the system but more more proactive and substantial welfare schemes are necessary to redistribute the gains from globalization which creates more losers than winners in the first instance singaporeans though schooled and trickled down neoliberal thinking and the evils of bloated state welfarism are today wondering whether their government is doing enough to redistribute globalization's gains especially in the light of disruptive disruptive Tech technology while Singapore has become a wondrous playground for the few who can afford it ordinary singaporeans are quite likely to feel an overall drop in their quality of life even foreigners have observed that Singapore is a stressful place to work in reports have ranked singaporeans among the top in the world where longest hours of work and shortest hours of sleep are concerned highly stressed and exhausted all the time many burnt out singaporeans young and old often express deep concern about their mental health they fear their career prospects are limited and many point an accusatory finger at what they deem to be unfair pro- forigner neoliberal practices nowadays these are often the kinds of reasons younger singaporeans site for not wanting to start a family and have children a choice that Cycles back to the problem of having one of the lowest birth rates in the world thus a vicious cycle sees Singapore turning unavoidably to immigration as a quick fix solution for maintaining a critical mass of Labor and talent in a small country in these conditions we are starting to witness in Singapore two developments associated with authoritarian populism first xenophobic sentiments are simmering and they are even catalyzing hither to pent up feelings of racism repressed by Decades of multi-racial conditioning emotionally appealing nativist arguments especially directed against the papap establishments neoliberal immigration policies can certainly already find fertile ground to germinate second even in a traditionally High trust Society like Singapore there are clear signs of incredulity resentment and perhaps even Envy towards the elite or more broadly The Establishment who appear entitled self-serving heartless condescending and arrogant there is a view that government policies to court foreign Talent as new citizens is really a means of diluting popular dissatisfaction with the strongly prap attitudes of newcomers ordinary singaporeans are confronted with a grating view of how to wealthy and Powerful live in Crazy Rich Singapore liwanu and his leadership team were careful to cultivate an image of austerity in the early Decades of Independence today a highly paid political Elite have found it difficult perhaps even unnecessary to conceal the opulence of their Lifestyles their elitist attitudes are often betrayed by the numerous faux paas that barely escape the scrutiny and publicity of social media as today's Elite circles become increasingly closed and protected one can also expect to find institutional Decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion much public skepticism has in fact been expressed openly about the competency and moral authority of the next generation of P leaders out of this decadent Elite we can expect to see the emergence of demagogues fueled by growing intra Elite rivalries charismatic and manipulative they will Channel popular energies and frustration against the traditional establishment and against the plural society in order to build a mass support base they will instigate moral panic and outrage and be the primary purveyors of conspiracy theories against the elite and against minority communities in an environment that has always severely lacked transparency and access to information and where online falsehood laws will have the perverse effect of heightening The credibility of sensored information the authoritarian technocrats in power will also be much less restrained in their resort to moral Panic as a diversion from their weaknesses and mistakes which will not only increase in frequency but also be much harder to conceal and and deny these I believe are the key factors that can lead plausibly to a dysfunctional future for Singapore shaped by authoritarian populism rather than a liberal or Progressive form of democracy thank you