Defence ..
Or Education
How do you tell if a country is better prepared for the future? One way is to see who it ranks higher in peace time - its defence or education ministers.
Jan 21, 2001

When the Philippines armed forces chief withdrew support from Mr. Joseph Estrada, it was curtains for the besieged president and he gave up power.

In neighbouring Indonesia, a civilian government is in charge, but it can't get the army to do everything it wants and in many regions the local commanders hold real power. Thailand, too, is seeing a resurgence of military influence.

During the past few months the air in Southeast Asia was thick with talk of military coups as corrupt, inefficient or weak civilian governments floundered - a deja vu of the 60s and 70s.

I was born into this world of coups and counter-coups, an Asia where army generals often ranked higher than civilian leaders (elected or not) - and the education minister was way down there somewhere.

The came the golden era when the generals stayed in their barracks and I was gratified.

One country after another - South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and war-torn Indochina - started to shed its culture of coups or to allow a general to run a country without the vote.

In fact, the strongest man was usually the commander of the division whose job was to protect the capital - the coup maker - or the air force leader if he had enough bombers or helicopter gunships.

The power of the military was very strong in Southeast Asia in the 60s and 70s and I have covered several military takeovers. Thailand, for example, would have an average of one a year.

As a correspondent, I once slept through one without knowing it. It was a Saturday when I returned pre-dawn to my hotel from a party just in time to see the morning newspaper sliding under the door.

Splashed across Page One banner-line was: "New Bloodless Coup", followed by "Generals declare martial law, suspend constitution". With a yawn, I went to bed. Not a shot was fired.

The next day I took a drive across the sensitive places like the Palace, Parliament House and the TV, radio stations and universities. A few tanks, some bored, tired soldiers - and an absence of crowds. No excitement. No reaction. Nothing.

In US-backed South Vietnam then fighting Uncle Ho Chi Minh's forces, military takeovers by one group of generals or another were regular events that excited only the US government and newsmen.

The decline of the power-grabbing, often corrupt, generals came at the end of the Cold War when the US no longer needed cooperative generals to fight the communists.

Another reason was, of course, a better-educated young generation which prepared to fight - and die - for democracy.

But there were, of course, exceptions. In the midst of all this were countries that ranked (unofficially, of course) their education minister the same as - if not higher than - their defence minister.

Who are they? Japan (after World War Two), Malaysia (where three out of four Prime ministers had been education ministers) Singapore and Australia to name a few.

The lack of military ambition is strongest in Malaysia and Singapore, both former British colonies.

After the political crisis of 1987 when UMNO was split down the middle, I asked a senior intelligence officer in Kuala Lumpur whether the armed forces would have grabbed power if Dr Mahathir Mohamad had lost.

His reply was a categorical no. "During the May 13, 1969 race riots, martial law was suggested and the military had turned it down," he said. "If we had wanted power, we would have taken it."

And Singapore - could there be a military coup, for example, if the ruling party were beaten in a general election? This question was a hot topic among us journalists after the 12.4 per cent loss of popular vote to the opposition in the 1984 election.

I dismissed the possibility very quickly for one reason, national service. Singapore's army, I reasoned, was a reservist army which meant soldiers were voters and this would rule out any military coup.

It is as true today as it was yesterday.

I also believe that as a small nation that sees itself under constant threat, Singapore does well to give equal billing to defence and education. They have come, or still are, under a deputy prime minister.

In fact, many people regard Education Minister Teo Chee Hean as next-in-line for the premiership after Brig-Gen Lee Hsien Loong.

How a country ranks its defence and education ministers is an indication of its priorities.

Will Southeast Asia go back to the military musical chairs of the past? Unlikely. The world will strongly punish army dictators (look at Myanmar)and the peoples themselves will likely take to the streets. The price coup makers pay will be too steep.

But rising violence and instability in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, in varying degrees, will boost the influence of the military. This is because people tend to turn to the army to crack down on extreme lawlessness. That's inevitable.

This means that in these troubled nations, generals will continue to rank higher than the poor education minister.

In this knowledge-based world, that will be sad. But military coups - NO!

Seah Chiang Nee