Singapore-Israel
A political comparison
Former Israeli PM Simon Peres explains why Labour Party lost the election in 1977, in which Littlespeck reader sees a lesson for PAP.
Dec 1, 2007

By ‘Double Take’
Dear Chiang Nee
I have just finished reading a very interesting book entitled “Battling for Peace”, the memoirs of Shimon Peres, a Polish Jew who grew up in Russia and left for Palestine in the early thirties.

He was three times prime minister of Israel and was (as Israeli foreign minister) a joint Nobel Peace Prize winner together with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1994.

In the chapter “New Society”, he tried to explain why the Labour Party, which had ruled Israel from its inception in 1948 to 1977, lost the general election to the Likud Party.

He wrote: “In my opinion, there was an accumulation of events and processes that together brought about Labour’s downfall. In general, movements of social reform reach peaks – and then slowly sink into sloth and fatigue.

Power provides comfort and security, but it also steadily erodes and corrupts. People in power begin to enjoy the trappings and benefits of power, often falling into self-pity and self-justification.

They harp on how hard they work and on how heavy a responsibility they must shoulder.

They become insensitive to one of the infallible principles of politics in a democracy: the more one enjoys wielding power, the likelier one is to lose it….

Party machines and party hierarchies, created originally to serve the noblest goals, become bloated and parasitical in the eyes of the people….

The fire that burned in the bones of the founding fathers abated with time.

Even these great social experiments (the collective kibbutz and co-operative moshav) began to pall, radiating elitism, selfishness and apathy, rather than concern for and involvement in the problems of society.”

In the early years of its independence, Singapore looked to Israel for some lessons in survival. Peres mentioned Singapore twice in the book although he did not say if he ever visited our island state.

But the words quoted above, although written about Israel’s politics, seem to be frighteningly and eerily appropriate in describing Singapore’s current situation.

This is because words such as “self-justification”, “insensitive”, “parasitical”, “elitism”, “selfishness” and “apathy” seem to be similarly heard in our coffee shop talk.

Historically, Singapore has been in much less danger of annihilation than Israel.

Thankfully too, Singapore has never fought a war. Yet Israel has a functioning democracy, which allows opposing political parties to replace each other in government.

What has stopped Singapore from enjoying this “luxury”?
By Double Take