Pragmatic resistance: adaptation or co-option?

May 30th 1993 was like any other regular gay night at the Rascals nightclub at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Marina Bay. The booze flowed freely, and the dance floor was lively.

Suddenly, the music was turned off and the lights were turned on. “Shut up! Police raid,” shouted a plainclothes policeman. Another climbed on the podium with a megaphone and started barking orders. One was wearing a fishnet t-shirt as he rounded up patrons. (Sting operations were common then.) The police divided the patrons into those with national identity cards (or other documents) and those without—and herded the latter group off to the Beach Road Police Station, where some spent the night in lock up.

Police raids on gay nightclubs at the time, the height of the HIV/AIDS moral panic, weren’t uncommon. But the reactions of patrons that night were. Wilfred Ong, a lawyer who was there, later looked into Singapore’s legislation and found that the police had no authority to detain people who didn’t have their identification documents, unless there was reason to believe they had committed a crime. He wrote a letter of complaint to the police, along with 21 co-signatories.

A month later, Ong received a call from the assistant superintendent of the Beach Road Police Station, reassuring him that there would be “no more future occurrences.” A few days later, he received a letter from the acting commander of the Central Police Division Headquarters, who explained that the police had received complaints of overcrowding at Rascals and had suspected patrons of providing false identification. More significantly, however, he apologised for the police officers’ behaviour.

The citizens’ complaint, in other words, had prompted authorities to acknowledge that the police had gone too far, a rare admission in Singapore. Some gay activists refer to Rascals as “Singapore’s Stonewall”, in reference to the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York City, seen as a key catalyst of the gay rights movement in the US. (For beer cans, bricks and bloodied eyes in 1960s’ New York City, polite letters in 1990s’ Singapore.)

The Rascals incident is recounted in detail in Mobilizing Gay Singapore: Rights and Resistance in an Authoritarian State by Lynette J Chua, a professor of law at the National University of Singapore. Chua found that gay activists strategically adapted their tactics according to socio-political conditions, and made use of the very laws constraining them to resist them.

She defined this as “pragmatic resistance”, a “collectively sustained strategy” carried out by gay activists in Singapore, who “adjust their tactics according to changes in formal law and cultural norms, and push the limits of those norms while simultaneously adhering to them.”

Examples of such norms include non-confrontation, the maintenance of social stability to ensure economic growth, preservation of the ruling People’s Action Party’s (PAP) political power, and a desire for legal legitimacy. Chua wrote: “Although they aspire toward legal reform, they refrain from tactics that directly confront the state, such as street protests, and avoid being seen as a threat to existing formal arrangements of power.” By circumventing or mitigating formal restrictions such as laws banning public assemblies, they maintain “cultural legitimacy” and “challenge and reshape the meanings of political norms.”

Thirty years after Rascals, it might appear on the surface that most, if not all, civil society organisations in Singapore continue to abide by these non-confrontational methods, ones guided in some way by the notion of pragmatism.

After attending the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt, Kate Yeo, a climate activist who started BYO Bottle SG in 2018 and is part of Singapore Youth for Climate Action (SYCA), wrote in a post-conference reflection that “having grown up in Singapore I’ve long been conditioned to favour pragmatism”, but frustrated at the slow progress of climate talks, conceded that her “pragmatism has its limits too”.

Yeo and other young activists may be engaged in their own form of pragmatic resistance—but it’s one that they are actively reimagining for contemporary societal norms.

“We are pragmatists...Does it work? Let’s try it and if it does work, fine, let’s continue it. If it doesn’t work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamoured with any ideology,” Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, told The New York Times, when asked whether Singapore could survive indefinitely with its current system of government. The refrain that Singapore practises pragmatism in governance (Lee said it three more times in that interview) is one familiar to all Singaporeans.

Kenneth Paul Tan, professor at Hong Kong Baptist University and author of Singapore: Identity, Brand, Power, believes that pragmatism here includes an “impatience with theorisation and philosophy”, a preoccupation with adopting “best practices”, and a “realist” outlook on things. “It’s about saying some things are just unchangeable,” Tan said in a lecture: “We cannot change those things therefore don’t try. Instead work around them. Don’t bang your head against the wall because you know your head will break, the wall won’t.”

Perhaps Lee was right: Singaporean pragmatism is about “doing what works”, except with value-laden assumptions about what actually works. Pragmatism manifests itself in our multiracial policy, when we maintain the racial proportions of our country through the immigration system to avoid disrupting “harmony”. It manifests in our Darwinian meritocracy, which focuses on giving everyone an equal opportunity in life, but doesn’t bother much about subsequent inequality, which has widened starting points and led to perceptions of slowing social mobility. It manifests itself in our need for “constructive” politics, or a belief that Singapore’s too small to have a multiparty system.

It is within this pragmatic worldview that activism also operates. To many in Singapore, “activism” connotes socially divisive rabble-rousers, marching in the streets or throwing cans of soup at glass-fronted paintings. Yet, the reality is that many activists likely hew to the concept of “pragmatic resistance”.

Most civil society groups don’t hold physical protests, with some more prominent ones like Pink Dot and SG Climate Rally confining themselves to Hong Lim Park. Many groups, even if critical of the PAP, don’t openly endorse any political party during elections.

“It’s the most effective way of activism in Singapore now, based on how our current political system is built,” said Yeo of SYCA. “Because if you do something too radical in the eyes [of the government], or confrontational, the government paints a certain narrative of you. And then it’s not just the government, the bulk of Singaporeans also internalise that image.”

Yeo, who’s posted infographics about plastic waste on Instagram, seems convinced that being pragmatic has worked for her. Yet, plastic waste and climate change are typically considered uncontroversial topics. Were there instances when Yeo felt the need to be more radical but decided to remain pragmatic?

“Yeah, all the time.” At the latest COP27, she said that Singapore effectively supported only a phase down of coal use instead of all fossil fuels. Yeo wanted to post about this but had second thoughts. “I was like, are they going to ‘POFMA’ me if I say that? Things like that may seem very small, but it’s always at the back of my mind, that everything I say has to be very clear, and it has to be very precise.” In the end, she posted a quote by Grace Fu, minister for sustainability and the environment, and asked her audience to “draw your own conclusions.”

The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (2019), commonly known as POFMA, empowers authorities to issue correction directions to people who make “false statements of fact”. It’s been criticised for its selective use against political critics and for crimping the freedom of expression. Similar criticisms have been levelled at FICA (Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act), a law passed in 2021 to target attempts by foreign actors to interfere in domestic politics through “hostile information campaigns”. Over 30 civil society groups signed an online petition, which led to an analogous parliamentary petition that was submitted by Leong Mun Wai, a member of parliament with the Progress Singapore Party, seeking to delay the passage of the bill. The online petition, “Say No to Unfettered Power”, garnered over 11,000 signatures.

Ching S, an organising committee member at Pink Dot and community builder at Prout, said that there were “definitely concerns within activist circles”, and a “chilling effect” on all activists when the bills were being drafted. As an example of how a law like FICA could be used against civil society groups, she recalled how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had issued a statement reminding the US Embassy “not to interfere” with domestic politics after it had co-hosted a webinar on LGBTQ equality with LGBTQ group Oogachaga in May 2021, before FICA was passed.

“In many other countries, this would just be, whatever lah, but all of a sudden…when you talk about human rights [here], it’s seen as foreign intervention,” she added.

Despite assurances that the laws won’t be used against Singaporeans expressing their views and opinions, their broad remit has inevitably led to activists being extra cautious when advocating for their causes.

This was not always the case; in the 1950s, Singapore had a vibrant civil society scene, with the University Socialist Club, Chinese middle school students, and labour unions actively protesting against the colonial government. Students in the 1970s from the University of Singapore Students’ Union were holding rallies on campus to dissent against university authorities, and other issues of the day, like bus fare hikes and the rights of low-wage workers.

Several laws have since constrained these freedoms. The Societies Act (1966) requires groups of more than 10 people who meet regularly to register with the Registrar of Societies, and they can’t engage in “political association”. The Public Order Act (2009) allows assemblies only to be held with a police permit, and the authorities must adjudge that they will not lead to “public disorder”.

The dreaded Internal Security Act (1960), meanwhile, permits detention without trial if authorities deem that someone is acting in a manner “prejudicial to the security of Singapore or the maintenance of public order or essential services.” In 1963’s Operation Coldstore, it was used to detain more than 120 trade unionists, politicians, journalists, teachers and students, alleged “Communists”. In 1987’s Operation Spectrum, another 22 activists were arrested, alleged “Marxists”. The latter incident has been cited as having disrupted the continuity of organising and mobilising efforts in local society.

Acknowledging the “law-abiding nature” of Pink Dot’s activism, Ching noted that it was how they kept Pink Dot members and those who attended the rallies “safe and out of harm’s way.” But, she added: “I also acknowledge that pragmatic resistance…in some ways it results in the co-optation of movements, because eventually we’re still deferring to the law.”

This speaks to the seemingly paradoxical nature of pragmatic resistance. If activists only adhere to socially and legally acceptable methods, is it even “resistance”? Or have activists actually been co-opted?

Howe had been active in the campaign seeking to delay the passage of FICA. As part of TJC, Howe has been investigated under the Public Order Act, and has sued the police for alleged overreach of powers during the investigations (the case is pending in the High Court).

“Certain tactics are framed as more practical, pragmatic, because it’s within the parameters of what the state deems acceptable, and that is constantly shifting and constantly narrowing…and the more there is that pressure, the more co-optation happens, then it does shape the decision-making of various civil society groups and individual actors, who may think ‘okay lah, it’s just easier to conform, I’m not willing to bear that cost.’”

Definitions of ‘co-opted’ differ. Some activists believe co-option is reflected simply by the use of a sufficiently moderate tone in order to garner invites to closed-door consultations with the government. A large proportion of civil society groups in Singapore would probably fall under this limited definition. A more charitable perspective narrows co-option only to government-organised non-governmental organisations (GONGOs), a paradoxical configuration where NGOs, such as the Migrant Workers Centre, are directly linked to state agencies or explicitly seek to be incorporated into state mechanisms.

The ultimate form of co-option is when activists—such as Louis Ng, founder of ACRES, an animal-rights organisation, and Carrie Tan, founder of Daughters of Tomorrow, which helps low-income women—go on to join the PAP. Supporters believe Ng and Tan can further their causes through politics; critics argue that they are perpetuating the notion that change can happen only through Parliament.

Pink Dot has had to deal with concerns about being co-opted since its first Hong Lim Park rally in 2009. Its framing has always been that of a family-friendly event, with the centrepiece of their rallies—participants forming a giant lighted pink dot in the evening—likened to the colour of a Singaporean identity card, and a mix of red and white, the colours of the national flag. It is perhaps the best representation of pragmatic resistance in Singapore: non-confrontational, emphasising social stability through a nationalist frame, and sticking to legal means.

Pockets of civil society have criticised Pink Dot for being too conservative and “playing respectability politics”, instead of focusing on the marginalised communities they purport to represent. Ching acknowledged the concerns, but added that for Pink Dot, “the messaging really started with changing hearts and minds. That’s been the goal since the very first Pink Dot; that was also what was very much needed back then.”

In recent years though, Pink Dot has become noticeably more political. The 2018 rally saw speakers make ‘10 declarations’ calling for LGBTQ equality in Singapore, such as for more positive portrayals of LGBTQ people in the media. And in 2019, the message in the middle of the light-up was loud and clear: “Repeal 377A”, the colonial-era law that criminalises sex between men (repealed last year).

Ching said that this shift was deliberate, and spurred on by Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, who remarked at a conference that same year that Section 377A “has not inhibited people from living, and has not stopped Pink Dot from having a gathering every year.”

“We changed our light-up message at the last minute to say ‘Repeal 377A’, because we were like, ‘you know, our existence doesn’t mean that it’s an open society,’” she explained. “We are a protest after all, that’s what we are trying to do here. It doesn’t mean that just because there’s Pride at Hong Lim Park there’s no discrimination.”

Migrant workers—a term commonly used to describe the over one million foreign workers in Singapore on short-term work permits—exist in a transient space in Singapore. They are dependent on employers to renew their permits, and don’t have the right to freedom of association. As such, migrant worker NGOs such as the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economies and Transient Workers Count Too, composed mainly of Singaporeans and Permanent Residents, have taken up the gauntlet to advocate on their behalf.

Ripon is a rare migrant worker who speaks up about issues such as the conditions in dormitories, transportation of workers in lorries, and salary disputes—albeit on social media. He set up the community group after he met another worker who didn’t feel comfortable going out in Singapore, even on the MRT.

“I tried going out myself, and found there were many misconceptions that workers had about the Singaporean community, such as they were not friendly…I tried to organise gatherings with my own people and others, and try to make a change,” he explained.

Community bonding events that Ripon and his group organise might fall very squarely under the ‘pragmatic’ frame of resistance. But, under such a tight labour control regime, even criticism on social media can be deemed to be too confrontational for authorities.

In June last year, Zakir Hossain, a migrant poet who founded literary interest group Migrant Writers of Singapore and One Bag One Book, didn’t have his work permit renewed, and had to return to Bangladesh. His then employer had told him that the work permit renewal system reflected that he had an “adverse record with a government agency.”

A statement released by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) later said that Zakir had made false statements on Facebook in October 2021 about living conditions at the Westlite Tukang dormitory. That month, there was a confrontation between the workers there and management over the quality of food and lack of access to Covid-19 recovery and healthcare facilities, and the riot police had been called to the scene.

Zakir had written a poem about the situation, which MOM said had mentioned “soldiers” and “armoured vehicles” when there were none, and this could have incited public disorder. (Contrary to MOM’s position, “Media reports at the time carried pictures of police armoured vehicles outside the dorm,” wrote Today.) MOM’s statement also said that they had renewed Zakir’s work pass “many times despite his activism and writings.” The final nail from MOM: “He has overstayed his welcome.”

Some NGOs and individuals such as the MP Ng appealed to MOM on Zakir’s behalf, to no avail. “After Zakir was deported, many workers that [were] actually trying to speak, they stepped back,” said Ripon. Was Zakir too confrontational? “He’s a writer, he’s a poet. He’s my friend too. For poetry, you can’t judge a writer by what he wants to write. He has the right to write what he wants to write,” said Ripon animatedly. “If you want to defeat him, [do it] by writing, not by deporting, not like that. He did not do any violence. I do not feel he went too far.”

Perhaps this highlights a flaw of pragmatic resistance tactics—the boundaries of political norms are defined nebulously, often by those in power. And even if you gain public support through such tactics, something seemingly innocuous like a poem on social media can be grounds to discredit you. Contestations over these norms and restrictions are even harder for foreigners, for whom the power gradient with authority is steeper.

Singaporeans can help, but that transient interface is all too apparent to Ripon: “I asked him [a volunteer] if he always came to do volunteering. He said: ‘Yeah, I have been doing it for three years, sometimes I do [it] once or twice a month.’ I asked him how many migrant workers did he know by name. He said: ‘None.’”

However, for those, like death penalty activists, who still see large pushbacks from the government and society at large, there is seemingly no utility in pragmatism. For these groups, perhaps appealing to natural allies and building up a support base would be more viable, and if it entails breaking certain political norms, that may be an inevitable trade-off.

Howe summed up his view on the issue: “For me, the starting point is: ‘What is the end goal of your politics?’ I’m quite clear that the angle of my politics, beyond the abolition of the death penalty, is also the abolition of a lot of the systems of incarceration and policing. And for me, there’s no way now or in the future that you will achieve [this] through not confronting the state on these issues. And I don’t think any concept of just resistance—pragmatic or otherwise—will take us there.”

Moreover, for issues more socially acceptable, there’s naturally a wider spectrum of activist groups. Howe highlighted the environmental movement with a long history: “You have a very wide range of groups with different politics, and that offers people different entry points into environmental issues…it invites people to come in and do different things, and over time, people might shift and become more radical, [or] they might become less radical.”

Howe believes pragmatic resistance is a more realistic choice when such a wide spectrum exists: “But if it’s just like TJC, or a small group of abolitionist activists, then I cannot spread myself that thin across different political positions.”

Pragmatic methods have brought benefits such as more direct access to decision makers in the government through closed-door consultations, where both sides could be more blunt and speak freely, said Yeo.

“It’s also our job to expand those boundaries, right? So, you work within it, while kind of pushing it along,” she added, citing Pink Dot and SG Climate Rally as groups that have pushed the boundaries through holding rallies at Hong Lim Park, while making the issues they advocated for more mainstream.

She also acknowledged the tactics of more “radical” activists: “They are very important in pushing the boundaries but also giving people like us, who are maybe more middle ground, permission to speak. When you dare to say something, you also give permission for other people to speak up. And that breaks the culture of fear and self-censorship.”

Even Howe, who’s relatively critical of pragmatic resistance and laments what he sees as a deepening “polarisation” of civil society, said: “I do think it’s important to see our work in society as building community. Sure there are differences in politics, but at the end of the day we are all here for hopefully similar reasons.”

Organisers, said US unionist Jane McAlevey, need to “wake up every morning asking how to engage the people who don’t agree with us—or who think they don’t agree with us.” Community offers society the critical mass to push boundaries.

Pragmatic resistance in Singapore today, then, involves an ecology of methods. Some are common to activists around the world, such as the articulation of values, community building and organising, positioning in relation to other activists, cultivating power, and constant dialogue with stakeholders, including the public and government. Others are more uniquely Singaporean, such as strategic adaptation: if “playing nice” doesn’t work, turn up the heat. These seem suited to a country where there’s long been a huge imbalance of power between politicians and the rest, where “activism” has been a taboo word for many citizens, and where most civil society organisations are really in their infancy. In a climate still very much hostile to activism in the traditional sense, this flexibility in methods is what organisations have to practise in order to survive.

“We’re a bit like Bruce Lee; ‘be water’. You know, formless, shapeless, we adapt to the environment, it uses gentleness to overcome toughness,” said Ching, on the utility of pragmatic resistance. “It’s not that we’re not even trying, we are trying what we can. And that’s exactly what we do.”

Isaac Neo is a writer based in Singapore. He co-hosts a podcast series on civic engagement and action on socialservice.sg, and practises what he writes about as part of SG Climate Rally. In his spare time, he watches Manchester United play, and also tries to bring them to glory on Football Manager.

Correction: an earlier version said that over 30 civil society groups signed a parliamentary petition seeking to delay the passage of FICA. It's actually the online petition that they signed, which then led to the separate parliamentary petition.