The awkwardness of ‘resilience’ in Singapore’s political discourse

“For our plans to succeed, for our hopes and dreams to come true, we need one final ingredient: the unity and resilience of our people.” – Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister, 2020

‘Resilience’ is everywhere in Singapore’s political discourse. Kenneth Paul Tan, professor of politics, film, and cultural studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, noted the predictability of the country’s National Day Rally speeches. He wrote in “Singapore’s National Day Rally speech: A site of ideological negotiation”: “Its format is predictable, beginning with an assertion of national vulnerability, achievements and challenges, followed by the call to Singaporeans to unite in spite of their differences as a determined, industrious and self-sacrificing people led by a farsighted and incorrupt government…” True to form, the 2022 National Day Rally placed resilience high on the agenda.

As did the Budget 2023 Speech, which listed cultivating national resilience as one of its three main thrusts. Lawrence Wong, finance minister (and deputy prime minister), spoke not only of the public having to weather a volatile global economic environment, but of structural resilience in terms of maintaining infrastructure that’s capable of coping with crises, and formulating tax rates that ensure fiscal “prudence” continues to be observed. The point was clear: our people and systems must remain resilient to challenges.

Certainly, resilience is an important quality to possess, for individuals and social systems alike. But the ubiquity of the discourse in Singapore is both problematic and awkward, considering the power differentials that separate a one-party dominant government and its state apparatus and the public.

To understand why all of this is important, consider language and power. Power is often thought of in terms of brute force or coercion. Yet language has the potential to mask the true locus of power, effectively maintaining the status quo in the process. It shapes the reality we experience.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is famous for uncovering the subtler expressions of power. He described the notion of symbolic violence—vis-à-vis overt violence—as a gentler, milder form of domination that is typically misrecognised and cloaked in virtues like loyalty, friendship, or hospitality. Think of how a wealthy family may refer to an underpaid helper as “part of the family”. Power may be established and maintained via strategies that are softer, and seemingly more palatable.

Language, at one level a medium of expression and communication, is, at another, instrumental in power relations. “Discourses are always to some extent euphemisms,” Bourdieu wrote.

For instance, immigration has traditionally been a thorny issue in Europe, as politicians and their electorates debate how (and often, whether) refugees from neighbouring territories should be accommodated.

In 2015, David Cameron, then British prime minister, described refugees fleeing Calais: “...you have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs, it’s got a growing economy, it’s an incredible place to live”.

A “swarm” of people. Rights groups rightly pointed out the othering, dehumanising potential of this metaphor. What do you do when there is a swarm of bees outside your home? You close the windows. (Read: borders.)

Point being, language can perform violence. It is constitutive in its ability to activate and foreclose certain feelings, ideas, and courses of action. It is very much bound up with our experience and understanding of the world. Its effects can be pernicious, and it’s important to interrogate its use in political circles.

With ‘resilience’, we should ask: what are its effects, what does it obscure, and whose agenda and version of reality does it promote? We may begin by exploring the genesis of the concept in post-independence Singapore.

Politics in Singapore is barely comprehensible without a proper understanding of the political meaning of vulnerability and its evolution.

The common narrative begins with the “founding” of the island by Stamford Raffles, British colonial official, in 1819. Singapore’s history—for all official purposes—begins then. (Recent attempts at charting a longer 700 years of history are still of more relevance to academics than policymakers.) As a British colony, Singapore was seen and administered as a naval stronghold, a ‘fortress’ whose strategic economic location at the tip of the Malacca Straits meant it was instrumental in facilitating trade within the region.

This notion of invincibility was shattered when Japanese imperial forces swiftly overcame the British in 1942 to begin the Japanese occupation. Singapore’s quest for decolonisation and independence began soon after the British reassumed control of the region in 1945. This was achieved in 1963, as Singapore’s political leaders negotiated a merger with Malaysia, against a tumultuous domestic and international political backdrop that included ‘Konfrontasi’ with Indonesia and alleged attempts by the Malayan Communist Party to seize power in Singapore.

Merger, however, did not last long. Political and societal tensions meant Singapore was forced out of Malaysia in 1965—a small, fledgling island-state thrust into the wilderness.

Competing political ideologies, subversive communist influences, the lack of natural resources to build an economy around, an ethnically diverse population, a tense geopolitical environment consisting of larger, Malay Muslim countries. In this highly abridged version of Singapore’s history, these were some of the challenges first-generation leaders from the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) claim to have navigated.

Alternative narratives suggest that supposed weaknesses masked genuine strengths. There may not have been much land or minerals, for instance, but Singapore was rich in other “natural resources”: a natural, deep-water harbour, a key location along trade routes, and geographic shelter that means the island is safe from the natural disasters that plague every other South-east Asian country. It was, of course, less politically expedient for the PAP to talk about these. So, in about two decades from the 1940s, Singapore’s identity went from colonial stronghold to vulnerable island-state.

However legitimate these concerns may have been in the 1960s, today, these historical events are often simplified and reproduced to cultivate feelings of national exceptionalism, self-reliance and survivalism amongst Singaporeans, as well as to reinforce the necessity of a PAP government.

Some of the original ideas feeding this sense of vulnerability remain popular among elites. For instance, Singapore’s ethnic diversity is frequently spoken of as a “fault line” waiting to be exploited by malevolent foreign actors. (As opposed to a strength: the vibrancy and splendour of multiculturalism that characterises most global cities.) This was part of the justification for introducing tough legal measures, such as the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) and Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act.

These days, Singapore’s vulnerability is also discussed in terms of its susceptibility to global economic disruptions and the harmful effects of climate change, given its openness to trade and capital flows, as well as existence as a low-lying island.

It’s worth noting that Singapore’s development into a “global city” was initially thought of as a strategy to ameliorate this base vulnerability. In other words, a “vulnerable” city-state with no natural resources apparently had no choice but to embrace the post-war, US-led globalisation—and now that it has, a new set of vulnerabilities has emerged. Singapore changes, but the spectre of vulnerability for the establishment persists.

Little surprise, then, that the country’s vulnerability is used to frame contemporary crises like Covid-19 as well. Insofar as rhetorical elements go, vulnerability, having been stressed over decades, is highly familiar and accessible.

Resilience is, arguably, the flipside of vulnerability. Vulnerability demands resilience.

In addition, the top-down nature of policymaking in Singapore and the one-party dominant government’s close ties to the bureaucracy, make it fairly easy for the former to formulate and implement new policies. The pandemic demonstrated how easily changes could be made to existing policies. Think overnight mask mandates, and the rapid implementation of TraceTogether, Singapore’s contact tracing app which, contrary to early promises, ultimately fell prey to mission creep, as the police used it for at least one non-Covid investigation. A malleable bureaucracy and media landscape mean implementing policy and communicating it to the broader public can occur at the snap of a finger.

These are, to name but a few expressions of this power disparity.

‘Resilience’, however, possesses an air of innocence, masking these more troubling facets of political life in Singapore. For one, it assumes people have a choice when asked to shoulder the burden of a certain policy. Take the circuit breaker in 2020. Overworked frontline workers were often hailed for their resilience. Many of them, for instance, were conferred newly established national awards for their service. Their names? You guessed it. The Covid-19 Resilience Medal and the Covid-19 Resilience Certificate.

Relentlessly promoting resilience—by encouraging it in the face of adversity at all costs—can be highly detrimental too. Sometimes, what’s needed is not individual resilience but the kind of change that eliminates the very need for this resilience—for instance, better rights, pay and working conditions for workers may have, over the years, improved the desirability of such frontline work.

Dealing out such symbolic forms of recognition while retaining the means to make substantive, long-lasting changes is somewhat infantilising.

Likewise, consider the Goods & Services Tax (GST) hike, the first half of which came into effect in January 2023. Activists and opposition politicians have rightly questioned its unintended effects and timing—amidst rising inflation—let alone its necessity, given the regressive nature of the tax and the state of inequality in the country.

To usher in the new year, Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister, wrote on Facebook: “2022 will be a time of transition. Beyond managing COVID-19, we will continue to generate new growth and prosperity for a post-pandemic economy. We must maintain unity, resilience, and willingness to accept difficult measures, in order to overcome longer-term challenges and keep on progressing together.” There are no prizes for guessing which “difficult measures” he was referencing.

Only 40 percent of Singaporeans—and 34 percent of middle-income citizens—hold a favourable view of the policy. The information and space required to critically evaluate alternatives are limited. The size of the nation-state’s reserves, most importantly, is not made known to the public. Nor is the breakdown of the government’s revenue projections—both of which are essential to consider the best means of raising enough funds for public spending, and truly deciding how best to ensure the country’s resilience.

Consider Budget 2023 more broadly. Lawrence Wong’s speech heavily referenced the challenges facing Singapore. This time, climate change, supply chain disruptions, inflation, and war in Eastern Europe were the most prominent fixtures. Their common denominator? They have little to do with local factors. As the deputy prime minister put it, “We do not have much influence over this global inflation picture.”

Yet, this is a controversial statement. Sure, given its size, Singapore doesn’t have much control over globally induced inflation, strictly speaking. There are bigger factors at play. But increases in Singapore’s cost of living—seen, for instance, in the housing market and prices of necessities—are not due to inflation alone. Lumping the two together, which the speech appears to do, is misrepresentative.

The rhetoric surrounding the latest fiscal measures contains similar themes. Wong spoke of the measures introduced in the latest Budget—for example, increases in stamp duties for property buyers—as necessary to build a more resilient tax system. Indeed, the PAP remains focused on accumulating the nation’s reserves, after dipping into them for pandemic-related support measures. Suggestions to the contrary are often met with serious rebuke, a position Leon Perera, an opposition Workers’ Party member of parliament, described as “dogmatic fiscal ultra-conservatism”.

In lieu of tax increases, Budget 2023 offers a range of short-term payments, to “tide” Singaporeans over. Yet it is debatable whether handouts like Assurance Package payments and GST vouchers make the population more resilient either. Truly cultivating socioeconomic resilience amidst inflation and rising living costs likely requires structural changes to an economic model that relies heavily on cheap foreign labour and weak labour laws.

It also naturalises the challenges facing Singapore and makes their responses appear inevitable, inhibiting critical discourse regarding both. Singapore is vulnerable enough to necessitate a paternalistic form of authoritarian governance, but at the same time resilient enough to bear the brunt of tough policies. Voilà. The government gets to have its cake and eat it.

It is a familiar PAP trick—paternalism masquerading as inclusivity. And language is indispensable in this endeavour.

Discourse, rhetoric, arguments—these are overlapping concepts. Pure, cold argumentation consists in carefully assembled statements that purport to be logically consistent and empirically sound. In contrast, rhetoric enters the picture when speakers use language in crafty ways to convince listeners, via devices like imagery, familiar narratives and appeals to emotions.

Realistically speaking, political discourse usually combines the two. Appealing to the public often requires solid arguments delivered in a flattering or otherwise powerful manner. The tricky thing with rhetoric, though, is that it can blind one to the soundness and consistency of an underlying argument.

So, we should think about this further. Suppose we did take the official rhetoric at face value. If resilience is constantly demanded and vulnerability incessantly stressed, does that not suggest something may be fundamentally amiss with the existing political set-up?

The study of social science grapples with competing epistemologies, or means of making sense of the world. How we think about the world and decide to approach the study of reality is often a big decision in itself. In the study of international politics, security was traditionally understood in material terms. But the influence of constructivism, which understands the world as the result of complex social and historical processes, challenged this thinking.

Ole Wæver, a political scientist, was among the first to apply its logic to the study of security. That is, if things in life are the result of social construction, our ideas of security are likely constructed as well. Famous for arguing that security is not a mere reflection of “objective” facts but constructed by elites via discourse, Wæver makes an important point. He argues that “securitisation”, the process of articulating a threat, ultimately reflects a failure. Constantly imbuing issues with an air of inevitability or urgency suggests existing systems are inadequate in offering protection.

Seen this way, the pervasiveness of discourses of vulnerability and resilience in Singapore is not necessarily something to be proud of. Nor does it reflect prudence, as often claimed. Rather, it may hint at deep inadequacies. The frequency with which we hear ‘resilience’ being bandied about should make us wary. Emphasising the need for resilience all the time cannot be healthy; it smacks of political expediency.

And to add, any system that relies on vulnerability to persist is likely unsustainable. It means dangers constantly need to be present—or invented—to stoke fear and rally public support. As Muna Abdi, a racial justice advocate, put it: “Instead of praising people for being ‘resilient’, change the systems that are making them vulnerable.”

This leads me to one of two conclusions. Either the official rhetoric of vulnerability and resilience is grossly misrepresentative, or the political system, controlled by a PAP-dominant government, needs upheaving. Neither bodes well for those in power.

Pradeep Krishnan is a PhD researcher at the University of St. Gallen, where he studies political psychology and public attitudes towards experts in Europe. He retains a keen interest in political discourse in Singapore. When he’s not fretting over Manchester United’s recent form, Pradeep also enjoys consuming existentialist novels and films.

Letters in response to this piece can be sent to sudhir@jom.media. All will be considered for publication on our “Letters to the editor” page.