If a giant typhoon were to hit S'pore...

AN AMERICAN'S VIEW

Bruce Sterling, an American science fiction writer, was in Singapore recently. He is best known as a creator of the 'cyberpunk' genre which has plots revolving around computers, artificial intelligence, usually coupled with some breakdown in social order.

He blogged these observations about Singapore:

'NOW that I'm out of Singapore, I reckon it's safe to allege that Singapore has tidy, authoritarian, city-state machine politics. Presumably, I won't get sued for libel for saying this. I mean, it's the truth. Singapore is a very foreign place. Being a Texan, I try not to judge people's political behaviour by any abstract standards. For me, it's all about the neighbours - and Singapore's neighbours are Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. I don't see a lot of oppressed Singaporean dissidents rushing off to the relative freedom of Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta. On the contrary, people in Malaysia and Indonesia are amazed by any polity that doesn't run on bribes.

For me, the unsettling aspect of Singapore isn't their repression, which is subtle and always nicely dressed in legalisms.

No, the weird part is the public exhortations, the regime's Taoist PR campaign. They've got some kind of genuine Techno-Confucian Mandate of Heaven thing going on. It's being carried out by really bright, eager, workaholic city apparatchiks who are keenly rehearsed.

If Singapore had just been hit by a giant typhoon, the regime wouldn't be snivelling and making excuses about the hunger and looting. Eco-catastrophe and martial law would surely put the Singapore power-elite really on top of their game. They wouldn't spin their 'clean-up effort'.

They would assign resources, put trained people on the job and actually clean up. Because they are not just a spin machine. They possess competence.

Competence doesn't seem like a big deal until you are forced to realise that your own government has none.'

The Straits Times Interactive, 8 September 2005