The Vandalism Act was the first legislative instrument enacted in the ‘nation’ to prescribe mandatory corporal punishment. The state discourse of the time, directed at legitimising corporal punishment, is therefore central to a particular construction of the role of ‘lawful’ violent punishment in the vulnerable Singapore ‘nation’. At the time it was enacted, through context and sub-text, the state used the Vandalism Act to demarcate certain expressions of opposition politics as criminal and anti-national – thus consolidating the state’s power over the space of ‘nation’, in both material and discursive terms. But the 1994 use of the Vandalism Act (discussed in the second half of this chapter) reveals that, in addition to being a vehicle for repressive technologies (corporal punishment, incarceration and heightened surveillance), the Act has become a vehicle for state pedagogy, such that the ‘citizen’ is instructed on how to constitute individual identity in terms of ‘good’ citizenship, virtuous conduct and ‘Asian values’.

Both the 1966 enactment and the 1994 enforcement of the Act are marked by a thematic constant in state discourse: the insistence that Singapore is an exceptionally vulnerable nation with exceptional circumstances necessitating ‘tough laws’ (symbolised by violent punishment) in order that the always vulnerable Singapore ‘nation’ might be rendered less vulnerable. This theme, cast in the rhetoric of nationalism, masks an appropriation of ‘law’ in the service of pedagogy such that, even if conducted behind prison walls, caning becomes instructive public spectacle. It is the high degree of violence and the state’s capacity to legitimise this violence that serve to control the (notionally) watching citizen. This chapter traces some of the expansive and malleable ways in which, through the Vandalism Act, ‘law’ as governance has manifested so as to reconfigure ‘rule of law’ ideals into a form of ‘rule by law’ that maintains legitimacy for state violence.

This chapter presents a second case study: the 1974 Newspaper and Printing Presses Act (or Press Act). This case study demonstrates the manner in which the enactment of legislation has undermined and reconfigured a freedom closely connected to the freedom of expression and the pluralism of political liberalism: the freedom of the press. If the Vandalism Act has been a ‘law’ through which the visible, public space of ‘nation’ has been rendered ideologically homogenous, then the Press Act is the tool through which the discursive space of ‘nation’ has been homogenised. The technologies of press management entrenched by the Press Act have resulted in a highly policed discursive space in the ‘nation’, leading to an ever greater legal and discursive conflation between ‘nation’ and the PAP-state.

The 1974 enactment of the Press Act is inextricably linked to events in 1971, when three Singapore newspapers were subject to a series of repressive government measures that resulted in the closing down of two newspapers and a change of ownership and control of a third. The state accused all three papers of undermining national security. According to the state, the papers had advocated divisive Communalist agendas, overtly or covertly furthered the cause of Communism or had undermined the ‘nation’ by being proxies for foreign interests. Three years after these events, the 1974 Press Act was brought into being. Before proceeding to an analysis of the Press Act, this chapter traces texts and events that operated as a proto-enactment of sorts: Lee Kuan Yew’s 1971 address to the International Press Institute (IPI) justifying the detention without trial of the four newspaper executives. These detentions and the state’s discourse at the time demonstrate how, in 1971, the state strategically used the public domain as a performative space, presenting its discursive legitimisations for ‘rule by law’ in a manner that lent dramatic urgency to its narratives of national vulnerability.

This chapter presents the third case study of this project: the 1986 amendments to the Legal Profession Act (LPA). Together with the study of the Religious Harmony Act (Chapter 6), the analysis of the Public Order Act (Chapter 7) and the discussion of the ‘foreign press’ amendment to the Press Act (Chapter 4), this case study demonstrates how, after achieving a spectacular level of economic prosperity, as well as social and political stability, the state clung to the construct of the perpetually vulnerable ‘nation’ when enacting ‘laws’ designed to constrain citizenship and civil society.

A liberal concept of citizenship and the capacity for civil society to counter the state are major constituents of political liberalism, a mode of ‘politics’ which, in turn, informs the ‘rule of law’. The studies of the Vandalism Act and the Press Act are part of a larger picture of how, by the late 1970s, opposition parties, trade unions, civil society and the press had been silenced, emasculated or co-opted. The PAP had consolidated its rule in such a way that the state was inextricably an extension of the party. If the voices targeted by the Vandalism Act and the Press Act belonged to working-class, ‘Chinese’-educated sections of the population who supported the opposition Barisan, then the voices targeted by the LPA, the Religious Harmony Act, and the Public Order Act might be seen as directed at a more middle-class, ‘English’-educated section of the population that was beginning to ask the state to honour the promised liberalism of ‘nation’.

This chapter presents a study of the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (or Religious Harmony Act). The Religious Harmony Act, formulated as part of the state’s response to the so-called Marxist conspiracy, became a platform for the state’s discursive construction of ‘religion’ as a national security issue, such that ‘religion’ (like ‘vandalism’, the press and lawyers speaking on ‘law’) became a category of threatening activity requiring anticipatory and preventative action by the state. Just as the state’s response to lawyers in 1986 might be seen as an effort to dismantle an embryonic civil society leadership attaching to lawyers, so too the Religious Harmony Act might be seen as repressing another potential civil society leader: the Catholic Church. This was, after all, the period of the late 1980s, when the Catholic Church had already played a prominent role in the ‘people’s power’ movement that forced Marcos to step down in the Philippines.

In Singapore, the 1980s saw activists from the Catholic Church critiquing the state in terms of its failure to deliver rights and prosperity to an underclass unable to advocate for itself. The state responded to this critique as it had to the Barisan in 1966, the Chinese press in 1971 and the ‘foreign press’ and the Law Society in 1986: It characterised the critics as threats to national security, silenced them and passed a ‘law’ legitimising the state’s positions. The 1991 Religious Harmony Act became the silencing ‘law’ that built upon the coercion of detaining certain Catholic social activists under the Internal Security Act between 1987 and 1990. Before presenting an analysis of the terms of the Religious Harmony Act, the question that must be addressed is, what are the conditions that make a ‘law’ on religious harmony possible in the first place?

This book opened with a brief account of Lee Kuan Yew’s exchange with the IBA – an exchange in which he rehearsed the narratives of exceptionalism, described the duality of the legal system and insisted that Singapore was ‘rule of law’. The central role played by this lawyer-leader in the reformulation of the ‘rule of law’ into an increasingly entrenched ‘rule by law’ has been demonstrated throughout this project, perhaps most vividly by his conduct during the 1986 Select Committee Hearings on the Legal Profession Act. In 2011, with Lee eighty-eight years old, the question arises as to how much of Singapore’s strategic management of ‘law’ is dependent on Lee leading the state, whether as Prime Minister or behind the scenes as Senior Minister and Minister Mentor. In other words, can legitimacy for ‘rule by law’ continue to be sustained in a Singapore without Lee Kuan Yew? In a tentative explorative of this question, I thread through the chronological logic of the case studies examined in this study with a brief consideration of a new legislative instrument, the 2009 Public Order Act. This exploration addresses the question of the sustainability of ‘rule by law’ legitimacy in a Singapore that has been so dominated, for so long, by one man.

The Public Order Act arises from a context of public domain contestation. In this regard, it is ‘law’ within the same category as the four enactments I have studied. While a detailed analysis of the Public Order Act is not possible (because the Act was just two years in existence at the time of writing and in this sense had yet to be fully performed), it is instructive to consider the ways in which this (apparently) newly minted legislation rehearses the key strategies, narratives and ideologies evident in the Vandalism Act, the Press Act, the Legal Profession Act and the Religious Harmony Act. In other words, the story of the Public Order Act suggests that Singapore’s ‘rule by law’ has become an institutional feature of the Singapore state and does not require the personality and presence of Lee Kuan Yew to endure as a mode of legality.

In October 2007, four thousand lawyers from more than 120 countries converged upon Singapore for the International Bar Association’s (IBA) annual conference. The selection of Singapore as a venue had been controversial, with some members and Singapore dissidents protesting that the IBA was lending legitimacy to a regime that had systematically violated the rule of law. The conference aired these and other issues from the air-conditioned comfort of Singapore’s technologically superior conference facilities.

Singapore’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, delivered the keynote address at the opening session of the conference. Lee’s address was followed by a question-and-answer session at which Lee was asked to account for Singapore’s problematic standing with regard to the rule of law. Lee’s response to this challenge was to pull out a series of tables citing Singapore’s high rankings in rule of law and governance indicators as proof of the existence of the rule of law in Singapore. According to press reports, the listening IBA members responded by bursting into laughter.

Law, Illiberalism and the Singapore Case

That laughter could mean many things, of course – from admiration for the preparedness of a man who was Prime Minister for thirty-one years, to incredulity at the discursive minimisation of the ‘rule of law’ from a qualitative ideal to schemas that rank and quantify. This laughter, and the range of meanings held within it, point to a Singapore paradox: A regime that has systematically undercut ‘rule of law’ freedoms has managed to be acclaimed as a ‘rule of law’ state.

The term ‘discourse’ and the idea of discursive constructions of knowledge have become commonplace in scholarly writing, although ‘discourse’ has been used largely in a taken-for-granted manner. In order to be clear on what I mean by ‘discourse’ (a term so expansive and inclusive in its meanings and applications “that [it] should be marked ‘Danger’”), I first outline the definitions and parameters of discourse and discourse theory that shape my analysis.

Foucaultian scholar Gary Wickham describes discourses as “visible ‘systems of thought’” such that, for example,

Discourse is thus evident, everyday and mundane. It is also inextricably part of social processes and practices. In one influential form of theorising on discourse that is informed, in part, by Foucault’s work, Critical Discourse Analysis, ‘discourse’ is described as a term that signals recognition that language use is socially determined. The social determination of language is disaggregated as meaning

In Critical Discourse Analysis, language choices and power relations in society are seen as co-determined such that an analysis of communication in a particular social institution ties together the macro-analysis of society with the micro-analysis of particular texts. Thus, a close reading of a legislative text, its conditions and contexts validly enables a reading of ‘law’ and power relations in the Singapore state.

An Insider’s Preface on ‘Rule of Law’ Confusions

In 1983 Singapore’s then Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, said it was a problem for Singapore that graduate women were not marrying at the same rate as non-graduate women; and when they did marry, they weren’t having as many children. This meant, he argued, that Singapore’s next generations were losing out on the genetic talent pool. It was, of course, a highly controversial speech.

At the time of Lee’s speech, I was a second-year law student at the National University of Singapore. I wrote a parody, the “Procreation Encouragement Act”, for the Student Union magazine. I modelled the “Procreation Encouragement Act” very closely on the legislation we were studying. The national coat of arms, margin notes, tortured legislative language – apart from its obviously satirical content, my “Act” looked and read like a product of Parliament. I conscientiously acknowledged the idea I was borrowing: my constitutional law tutor, Dr Hugh Rawlings, had referred to an imaginary “Procreation Encouragement Act” in a tutorial problem he set us. I asked for his permission, took the title and wrote the “Act”.

This project has traced the Singapore state’s reconfiguration of the profoundly liberal concept of the ‘rule of law’ into an illiberal ‘rule by law’ through the state’s manipulation of legislation and public discourse. In tracing this process, I have asked: How does the Singapore state maintain its legitimacy as a ‘rule of law’ polity despite its ‘rule by law’ practices? In this concluding chapter, I revisit the specific legislative moments detailed from Chapters 3 to 7 to derive a whole that is greater than its parts: a template for ‘law’ that facilitates and engenders state legitimacy for ‘rule by law’.

The case studies have illustrated how the state tries to make ‘law’ Singapore-specific through arguments of exceptionalism and the trope of Singapore’s perpetual territorial vulnerability. As a preface to the template for ‘rule by law’ legitimacy offered here and in keeping with the methodological focus on discourse, I first analyse a significant exchange between the International Bar Association Human Rights Institute (Ibahri) and the state. This exchange demonstrates that no matter how much the state’s discourse of Singapore exceptionalism has tried to fence off ‘law’ as ‘local’, as concept and category, the ‘rule of law’ is inexorably global. In this global resonance, there is the implication that the remaining challenges to the legitimacy of the PAP state, and possibilities for a resurgence in the ‘rule of law’ within Singapore, lie externally.