Corruption

Being in Singapore got me interested in the government of Singapore, primarily because of the obvious 50th anniversary celebrations of the independence from Malaysia. Lots of fly-overs by military helicopter and jets etc.

Wiki says “In the 1959 general elections, the People’s Action Party (PAP) swept to power … the PAP has been returned to power in every general election [since] … The Government is generally perceived to be competent in managing the country’s economy and largely free from political corruption.”

Since 1959 only only 12 opposition politicians have ever been elected into parliament. The legal minimum campaign time, from when the election is announced to polling day, is nine days. The announcement of the election follows the announcement of new constituency (gerrymandering) boundaries. Subsequently over 50% of seats are uncontested, assuring the PAP of an electoral win.

But this isn’t enough for them; in addition, any independent politicians that garner popularity usually end up in prison for things such as subversive communism, tax evasion, defamation, and even assembly and speaking in public. So very few people are silly enough to even want to run against the PAP in an election.

I don’t know about you but to me that sounds like political corruption of a kind.

What this says to me is that there are two types of political corruption;

1. The corruption associated with elections and re-election, and

2. The corruption associated with unfair access to taxpayers funds or markets, as a result of corrupt government actions

Here is the interesting thing; all governments fail the test of these two types of corruption to some degree or another.

But in the case of both Australia and Singapore the governments of both countries will claim that all the institutionalised acts labelled by the conspiracy theorists as ‘corruption’ are absolutely within the law. This is the usually the case!

Which then would lead me to conclude that corruption is best measured by the gap between the original intent of the laws and the actual use of them.

Even this definition is flawed though because, for example, Singapore inherited many of their laws from England. Whilst in England there may have been good historical intent behind the laws, there never was in Singapore. Copy, paste and reinterpret.

Another useful definition of corruption would be the separation of the government from both the judicial system and the policing system. The greater the degree of independence of the latter two from the influence of government, the less there is any sort of corruption.

Now let’s see if I get out of Singapore tonight eh?