Smart Democracies are Stupid???

Thursday's frontpage caught my eye rather quickly, with its headline about how "At SICC, more democracy may not be a good thing". The main thrust of its author's (Yap Koon Hong) argument was that the Singapore Island Country Club had lost developmental momentum, and was being overtaken by rivals like the Tanah Merah Country Club and the Sentosa Golf Club, because of the way it had changed the way it was managed. It is chaired by someone appointed by its landlord, the Public Utilities Board. The chairman in turn had the power to appoint the president, treasurer and club captain positions in the general committee, whose remaining members consisted of elected members, with the chairman smiling on benignly.

In 2003 however, a controversy broke out when then-president David Wong raised the notion of getting an early extension for the SICC's 30-year lease and proposed a co-payment scheme which his members found outrageous and revolted against. The success of this revolt removed the perception that they could not hope to successfully challenge a PUB appointee, and more challenges to his authority were subsequently made, eventually leading to a stalemate. David Wong resigned, and lawyer Giam Chin Toon was picked by the SICC chairman, Koh Yong Guan to be the next president. With the new president in place, Koh slowly transitioned the general committee from being one that was partially elected to being one that was fully elected. Giam also ended a long-running scheme which allowed committee members to act as supremos for various club activities, and clipped their power bases. This stirred up another bee's nest, which remains buzzing to this day.

Koon Hong brings up the fact that the Sentosa and Tanah Merah establishments are run by appointees as supporting evidence for the argument that having appointees works. Another fact he brings up is that the membership consists of local millionaires, billionaires, captains of industry etc., who are largely very opinionated and commanding, and so they end up squabbling to the point of bringing the club to a standstill.

Koon Hoon implies that people who can think and are all leaders in their own right can ruin a democracy. To go the other way round, he's also suggesting that a democracy can only work when the electorate is largely made up of people who can't think as well, and are mostly sheep. To me, it seems as though he wants an authoritarian state of affairs for the club, even though it may officially be a democracy. Sound familiar? To drive the point home, let's push the contrast up a bit, and call for citizens that don't think at all, and are unquestioning minions. You'd have something not too different from North Korea, which actually insists on calling itself a democracy.

Without even considering that they may have political processes that are improperly-defined and need tweaking, or simply bad people in charge that need more patience to deal with, using gridlock as an excuse to promote the rejection of a political ideology altogether and embrace a more authoritarian one, is to prematurely jump to conclusions, and merely reveals the political bias of the person who thought of the suggestion. Considering that Mr Sim Kee Boon, a prominent member who also happens to be Tanah Merah Country Club's first and only chairman, is proposing a candidate for election to be the club's next president, it is with disbelief that I read the following quotation from him: "Democracy per se is of little use to members of the club, except for those who want to do the politicking."

As a candidate, Mr Sim should be fully cognizant of the fact that politics inevitably arise in the conduction of the affairs of daily life, and are hence inseparable from them. If anything, the presence of politicking is a good thing, because it shows that people at least care enough about the issues to get involved. Any benefits that might be enjoyed from apparent political apathy are short-lived at best, and will eventually be overshadowed when incompetence seeps into the leadership, causing dissatisfied members take their patronage elsewhere. It is, unfortunately for SICC, already the case. Time will tell if they can plug things before it gets worse.