Remake the process of engagement

Having more political engagement is good, but exactly how to do so is worth pondering

By Warren Fernandez, The Straits Times, 12 Aug 2012

At first glance, you see someone tying a knot. It soon becomes clear he is hanging up a flag. Once fastened, he hurls this over the balcony of his Housing Board flat in Hougang.

Mr Soh Eng An then appears on screen to explain why he has put up his flag to mark Singapore's 47th National Day. "Happy Birthday, Singapore!" he declares cheerily into the camera.

A bit of propaganda to get more people flying the flag? More feel-good messaging designed to boost support for the ruling party?

Not quite. This is actually this year's National Day Message from the Workers' Party. It goes on to show WP youth members distributing flags to celebrate Singapore's independence on Aug 9.

I found the video heartening. Not only because of the images of Singaporeans enjoying their lives and expressing their love for their country, but also because it put paid to the perennial notion that surfaces around this time of the year that flying the flag is a partisan gesture only performed by diehard supporters of the People's Action Party.

After all, the flag and our National Pledge belong to Singapore, and Singaporeans, regardless of race, language or religion - or political affiliation, for that matter. Singaporeans need not be coy about flying their flag, if they are so inclined.

Beyond the debate about the flag though, the video also brought home how political players on all sides are having to do more to connect with voters, especially younger ones, these days.

Indeed, no less than Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has taken to delivering his annual National Day message in novel ways. This year, he addressed Singaporeans from Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Park, with its canal turned to landscaped river, and the distinctive pitched roofs of the flats in that estate as the backdrop.

Even this year's official National Day song, Love At First Light, has been given some competition by an independently produced music video titled I Still Love You, which some say is more appealing because it is less polished and more realistic.

Clearly, in today's fast-changing media landscape, where visual imagery and public perception are no less critical to the success of major initiatives, communicators in government, business, and non-governmental organisations are coming round to the idea - some more readily than others - that they need to get their acts "ready for prime time", as they say in the media industry.

Add to that Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media, which have such a hold over the younger set, and the complexity of public communications in today's world multiplies manifold.

Governments everywhere are having to get up to speed, and Singapore's is no different. The recent Cabinet changes, with its added focus on areas such as family and social policy, as well as community and consensus building, also signalled a recognition of the need for the Government to step up its efforts to engage and communicate better.

But while having more engagement on policies and issues is likely to be welcomed by most, such efforts will have to go further than simply increasing the volume of posts, blogs, tweets or Facebook "likes" if they are to be meaningful.

Rather than adding depth to the discussions on the big issues facing the nation - from a declining and ageing population, to the painful restructuring of the economy - and shedding light on how to tackle these, more engagement could also simply generate more heat in a flurry of postings on the latest hot topic, whether it be anger over Ferrari- driving foreigners or wild speculation about the health of one of our leaders.

Some media commentators have highlighted the emergence of what they call the "dialogue of the moment" - who's up and who's down? Who's doing what to whom? Or who's the latest one to slip up or get flamed? - rather than anything more significant.

This phenomenon is not unique to Singapore. A recent column by the New York Times' public editor Arthur S. Brisbane, for example, lamented that candidates for the United States presidential election in November were far less interested in talking about their visions for the future than about each other's flaws.

This, despite the fact that "voters will choose between two starkly different paths on vital policies concerning the size of government, Social Security reform, health care, bank regulation, climate change and more". He added: "A campaign that should be offering voters clear choices on substance has devolved instead into an exercise in attacks and rapid-response counterattacks."

In other words, as important as promoting more engagement is the question of just what we are going to be engaging on.

The recent move to launch a national conversation spearheaded by Education Minister Heng Swee Keat seems an attempt to steer the discussion here beyond the "dialogue of the moment" towards fashioning a broad consensus on the kind of society Singaporeans would like to have in the future, and how best to make it happen.

This is critical. Forging a wide consensus on where the country should be heading will offer more room for debate on just how to get there. In the absence of such a consensus, policymaking risks being reduced to, or becoming trapped in, incessant partisan bickering and point-scoring.

Several previous attempts have been made at such consensus building, such as the Singapore 21 and Remaking Singapore Committees in the 1990s and 2000s, both of which I was involved in. These efforts, I thought, were worthwhile in elucidating arguments on various sides of the issues and shaping understanding on the inevitable trade-offs that have to be made in policymaking, for those who participated in the discussions.

But because the debates are time-consuming, they necessarily engage a limited number of people, no more than a few thousand each time. Beyond this group though, those who have not been privy to the discussions are often left somewhat underwhelmed by the outcome. Could not more sacred cows be slain? Were assumptions not challenged robustly? A case of insiders not thinking out of the box?

Political leaders anxious to assure people that this is not the case have been known to declare that there are "no sacred cows", raising expectations beyond what they can deliver, because some realities of the world don't change just because Singapore has decided to relook its approaches. What they probably mean is that all issues can be discussed and ideas considered. What some listeners hear, however, is that their pet cause or idea is likely to be taken up. The resulting gap, alas, breeds cynicism, which is so cancerous to the body politic.

This is not to say that such an effort is pointless. On the contrary, periodic reviews of policies are necessary and a willingness to change is vital.

To be effective though, Mr Heng and his team should consider going out of their way to engage more people and more widely, doing so in public as often as possible, and perhaps in ways not tried before. Simply relying on old-style dialogues and closed-door feedback sessions will not do. Instead, they might have to take the discussion to where the Facebook crowd gathers, both virtually and in real life.

To cut through the chatter, issues will have to be framed in engaging and perhaps even stark ways, and the policy trade-offs involved fleshed out and thrashed out. Some of these debates will prove controversial, even contentious, partly because the issues are increasingly complex shades of grey and the trade-offs that are called for are becoming increasingly difficult to agree on.

But there is just no running away from it. Ironically, given the evolving political and media landscape, the team charged with forging a new national consensus might well have to begin by rethinking the process of political engagement itself.