Politicians and Good Governance

We all know Good Governance cannot be taken for granted. Beside having a good, competent, clean, effective and efficient civil service, we also need politicians to become the political leaders who will lead and give the right directions for the civil service and country to move forward.

On the surface, we demand high morality, competent, knowledgeable, not only intelligent but WISE people with a certain level of empathy to be our political leaders. Even with such political leadership, we still need a system of institutions designed with a clear separation of powers so that REAL Democratic Checks and Balances could be effected.

One of the strong narrative of PAP which has ruled Singapore over 50 years, is its ability to find good, clean, competent people with high morality to become its MPs and Ministers. They claim to have high standards when it comes to selection of their candidates for each and every General Elections. They would immediately remove any MP or Minister once character flaws or other critical flaws were found in their slate of candidates.

In maintaining their "Whiter than White" narrative, they have removed two MPs, one of them who was the Speaker of Parliament, immediately after they were found to have extra-marital affairs.

However, morality is more than having indiscretion in their personal relationship. For example, would you consider people who abuse their workers or domestic helpers immoral? Would you consider a person using all means to get other people into trouble just because he doesn't like them, as immoral? Or someone who helps a big bad guy to bully others who are from the vulnerable groups, knowing that he is really the bad guy but did it for money's sake, as immoral?

Immoral issues may not be "illegal" but it just doesn't appear to be just or right to our own conscience. You can do things in all legitimate way but lacks the morality conscience.

In politics, it is simply not easy to find anyone with unrighteous mind, morally principled and yet, competent and effective. Thus, most of the time, political parties including PAP, may just compromise on the quality on the morality of the person they chose.

Lawyers are presumably the "Natural" candidates to become Politicians because the most important role of a politician is law-making. And lawyers are presumed to be people who have high values in upholding justice, social justice or otherwise, and should be highly principled when it come Human Rights and Civil Rights issues. They are normally seen to be fighters and defenders of Justice, Rule of Law, Human Rights and of course SOCIAL Justice. And lawyers are supposed to have the necessary oratory skills which politicians depended heavily upon to win votes.

Thus, in modern history of politics, there were lots of lawyers who become politicians, some become GREAT politicians like Gandhi. In Singapore's context, we also have numerous politicians both in PAP and opposition camp, who are lawyers. 

However, not ALL lawyers are "good" lawyers with conscience.Some would defend the crooks, rich and powerful for their wrong doings or even help these people to bully other people, just for the extremely high fees these people would pay them.

But we would expect lawyers who chose to become politicians to walk the righteous path of defending the weak, fighting the unjust and upholding the justice, including social justice, without fear nor favor.

It would be pretty challenging for lawyer-politician to strike that delicate balance between their profession and their political work. There are "political incorrect" cases which they should avoid even if they are monetarily rewarding.

Despite of the general cynicism of lawyers are most of the time "liars", they will have to be mindful that they do not lie or do anything which may be legitimate but morally wrong or against basic human conscience.

Avoiding controversial case is normally the first rule that lawyer-politician should adhere to. However we have witnessed PAP lawyer-MPs sometimes get themselves into controversial cases. It is true that by the spirit of justice, even crooks have their rights to legal representation. But sometimes it is the manner which the lawyer conduct their defence that would reflect badly for themselves. Furthermore, as a politician who is supposed to uphold social justice, helping the weak and vulnerable, it would NOT augur well if the lawyer-politician chose to defend crooks to avoid punishment from law for their bad deeds.

 My late brother David, had the chance to study law and become lawyer while he was young. But he declined the offer and forgo his opportunity to university education because he felt that if he became a lawyer, he might have do something against his own good conscience in future. Of course, he didn't choose to become politician either but that shows the kind of dilemma a morally upright person like my late brother may have about legal practice.

This should be even more so for those lawyer-politician because you cannot promise Good Governance when you are sly, dirty and use unethical methods to help crooks to get away from justice or simply bully others. The inherent contradictions are just too glaring to ignore.

So far, I have not heard or seen PAP setting up a Code of Conscience and Moral Conduct to its MPs which may link to their professional jobs outside politics. And after witnessing some of the things they do in their professional life, it makes me wonder how "Good Governance" could be achieved by PAP with the bunch of people it has.



Goh Meng Seng