Let me now return to the question posed near the beginning of this paper: is law as social engineering in Singapore purely an outcome of its situation, or is it indeed a glimpse of the legal future of the 21st century in the Asia-Pacific region?
To answer this question one must look more widely at events in East and South East Asia, and look carefully at the crystal ball (or at the yam sticks!).
I hope to have shown how the development of Singapore law has been an outcome of its peculiar history, geography and politics. It would be an easily achieved answer to say that the case of Singapore affords us no general propositions about the future of state and law in the region or the world: it is a one-off case, albeit a remarkable one.
This would be superficial reductionism. There is much in the Singapore experience which matches that of the premier-league players, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea, and now also to some extent, in the first division, Malaysia, Thailand, China, and possibly also, looking to those aspirants for promotion, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
There is also no doubt that Lee Kuan Yew and other Singapore leaders see Singapore as a model for others to follow. This attitude is clearly shared by the leaders of some other countries. China has asked Singapore to create a Singapore clone at the city of Suzhou, near Shanghai. Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia are cooperating with Singapore in the creation of special economic zones. Singaporean enterprises are investing in Vietnam and China; the latter has now become the largest recipient of Singaporean outward investment.
There are of course important differences. These countries all have autochthonous legal systems dating from pre-industrial times. Some are still communist states. Although they display different degrees of openness in their political systems, all have large and growing democracy movements, spawned by educational advances, the rise of a prosperous and ambitious middle class, and the influence of NGO movements and other international movements. In December 1991 President Ramos of the Philippines politely rebuked Lee Kuan Yew for suggesting a Singapore-model approach in that country, reminding him that his country had already tried an authoritarian approach without much success.39 It is a grave error, in my view, to think that state structures, political cultures and legal systems in Asia are similar or are converging.
The question therefore arises whether these emerging NICs, as they are often called, or newly democratizing countries (NDCs, as I would prefer) can pursue a Singapore-style legal system. I think the answer to this is that although, to an extent, they have already done so, further development of the region's legal systems along the lines of Singapore's is unlikely. Although it has been affected by the tail-end of the region's democratic reform-oriented movement, snuffed out in the 1987 detentions, Singapore has only marginally conceded a point or two to this movement, putting forward an alternative ``style'' of PAP government under Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong since 1990.40
The Singaporean educated middle-classes are a much more malleable entity than their equivalents elsewhere in the region, where important concessions have been made to ``multi-party democracy''. Even in Japan, the model which others in the region try to emulate, a coalition of non-LDP parties has taken power after two generations of LDP rule, an event unthinkable until recently. The effect of such events on Singapore has, so far, been slight. Even the present ``consensual style'' of Government has been able to embrace the dismissal of an opposition politician from his university post on the flimsiest of charges, and the hounding of Workers' Party leader JB Jeyaratnam resulted in some very adverse comments from the Privy Council.41 There is little sign that the new style is anything more than the old policy in new clothing. The necessities of Singapore's situation and the economic success achieved over the past two decades have enabled the PAP to immunize itself effectively against the democracy movement, albeit with some international disapproval. The size of Singapore has enabled a growth and effectiveness of the organs of state to an extent which even Japan, with all its social cohesion, has not been able to achieve. The severe anti-corruption laws protect the Government from the most telling charge which is brought against its peers elsewhere in the region, and which fuels the demand for legal reform.
My conclusion is therefore that the monsoon-winds of change now sweeping the region cannot be broken by the wide espousal of a Singapore-type legal system. On the contrary, I think the question is whether Singapore itself will be swept along by these winds. My guess is that the legal system is now firmly entrenched, and that it will ride the storm. I envisage that much of the region will become, superficially, more like Singapore, but Singapore itself will have to make some concessions to the growing desire for rule-of-law institutions, or a rechtstaat, and the paraphernalia of constitutional democracy.