Countering Authoritarianism Online Training - Narratives and Outreach

Countering Authoritarianism
Online Training Part 1:

Narratives and Outreach
8th August 2021, 09:30 AM – 11:30 AM| GMT +8
Official Webinar Transcript
Documented by:
Henry Earl P. Manuzon

ryemanuzon0829@gmail.com
Countering Authoritarianism Online Training Part 1: Narratives and Outreach
OFFICIAL WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT
Moderator: Okay. Good morning, everybody. I think we can start now. Good morning,
everyone. My name is Shakir Ameer. I am from Democratic Action Party Malaysia. Today,
we have a special webinar series on Countering Authoritarianism Online Part 1. This is
the Part 1 of the online training of this title, part one of part two. This is especially by the
Academy of Progressive Politics. And I'm Shakir and I'm your host for today. We have a
few speakers that will share some of their opinions. First, we have Teo Nie Ching. She's
a member of parliament in Kulai Joho. She's also the International Secretary of the
Democratic Action Party - DAP. We also have Scott Nakagawa - senior partner from
ChangeLab from the United States. We have Kirsten Han, a journalist and activist from
WeTheCitizen, and of course, we have my old friend, Mandy Singh, former secretary
manager of Bersih Malaysia. Good morning to everybody. Welcome. So just for the
audience information, this is live-streamed and you can also catch us Facebook which is
hosted by SocDem Asia as well as DAPSY. So, let’s get going. This is hosted by SocDem
Asia and DAPSY Malaysia. You can go to our Facebook pages as well. You can ask your
friends to join us for this webinar. Okay, and also, in two days, this webinar is in
conjunction with the 8888 Uprising that since today is the eighth of August and it's the
anniversary of the peak of the uprising which happened today around sometime in August
until mid-August. I mean it went on for like 3 months. So, this is a commemoration of that
day. I would like to present to you the Opening Message from a Member of Parliament,
from a Deputy Minister for Women, Youth, and Children of the National Unity Government
of Myanmar – Ei Thinzar Maung. You can start the video now.
Ei Thinzar Maung ( Recorded and Translated in English): Good morning everyone, I am

Ei Thinzar Maung, and I am currently serving as Deputy Minister of the Ministry of
Women, Youths, and Children Affairs of the National Unity Government of Myanmar. As
a former participant of such training programs, it is my great honor to be able to give an
opening speech today. Social democracy is not very popular in Myanmar yet. However, I
had long been attracted to the ideology of social democracy and its visions for the society.
As a social democrat, I could not help but trying to understand the ills of our society such
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as injustice, inequality, exploitation and oppression. I’d like to take this opportunity to
speak a little about what is going on in Myanmar. If you study the political history of
Myanmar, you will find that nationalism, communism, and socialism had been leading
forces of in ebbs and flows of the country’s politics. Nevertheless, none of these
ideologies properly took root in Myanmar. In the absence of any of these political
ideologies, military authoritarianism has taken root in Myanmar. With that, especially in
the 1990s, crony capitalism shaped our economy as those military elites and people close
to these elites flourished at the cost of inequality and environmental degradation.
Decades of military rule had driven millions of people into extreme poverty. And this has
become worst due to the pandemic and the recent military coup in February. The
economy is on the brink of collapse and the recovery will take decades according to
economists. So, it is the utmost importance not to repeat the same mistake again by
reviving the old economic system when we succeed the current Spring Revolution. Our
new federal democratic union will have to formulate a new economic system that is based
on fair taxation system, universal healthcare and free education. When that time comes,
I hope social democratic governments and forces across the world will offer help and
assistance to our country. The military coup is not new to us. Our country had faced three
military coups before – the first in 1958, another in 1962, and the third in 1988. And the
fourth, and which we all hope the last one, in this February. The currently military junta,
and its leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, have been accused of ethnic genocide and war
crimes they have committed on ethnic minorities. The Burmese military conducted mass
killing and raped children and women in ethnic areas for many decades. The most recent
case probably the most globally known is the military’s persecution and genocide against
Rohingya Muslim minority. The military often portrayed itself the guardian of Buddhism
and yet it nevertheless brutally suppressed the peaceful protests led by Buddhist monks
in 2007 Saffron Revolution. Before the election in last November, General Min Aung
Hlaing said “there is nothing I don’t dare to do” in front of a group of political parties that
have ties with the military. He meant it when he said that, perhaps after being emboldened
by decades of impunity. Myanmar has now severely been hit by COVID-19, military
dictatorship and poverty. It could be the worst political crisis that anyone could imagine
but still many countries in the region share some of the characteristic of our crisis.
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Certainly, Southeast Asia is not the cradle of democracy but you will find some historic
people’s movements. Countries in the region face one military coup after another but the
revolutionary spirit of the people have never died out. Amid the pandemic, these brave
people continue to fight against the dictatorship. Nations of Southeast Asia have
awakened. “No more to the oppression” slogan of the people is echoing throughout the
region. The defiant sounds of pots and pans in Myanmar have spread to other countries.
Soon Myanmar Spring can become “Asia Spring”. We need the support and solidarity
from all social democratic forces to help the movement gain a momentum and becomes
widespread. I plead for your continuous support to the movement in the spirit of sisterhood
and brotherhood. Thank you.
Moderator: Thank you very much to the honorable Deputy Minister for Women, Youth,
and Children from Myanmar. I wish you all the best. So now, let's start with our forum with
our webinar. Let's start with the first speaker since Malaysia is the host. So, I will ask Teo
Nie Ching a few questions. Actually, all of the speakers will be getting the same questions.
So basically, the first question - what characterizes and sustains authoritarian populist
politics as well as what kind of campaign can deter or destabilize authoritarian rhetoric
and methods, and what are their key features. So, I will ask Teo Nie Ching to elaborate
first. Yeah. Thank you.
Teo Nie Ching: Thank you. Thank you to all the panelist and also all the participants.
First of all, on behalf of the DAP Malaysia, I would like to express my gratitude towards
SocDem for giving us this opportunity to co-host this event, today’s discussion. I’m
representing Democratic Action Party from Malaysia. to me, populist politics is not
something new. For instance, I think our former Prime Minister Najib Razak, who is a
world-known kleptocrat. I think he's a firm believer of cash scheme. He gave a lot of cash
out to the people and therefore, it makes him super super popular. When he was the
prime minister, he will give cash I would say three times a year to the bottom 40 families
and every 4 months they are getting about I would say 400 ringgit that is about 100 USD.
This cash out, it made him very, very, very popular and therefore, even until today, after
our last general election that was in 2018, he is still considered one of the most populist
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most popular leaders in his party, that is Ammo. Even though, is no longer the president
of Ammo and he is now merely opposition but we can say that on Facebook, he is even
more popular than he was when he was the prime minister. So, Pakatan Harapan, that is
a coalition where Democratic Party - DAP - is a partner when we took over the
government in the year 2018. At that point of time during our campaign, of course, the
1NDP was one of the issues that we have campaigned heavily to the people to tell the
people how Najib Razak has misused the money of the country and then how this case
has become a war on cryptocurrency and then how we even like country like USA was
investigating him. So finally, we're able to defeat Barisan National after 60 years. It was
the first time that Barista National was defeated in the general election and we took the
federal government. However, the prime minister candidate of Pakatan Harapan Mahathir
Muhammad in 2018, it was the second time he returned as a prime minister. Previously,
he was with Barisan National. He was a member but because of the 1NDP issue he left
and then eventually he joined Pakatan Harapan. When he became the prime minister, we
can see a very clear different approach for him. He is very reluctant. He was very very
reluctant to give cash oide to the people. He believed that people should only be given if
they are hardworking and therefore, during his leadership PH is starting to reduce the
certain subsidies and actually they also caused us a lot of problem because people start
comparing PH against Barisan National, Mahatir Mohammad against Najib. It's not saying
that you accuse Najib for taking money from the people but eventually he's giving money
to the people but however during PH time because we realize that we have a very huge
debt that we need to pay and therefore, we start to reduce. We start some exercise and
we reduce direct cash aid. In exchange, we turned it to perhaps like a reward scheme of
necessity. But people don't understand it. Sometime, they accused us of being not as
good or not as popular as Najib. So, you can see that populist approach actually is the
easiest way to win the hearts and minds of the people. And even now, when Najib is
opposition, you can see that he's still very popular especially on the social media. It's also
because he is still a very populist leader. For example, I think during this COVID-19
pandemic, it makes a lot of people suffer a lot economically. It’s the same for us in
Malaysia. So, how do we assist people during this COVID-19 pandemic because
Malaysia, we actually go through certain phases and there has been months of full
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lockdown where people where people are unable to work and therefore, they are unable
to feed themselves. So, eventually, the question would be how can the government help
the people and one of the proposals actually being considered was that government
should allow the people to withdraw money from EPF, that is a retirement fund, freely. Of
course, to me, that is another populist approach, because retirement plan is something
that we should save for the future. If we allow people to take out all your money or a huge
percentage of their money from their retirement fund now, yes, we might be able to solve
the problem temporarily but however, eventually, they are going to suffer. They are going
to suffer when they retire. It could be 5 years later, it can be 10 years later, it can be 15
years later. We don't know. But of course, we are no longer the we are no longer the
government now because in the year, 2020, there is another change of government due
to certain members of parliament decide to cross party. So, the current government, we
call it PN government – Pakatan National – PN government. So even though, Najib - he
is considered a member of parliament he was considered a member of parliament - but
on his Facebook and on his social media, he always criticizes the government for not
allowing people to withdraw their retirement fund freely and saying that PN government
is being is being unreasonable, imposing too many conditions. However, to me actually
certain conditions are reasonable and actually we just shouldn't allow people to withdraw
their retirement fund without any limitation because I think retirement funds serve some
purpose for people especially when they're retired. And our approach will be the
government should give more cash aid to the people but however, try to save people's
retirement fund. But again, Najib being a populist leader, he was using this issue heavily
criticizing the government and eventually the PN government also gave in. Najib is now
saying he is no longer supporting PN government and so we are going through a very
unstable situation in Malaysia. What I'm trying to say is that even though during his time
when he was a he was a (xxx), he was who was supposed to support the government
instead of like acting like opposition but actually when he was a (xxxx) supporting PN, he
was acting like a opposition, criticizing the government actually heavily. Some people
actually said that he's more qualified to be the opposition leader. So that is the populist
approach that we can see in Malaysia and we also notice that during this authoritarian
politics actually is on the rise. During this difficult period, we can see the government
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actually taking actions against doctors who expose the dire situation in the hospital, also
taking action against activists who exposed the situation in detention camps, even
charged them in court and also at the same time taking action against journalists,
accusing them of spreading fake news. So, the government, the Malaysia government at
the moment is also using authoritarian politics to actually to stop criticism against
themselves and also to make sure that people don't expose too much about the
mismanagement or the failure in terms of like managing the pandemic. And all these
actually, eventually, making to a certain point in time because the event, the COVID-19
pandemic situation in Malaysia until today is still very bad. We imposed full lockdown in
June. However, 2 months later, the COVID-19 cases did not go down but however, it
increased and currently, we have recorded more than 10 thousand deaths in Malaysia
and therefore, we can see that people are also getting that they cannot stand the
government anymore and therefore, you can see the fight back spirit coming up from the
people. 2 weeks ago, a group of young people, actually they are not organized by the
political parties definitely not organized by Pakatan Harapan, but now you can see that a
group of young people wearing black and then they have a demonstration. They have a
gathering, of course keeping social distancing. And in our capital. Of course, you can see
that now people because they feel no hope for this government and then therefore, you
can start seeing the fighting spirit from the young people. And therefore, politics again
become very unstable in Malaysia also because people are getting very unhappy with the
with the current government. So, to me, the campaign that we can use to demobilize or
deter authoritarian populist, actually we need to expose the inconsistency and hypocrisy
and also equally important is to make people realize the importance of freedom and also
participation. I think participation is something that we need to make our people
understand and appreciate so that they will realize that. Because during PH time, we gave
a lot of freedom to the people. To a certain extent, you can see that there are a lot of
noise against the government and it also causes the instability of the government, within
the government itself. The coalition partners are started feeling that maybe working
together with DAP and others doesn't really guarantee that they would have a better
future, a better chance in the next year and therefore eventually it was also part of the
reason that cause fall down of the Pakatan Harapan but I think compared to now where
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people we can see the authoritarian qualities coming back to Malaysia where you can
see they are using police. They are using all kinds of action against people who criticize
the government. In Malaysia, we are supposed to have five-day parliamentary but
because suddenly due to the statement for Istana, eventually the parliament was cut out
for 5 days to 4 days and on the fifth day where all the opposition MP we want to enter the
parliament to make a stand, to make a point, not really we are having any seat but just to
make a point, our police, our government even use the Federal Reserve to actually stop
us from approaching the government and I said I would go at all places. So, I think all
these resources could be better used to actually fight the pandemic and try to control the
COVID-19 situation rather than using it against their political enemies. And therefore, I
think people especially in Malaysia, I think people start to realize that yes, during PH time,
you can see there are a lot of noises against the government, different views but at least
at that point, I have people will allow to express that you freely and therefore we have a
lot of opportunity given to the people. We engage the NGO. We engage individuals so
that we can get their feedback. And when he took over one of the common critism, it's
very difficult to engage government. Journalists also complained that when the current
new prime minister, Muyhiddin Yassin, after he became a prime minister for about one
and a half years but he never really has any free press conference with the journalists
where they can actually ask questions freely. Most of the time he only does broadcast TV
and of course on the social media or media statements. So, I think when people start
realizing the importance of freedom and participation, that is the best way for us to
demobilize authoritarian regime. That's it for me at the moment. Thank you, Shakir. Thank
you.
Moderator: Okay, thank you Secretary Nie Ching. As a Malaysian myself, yes, I agree
with what we are going through right now with the current leadership and all. Okay, next
I would like to welcome Scott Nakagawa. He's a senior partner from ChangeLab, United
States. Scott, the floor is yours.
Scott Nakagawa: Okay. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I really appreciate
you're including me among so many esteemed guests and I want to try to stay brief here
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because I know that there are number of people want to speak or who are scheduled to
speak and I think it's really important that people who are in the region on the ground
doing the work have an opportunity to share their experiences. My role here is going to
be primarily to help us understand what characterizes and sustains authoritarian populist
parties generally or politics rather generally and to figure out what kinds of campaigns
demobilize, or deter authoritarian rhetoric and methods. What key features these
campaigns generally tend to have and so I'm going to give you kind of a broad overarching
view and particularly that view from the US where we are in the throes of a fight with
authoritarianism. So, what I can tell you from what I've learned is that authoritarian
movements aren't aberrations from nationalism as usual but instead exaggerations.
Ultranationalist authoritarian movements exploit existing inequities and exaggerate
existing divisions. They exploit those divisions and become most dangerous at times
when the dominant nationalist ideology of a nation is failing to fill the gap between the
reality of how states are performing which is never really according to the ideal of
nationalism and that ideal. They basically wedge right there in those division in those
places where the state is failing and they try to drive people apart in order for them to be
able to take power even when they are minority movements in many instances. So, they
exploit contemporary crises. They move reactionary ideas in regards to those crises. They
take advantage of various failures and then work their way into those cracks in national
identity and usually around issues of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion and widened
them to the point where the national identity, nationality, gets split and factual in fighting
between extremely polarized groups results in the power and influence that authoritarians
can exercise then even when only a minority is magnified. So, they do this and they do
this really successfully in a number of different ways. First of all, they generally tend to
exploit an idea about a mythic past. So, the idea that “The nation was once great and
good to its people before corrupting influences like immigration, feminism, anti-racism, or
religious pluralism or secularism” was adopted. They then build upon this nostalgia and
they attack intellectualism and embrace unreality. So, they will generally attack academic
freedom and freedom of the press. These should be understood as attacks on
intellectualism and reality because these are pillars of a shared reality with any given
nation state. They do to undermine people's ability to see and act on behalf of their own
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real interests and often do so by going after these particular pillars and then opening the
door to the possibility that anything can be true because nothing can be proven to be true.
So, if we understand theory to be a systemic explanation of reality, conspiracy theories
which is what these authoritarians thrive on are explanations of unreal and so in order for
them to be able to popularized those theories they need us to be engulfed in unreality
and that is part of the reason why they are so heavily invested in using virtual reality - the
internet - in order to promote their ideas. So, all of this again just to drive from this point.
In order for these big lies, these conspiracy theories to undermine people's faith and
nationality and win the day, there has be something failing in the state. The state is not
failing to be able to live up to the ideals off the consensual nationalism that supports
democratic ideals and therefore, they're able to critic those ideals. And, in a fight over
democracy, most of us know, I think all of us know, that none of our states have been or
are now really democratic states. The United States is not a real democracy. In a fight
with anti-democratic movement from the right from an authoritarian movement, the side
that is more critical of democracy in an anti-democratic state has a huge advantage and
so they work that advantage in order to undermine people's confidence that democracy
can work for them. So, the other thing they do is that they promote an idea about
victimhood. They say that certain groups of people are being victimized by other groups
either because waves of migration are causing them to fall into the minority or because
the government is failing them, they feed this idea of victimhood among people. because
once one views oneself as a victim, this status justifies doing anything including breaking
the rules or even resorting to violence in self defense. They also to promote ideas about
law and order understood as retribution justice. So, in other words, retribution equals
justice and generally tend to put issues of justice on one side of a kind of social or cultural
division in society and freedom on the other and argue that any advance of justice in the
society, greater equality, will erode freedom. So that those two things are not compatible.
They also go after sexual anxiety and this is really important. They will attach gender.
They attack sexual identity, sexual orientation, and sexual expression and they do this
because they want to incite a moral panic that causes people to lose the ability to reason
their way through ordinary decisions to reach for authoritarian solutions in the face of
something that is invading something that is very intimate and very private and where
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they feel most vulnerable. These kinds of attacks around sexual anxiety are soft entry
points to bigger attacks on freedom of expression in general. So, they build their base
that way and then they go after bigger and bigger prizes. The other thing that of course
is really important to them is to attack the welfare state. So, as soon as national begins
to crack, they're able to make the argument that the welfare state serves some people at
the expense of other people. So, we are no longer able to see our shared interest in
supporting it and that further undermines people's faith in the state. The last thing they do
is they appeal to the heartland. They claim to be the only legitimate keepers of authentic
nationality. And so, in our fights with these folks, we need to be able to speak to that idea
of authentic nationality, as inclusive, as feminist, as democratic, and as embracing of the
diversity of people within the nation because their creed will be an epic nationalist or
religious nationalist creed and we need to argue for civic nationalism for the rule of law
and in order for us to do that, we must first humanize the groups that are being attacked
so they're not able to be able to make that argument that those groups are takers and not
makers or perpetrators and not victims. So, I'm going to stop there. I didn't really get to
the part about what kinds of campaigns demobilize the authoritarian rhetoric. I'm
assuming that we will get there in the discussion but I'll stop in order to get people, other
panelists, chance to talk. Thank you.
Moderator: Alright, thank you very much, Scott. Very good sharing from Scott. Yeah,
maybe he can elaborate further later up on our discussion. Next up, our next speaker, is
from Singapore, Miss Kirsten Han. She's a journalist and activist from WeTheCitizens.
Yes, Kirsten, you can you can present now.
Kirsten Han: Yeah, thanks for having me this morning. I think like Scott, I just want to be
as brief as I can and really kind of just talk a little bit about the Singapore situation because
I'm not sure how many people are familiar with what we have here. So, Singapore is in
an authoritarian stage but things are a little bit different. I think difficult for casual observers
of people from outside who don't know Singapore really well to fully see or understand
this authoritarianism because a lot of it is very embedded and it's also very calibrated,
very targeted so that that's control without attracting a lot of international attention or
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outcry. So, what enables that? – is that we have a ruling party that's been in power for a
very very long time and that dominance has allowed them to set a lot of national
narratives, normalize a lot of authoritarian practices. So, people just see it as pragmatic
and also the controls are subtler and more targeted so that you can actually get a lot of
Singaporeans who will tell you that Singapore is not authoritarian and that they feel free
and they're not lying to you. That is probably, the experience of somebody - if you don't
talk about politics, if you don't criticize the ruling party very publicly, if you just do your job
and go about your day and enjoy the sort of material comforts that Singapore can offer
which is a lot, then, you probably won't feel like you're being oppressed. You won't feel
the authoritarianism. And it's something that only kicks in particular people that they
decide being too vocal to allow mobilizing too many people, getting too much of a
following. And so, it's kind of targeted and a lot of the controls. They've found different
ways to control influence the press, the mainstream local press. It's not so clear as direct
censorship where they veto our articles or things like that but it's more with built on self-
censorship now where it's been so entrenched that people just can't reflexively do it. It's
about appointing editors who will gatekeep for you. So, you have a lot of gatekeepers and
different sorts of systems. And so that's kind of what we're facing, which some people in
Singapore would still argue like so what it works. There's a lot of that's sort of narrative of
well, it works – “look at the US, what a mess; look at, other countries that claim to be more
democratic than us, what a problem that they have and we're dealing with COVID so
much better than that. We're dealing with everything so much better than them” - and
that's what used to justify a lot of this sort of authoritarian practices, a lot of discussions
about what sort of politics Singapore should have. And I think personally for me, I think
that's a function also of not having a lot of clarity as a society and as Singaporeans about
what our principles and values are and I'm not talking about the principles and values that
our government tells us we have which is that – Singaporean people are resilient,
hardworking people - but to talk about, what sort of obligations we have as a citizen, what
sort of obligations do citizens have for the country and for the rest of society and what
obligations to the government have to us. At the moment we have a situation where it
feels like citizens are more accountable to the government and the government is
accountable to citizens because you can be investigated by police. You can be
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questioned. You can be called out but it's harder the other way around. If you are an
ordinary citizen and you want to demand accountability from the government on certain
things, it can be harder to actually get that sort of accountability because we have a huge
lack of independent oversight mechanisms. We have a lack of independent commissions
to look into complaints. We don't have an ombudsman, things like that and so a lot of
people who run into problems the government just kind of get blocked because where do
you complain to who will investigate your complaint, how will you get this sort of
accountability. And I think the other reason that I want to focus on this thing about clarity,
about values we don't really talk about things from a right-based perspective and we don't
talk about things from the perspective of having solidarity between communities living in
Singapore, between different segments of the population, and it's easy then to have this
divide and conquer where attention is directed one another but not on people who actually
have power. All these things already existed before COVID and during the pandemic,
we've just seen them play out in different ways. So, for example, the lack of checks and
balances on the ruling party means that they can do a lot of things, push through a lot of
measure without a lot of scrutiny and questioning and things just go through. They don't
get debated fully before they happen. So, what we've seen is a lot of implementation of
contact tracing apps. Digital contact tracing that has just gone through and we haven't
had a full discussion about the balance of privacy and public health and what's the trade-
offs of using so much technology that tracks people surveillance and these apps are now
widely used. They're pretty much mandatory. If you want to go out in society and
participate in society. Yeah, we have seen expansion of their use. So, for example, when
they first launched this contact tracing apps, they said things like don't worry, it will only
be used for contact tracing and nothing else, so, we won't use it for anything else and
then, 6 months later, they went actually sorry, forgot to point out that under the criminal
procedure called the police have access to all this data they want and actually they've
already accessed it once for murder investigation, sorry about that but that's how it is.
And then after the outcry, then they passed a new bill that says - okay, well, we'll limit
access, the police access to this data except for these categories of serious like
kidnapping and rape and murder where they will be able to access the data, which was
then sold as we are restricting police access to this data but it's actually at the end of the
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day still an expansion of use because the original promise to Singaporeans was that it
would not be used for anything else apart from contact tracing. And so, we don't have,
the capacity to really resist or even slow down some of these measures because there’s
not enough opposition and empowerment to question and to stop it. We only have ten
elected members of opposition in our parliament. We have some non-elected members
but even if you add them all together, it's not enough to counter the overwhelming majority
that the ruling party, the People's Action Party, have. So, a lot of things just kind of go
through, go through, and we see expansion in police powers and powers of government
officers. Recently, some Singaporeans are quite shocked to discover that police officers
and what they call safe distancing enforcement officers are allowed to enter your home
without warrant to check if you're complying with COVID regulations or not because we
have regulations about how many visitors a household can have. So, these officers are
allowed to enter your house without warrant to see if you have visitors and you're
supposed to have. That actually us surprising to a lot of Singaporeans but it's not
surprising to activists and civil society members who have known for some time that there
are a lot of cases in which police officers and government officers can enter our homes
without warrant for various things because their powers have been expanded under
various laws. We are also seeing that our Home Affairs Minister is saying that right now,
we have over 90,000 CCTV cameras in Singapore which is a huge amount for a very
small country and his promise is that by 2030, we will have at least 200,000 police
cameras scattered around the island and this again is not something that Singaporeans
get to oppose or meaningfully slow down. They just can't do what they want. So, this lack
of checks and balances is coming out as an issue and interestingly and fortunately, I think
more Singaporeans are getting a bit concerned about this lack of balance and that's why
in our last general election last year, there was there was this kind of resonance in a
message of denying the ruling party what they call a blank check. There is this kind of
interest in in checks on power but it's going very slowly because even after all this
resonance about, let's not give them a check, only ten opposition party members were
elected in our elections. There are lot of reasons for that, from the popularity of the ruling
party among people to difficulties for opposition parties to put up a fight in the election but
by Singapore standards, ten elected opposition members of parliament is quite
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significant. It's the most number of members of opposition members of parliament we've
had. I think that reflects this kind of growing interest in and checks on power. Despite
being this authoritarian and very dominant government, the ruling party still kind of keeps
an eye on kind of populist sentiment and what divides people, what brings people
together, what will make voters happy rather than just the values and principles
necessarily and I think this is actually something that all political parties have an eye on.
Our opposition party also have an eye on this all the time. And a lot of political calculations
going into what they can do, what they can get away with across different political parties
but most significantly of the ruling party because they're the ones with the power. It means
that they can get away with unfairness and injustices inflicted upon different groups that
do not have care or solidarity from the Singapore voter base. What we've seen for
instance during COVID is exacerbated and injustice against migrants. Migrant workers
especially male migrant workers living in dorms where the most hit by COVID. The virus
just basically spread within all these crowded dormitories and so what happened then is
the government has locked down on these dormitories and not allow the workers to move
about freely in the community as say which is to segregate these workers. It's been one
year and they've not let the workers out. So, they just shuttle from the construction sites
to their dorms and back again and that's something that they can get away with because
there's no solidarity from the Singapore voters to these migrant workers and so I think
one thing that we have to talk about when we think about resisting this kind of
authoritarianism and this sort of populist and authoritarian politics is how to build solidarity
between these immunity so that we can be stronger and resisting this sort of unfairness
right now. It's a lot. It's accepted because it's only happening to migrant workers and this
is not happening to Singaporeans and that's something that we need to look at. Thank
you.
Moderator: Alright, thank you very much, Kirsten. Yes, I think we all can relate and can
agree that transparency especially on managing our tracking apps you from our
respective countries is very important. I mean, we have the same questions also in
application started last year in Malaysia as well. These are the questions that will continue
to be asked and governments must be held accountable especially on managing our
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travel data. Agree with you completely. For the Malaysians who are watching this webinar,
you can catch it via a DAPSY Malaysia or Teo Nie Ching’s Facebook page. It's being live
streamed there as well. You can inform your friends and family also to catch this
interesting webinar. You can also access the SocDem Asia Facebook page for the live
stream. I will introduce our last panelist, my old friend. He's a longtime veteran. He also
used to work for the Communications Ministry, Mister Mandeep Singh. Welcome to you.
Mandeep Singh: Thank you. Good morning, friends, to all who joined the forum on Zoom
and also social media. Thank you for inviting me to allow me to share my thoughts about
the issues happening about authoritarian. Nie Ching mentioned, actually she covered
pretty well on Malaysia, but there's one thing I want to add is the characteristic of
authoritarian government and regime is they also play race and religion particularly in
Malaysia. What is happening now and before I go back to 2015, we see that the
Democratically appointed left the government by the people on the 9th of May 2018 was
overthrown by a group of individuals under the name of race and religion that a certain
particular community to work together and to form a government despite they were not
elected by the people. We see this happening by two major political party. Two, I would
say race-based major political party where you have xxx who've been governing in
Malaysia for 61 years and The Islamic Party, they have a lot of members who've been
governing some states in Malaysia as well. These two party under the name of race and
religion came together to overthrow a democratically appointed government and this while
I'm saying Malaysia, this is so what happened in Indonesia when if you remember the
212 somewhere in 2019 where (xxx) was removed from office, (xxx) was kicked out. It
was also a game based on race politics. This is another character that and we'll see today.
It's happening in this year and I think this will continue for quite some time. We’re back to
Malaysia is very unique case today because we came from an authoritarian government
until ninth of May and this authoritarian government before ninth of May, I would say they
are democratically elected. They went to a process of election have been more practically
elected. Now, you have an undemocratically appointed government. They were not
elected, only in parliamentary. In 2015 like Nie Ching mentioned that was I think the rise,
it was not really so much only on 2015 because we in Pakatan Harapan and we agreed
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on Doctor Mahathir Mohammed as a prime minister for us in 2018 but we must not forget
that Doctor Mahathir was the prime minister for 22 years. He also was the most popularly
elected but he had the characteristics of authoritarian. In 2015 what happened in Malaysia
where Najib Razak, the prime minister and now who is a convicted criminal, we must not
forget has been found guilty by the court in Malaysia of stealing the money of the people,
and who is acting today as he's purely innocent, who is acting that he's like the opposition,
but he's not. He was part of stealing and he was the man who stole billions of money from
the people of Malaysia. In 2015, when we see that when the reports were out about one
MDB of corruption cases of Najib. So, what Najib used and then there was also arising of
the people in Malaysia where for example, Bersih was a movement where it's a movement
for free and fair election but later on move to fight for corruption and to fight against
authoritarian where we see Najib Razak to start using home with the institutions. He's not
using the police force. He started using the anti-corruption agencies and he has so many
other agencies to silence the voices of the people and also lawmakers and as a civil
society. We saw that parliamentarian who were campaigning of one MDP was denied to
leave the country case who was not allowed to leave the country to go out to do reports.
You had activists who were not allowed to leave the country, and consistently been
arrested or being charged in court. The movement leader was detained with the trial and
because of the anti-terrorist act because of mobilizing people to the street in terms of
demanding the resignation of the prime minister. You also have issues of Razak here not
allowing political party to contest an election. This is what happened to the winning party.
So, these are some on how a government or how a leader when they start losing their
popularity, when they are afraid of the citizens, and start losing power when they know
that they're going to lose power, they start losing government institution to clamp down
on the citizens. Basically, normally, they will declare war to their own citizen which is
because they don't want to lose their power. They don't want to leave the office. The
reason why they don't want to lose power, they don't want to leave the office because
they know that the moment they collapsed from power, they will be charged in court. They
will be investigated and this one actually happened in Malaysia where at the ninth of May,
we saw that the corrupt was brought to court. It's not about taking revenge but that is
about reclaiming the stolen money. It's about bringing justice to the people by bringing
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them to court. So, these are some of the characteristic but so how do we count them?
What do we do? For the case of Bersih, it was a very unique movement. I would say that
it was started in 2006-2007, between the political parties and activists but then after the
change happened in 2008 where some of the leaders of Bersih who were doing then
appointed as a parliamentarian state assembly person, and then Bersih was handover to
civil society. I think the unique thing about Bersih, the movement in nature, in fighting
against authoritarian and where we had people from different backgrounds. We have
groups from the human rights. We had a group on the student. We had from the Labor
Day. So, we had different groups coming together under one agenda because when you
want to fight against authoritarian, you want to fight against dictatorship, you can’t have
so many different fronts to fight against one particular person because this particular
individual who is a dictator or authoritarian, they have a lot of government missionary
agencies to counteract you. So, how do you consolidate your effort and in terms of Bersih
movement at a particular time, we had different groups coming together agreeing on what
common agenda which is free and fair election. Going down to the street for free and fair
election. When I say going down to the street because that was the only avenue we had
in Malaysia at a particular time. There were no agencies, no government leaders who
want to communicate or engage people so therefore, the only option left was the street
where again street is also another democratic process or means that we should practice.
We had so many different groups coming together in terms of for a free and fair election
and this was I think we must not forget about how the political parties who played a role
in terms of helping to mobilize its citizens because often people will say that a political
party shouldn't enjoy a social movement in this but again, we must not forget political
party are also citizens of the country who contributed a lot in terms of the mobilization,
who have common agenda in terms of Bersih. The political party, unfortunately, it was
only the opposition then now who supported all the agenda, the agenda that was
campaigning. We had a united front by the people together by a united front by the people
against this authoritarian regime which I think it was quite a successful one in terms of
creating the awareness about how do we as citizens while we oppose something but how
we participate in the action where we call the electoral action whereby bringing change
through the ballot box. So, I think it was years of campaigning against this authoritarian
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regime against dictatorship in Malaysia where some will see it may not be dictated but it
was where institutions and all the missionary will use against us and finally, coming to
and translating this anger into the ballot box. Actually, in Malaysia, I would say that it was
something that we managed to do a change to compared to our neighboring countries in
Philippines in 1987 and Indonesia in 1998. We managed to bring the change where in
something we call the revolution to ballots box. It was a very interesting moment but
unfortunately, this moment or this freedom didn't last long. 22 months today we see
there's another again the rise of authoritarian in Malaysia and I think this time the rights
of this authoritarian in Malaysia I say is even more terrible compared to the Najib Razak
era because we see that the rise of the young people happened 2 weeks ago - the black
Group. Never before in the history of police been investigating activists on a daily basis
visiting their homes, taking statement or investigating their parents. Yesterday, what we
observe is the youth group announced again that they're going to go to the street on the
twenty-first of August. Within 5 hours, the inspector general of police had responded. I
have participated organized, involved in my people demonstration but I've never seen
these parts of reaction. For me, this is fear by the government leaders who are really
fearing the uprising of the people and but for me, this will not stop because you can't stop
the uprising of the people. You can never stop a social movement. You can use populism.
You can use you can govern in whichever way but the moment the people start organizing
themselves, when the people unite, it’s very difficult for the people to be defeated. It is not
only in Malaysia, we see in so many countries where how any of the people, the people
movement win. Maybe, I will end here for the first round. Thank you. Alright, thank you
very much.
Moderator: That's the end of our first round of questions. So, I get from what we can see.
I think it is definitely due to the pandemic that many are using excuses for authoritarian
politics and on the transparency and many things are being questioned at this moment.
The pandemic is used as an excuse most of the time and it's being misused. Anyway,
let's proceed to the second set of questions. The sequence will be the same as earlier.
We can start with - how can a progressive fight against authoritarianism and would create
better pathways to engage with younger people, minorities, and vulnerable section of
19
societies and also are the old methods no longer working or do we need new tactics, new
ways of countering authoritarianism. We can start with Secretary Nie Ching.
Nie Ching Teo: Thank you, Shakir, and thank you to the other panelist. Actually, I think
me from Malaysia can really pretty much to what Kirsten share with us now because I
think we are neighbor countries and therefore I think our people also do a certain extent
having similar mindset. To majority of the Malaysians, what they want for their
government now is efficiency and effectiveness. The voters in Malaysia are more results-
oriented. Therefore, whether or not the government is being authoritative is not their
concern. It was a concern of some Malaysians but it wasn't a big concern to all the
Malaysians. They want an effective government to control this pandemic. I think that is
the reality. We even have people and association putting advertisement on the
newspaper to congratulate those people being appointed by this government, by the
current government. So, you can see what people want, at least from Malaysia
perspective, actually is a stable government, is a government who can deliver it. PN at
the very beginning of the governing, they actually did quite well and that was because
they were able to control the pandemic. They were able to control the situation relatively
quite well and quite successfully. In the year 2020, they came into power in March and
not long after that, they actually impose MCO - movement control order - whereby children
cannot go to school, majority of the business has to be closed, most of the factory has to
be closed unless they are essential services and they are able to reduce the cases quite
successfully. Therefore, at that point in time, the approval rating for Muhyiddin Yassin,
our current prime minister, even though he betrayed the mandate from the people voted
for him in the year 2018. People voted for him in the year 2018 because he questioned
Najib Razak for the one NDB cases and therefore, he actually leaves PN and he joined
Pakatan Harapan the year 2018. He was a candidate of contested at his origin
parliamentary seat against his opponent. He won. So, it's very clear the mandate given
by him through the people actually was not to work Barisan National because the people's
desire at that point in time was to bring down Barisan. However, in 2020, he did make a
decision to leave Pakatan Harapan and go back to work together with Barisan National
and form a new government SPN. Because he was able to control COVID-19 pandemic,
20
relatively, successfully and his approval rating was even higher than Dr. Mahathir
Mohammad. So, you can see from there, it's very clear that if the government was
effective, the government can deliver and come up with results. Actually, for majority of
the Malaysian especially during this COVID-19 pandemic, that is the most top priority for
them. That's why I can fully relate to what Kirstin mentioned because in Malaysia is about
the same as well especially under this COVID-19 pandemic. I was asked to the questions
are that's not working in defeating authoritarianism and their neighbors. I will say yes
because at the moment during this COVID-19 pandemic, it's very clear how to go back,
how to control the COVID-19, how to make sure we can go back to our normal life, how
to stop this endless lockdown. This to the people is very, very important. Similarly, now,
we can see that approval rating of is Yassin like lowering. I think I think his approval rating
at the moment is actually very, very bad and you can see that they are actually
withdrawing support but they are no longer supporting him because they are unhappy
with his performance but it's also because it the political fighting in Malaysia. What we
can see now is people now showing that they are unhappy it is also because mainly
because that the situation in Malaysia is getting from bad to worse. Like I mentioned just
before we impose another full MCO, the COVID-19 situation actually was better than now
after 2 months of imposing a full MCO. But a lot of people cannot make a living. They lost
their living and therefore, life is getting more and more miserable for majority of the
population. 20% of the middle class actually now drop to pay for the bottom forty because
the income is actually being affected and therefore, this is why people are feeling unhappy
and there's an anger against Yassin and also his government. Therefore, I think during
this COVID-19 pandemic, definitely due to efficient and effectiveness is the most
important thing for majority of the people and I think for us to fight to be fit our current
government, I think is to we need to constantly promote policies that we think that can
actually help people how to control COVID-19 situation and help to restore economy. I
think that's very, very important. At the same time, I think we always need to engage with
the young people, minorities, and vulnerable sections of the society. We need to provide
them a platform to share because that is what authoritarian government will not do.
Authoritarian government will never engage the young people, minorities, a part of our
actions that will they will shut them down. They will refuse to listen to them and therefore,
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what we need to do as a progressive party is to always engage them, listen to them, and
provide a platform for their voice to be heard. I think that is very, very important and
because of the fact that, at the moment, livelihood is the most important thing. In Malaysia,
we are also being forced to consider whether we need to actually form certain type of
entering government even though they used to be our traditional opponent. There is no
final conclusion yet but there was this a voice saying that even calling from the people
that at this point in time, PH should actually consider to work together so that we can
provide a stable government, a stable government to solve this COVID-19 pandemic.
Maybe we need to have a political moratorium for one and a half year or at least a year.
In Malaysia, our target is hopefully we can achieve herd immunity by October or
November. Of course, having herd immunity will not be sufficient. I think we need more
to actually restore and boost the economy. We need more time to observe what would be
the inference of the various type of variant especially like the delta variance, and therefore
they are causes for us to have a political a ceasefire at the moment to form certain type
of unity government or entering government with our political opponent so that we can
provide a stable government just to solve this COVID-19 pandemic. While we don't have
any conclusion in the moment because I think everyone will understand. It's not easy for
you to actually put aside all the differences and now starting to work together with your
political opponent especially they are known kleptocrat. It's not just political differences.
It's like to us, they don't have a clean record and for us to work together with the corrupt
people or those people who have betrayed us and lead us to form a government with
those kleptocrats. It will not be easy. It won't be an easy decision but this type of
discussion and these are calling even for the people. Every day, the message that I
received, some will actually urge us to consider to work together so that at least we can
have political ceasefire. So, I think at the moment because people's top priority is
livelihood and also how can we end this COVID-19 pandemic and therefore, definitely we
need new tactics to actually engage with the people and then provide solution to them
and therefore, at the moment, our focus for DAP is always to promote policy. We are
trying to create a framework that if this framework is acceptable to all, especially to the
other side and then, we are willing to consider to work together whether is it to form a
government together or even as an opposition but we constantly provide views so that
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we can improve the policy and hopefully that's how people can see why progressive views
and actually leaders are actually important in the nation. Thank you. I stopped for now.
Moderator: Thank you, Secretary Nie Ching. I believe that it's a dilemma that is faced by
Malaysia at the moment especially the opposition to work with your enemy for the
betterment of the nation or kill the enemy and we don't know how. It is something that
everyone is still figuring out. Anyway, our next speaker, Scott. Maybe you can continue
and say your thoughts.
Scott Nakagawa: Yes. Okay. Well, I can only really speak in abstractions, about what I
know through comparative studies about of what's happening around the world. So, the
first thing I would say in terms of how we have to respond to authoritarianism is rooted in
something I learned from a man who is part of the resistance in Serbia. So, that effort to
defeat him was one that taught him some important lessons. One of them was that when
authoritarian movements, when ethnic nationalism on the part of the majority gets a
critical point, nations tend to fail. The in fact always fail and but the failure of nations is
not just rooted in the fact that the most powerful group goes in this kind of ultranationalist
alterations of direction and against the rule of law but because minority groups react to
that quite legitimately by defending themselves in a way that ends up being destructive
to our ability to protect our cause. They go in a much more particular direction become
more subculture in the vernacular we use in the United States, I would say we decide that
we can only hang with people absolutely have our back and those people are just like us
and not any different than us and so we have fail in our ability to be able to build the kinds
of coalitions that are effective at opposing authoritarian rule like popular coalitions. That
seems to be a pattern that's happening all over the world. The thing that causes us to fail
to recognize the importance of universal identities like nationality, we give up on
nationality and we reject it as something corrupt or polluted, not satisfying to us, not
descriptive of who we are because of course, often for minorities, nationality is in fac a
kind of humiliating course of sort of identity. So, to give up on that though to the idea that
you can perfect the union through contesting of a brown nationality actually is giving up
on democracy which requires a constituent we and that constituent we need to be one
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inclusive and equitable to be sustainable. The other side of this, I think is that we need to
remember in this, that ethnic nationalism, this kind of authoritarianism is not sustainable.
Ethnicity is a political and social construct and not actually a real basis for nation building.
Your ethnicity is not the basis for your real interests of what do you eat whether you have
to, whether you're adequately clothed for example and so ethnic nationalism is a means
of taking power but not a very good means of keeping it which is why authoritarians resort
to violence because when elections become corrupted and authoritarian control must be
maintained on the basis of false idea like that, the main means of balancing power is the
coup d’état and so they must constantly protect themselves against it making the state
increasingly more and more repressive which makes it less and less popular. So that stuff
I think is really staple to understanding the situation we're in. The other thing we need to
keep in mind in places like the Philippines for example where everybody's on Facebook
and so much of what we understand is mediated through social media, we need to take
the fights that we're involved out of the virtual sphere and to the ground. We need to
remember that social media, the internet, the information-based economy is the highest
expression of neoliberalism and neoliberalism is basically just a kind of transitional thing
on the way to get in a late capitalism on the way to what appears to be now the oligarch
– the consolidation of huge amounts of power among smaller and smaller numbers of
people through, of course, the accumulation of great amounts of wealth. So this totally
unregulated environment of social media is one that totally that really favors them over
us. It's driven by outrage. It thrives on unreality and so we need to get out of there and
bring the fight to the ground to the places where it's actually happening. So, for example
in the United States, we're in a fight and I realized that we're in a relatively of this position
here but we're in a really, I think actually, dangerous fight that could tip us over to the
point where will start to slide to the kind of autocratic government that many people
throughout Asia are now facing. We're in fight over something called Critical Race Theory
which is this kind of obscure legal theory that basically says that in legal deliberations that
race should be considered historic construct that has rural implications for how decisions
should be made. It's something that is taught in law school. The right of society decided
to name anything that has to do with the promotion of equity or anti-racist education,
Critical Race Theory are attacking it. So, in that process, what they're doing basically is
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taking something that is basically a kind of unformed feeling, a form of anxiety that the
dominant racial group in the United States, white people, are feeling about their status as
it's falling because of demographic change and globalization. The mass migration that
the United States is trying to keep at bay but it will eventually fail in doing. They feed on
that anxiety and that fear and they give it a name. They put in a signifier on it and the
signifier turns it into a weapon that they can use and debates and then they're using that
weapon and fighting against our ability to actually talk about the central inequity in
American society which, unless it's resolved, continues to keep the idea of available as a
kind of form of a reading of a political ideas in which minority groups will constantly lose
and so they're basically making an argument for minority rule in the United States saying
that all of these different minority groups are using this thing called Critical Race Theory
in order to beat up on white people and make the case for white people’s falling status.
And so white people's only recourse is minority rule and that means the rejection of
democracy of elections. It is a big part of why the far right in the United States has focused
so much of their attention on the courts because courts are not majoritarian institutions.
They actually exist to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority in terms of
American civil rights law and so they're trying to make that case through the courts by
taking them over. In a fight like that, it becomes be important for us to not just argue with
them on the internet and not just argue with them in the media but to figure out where it
is that they're deploying that fight in order to build their bases. In the US, it's around school
boards that govern local school districts and so they're deploying people to mobilizing
people to attack those boards, to intimidate elected school board members, and to make
these arguments a Critical Race Theory being advanced through the schools by minority
groups and that this Critical Race Theory curricula will shame and humiliate white children
and make them feel like they're bad people because they're white. None of that is actually
happening but on our side of that fight, many people are combating it by saying but Critical
Race Theory should be protected which it should be. I believe that it should be but then
name it as all of the things the right is saying this from equity, inclusion and diversity
training in government to anti-racist curricula in schools to critical black history, and so
that it contributes to this kind of confusion and fog that people are in, in which critical race
theory can mean anything and nothing which makes it even more powerful weapon. So,
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what I've advised people to do here is to take the fight directly to the school board to react
to the things that they're proposing which are often limits on teacher's ability to teach
about race relations as opposed to continue to repeat the Critical Race Theory line and
say that that's what you're defending. This is not, that's not what the fight's all about. So,
I earlier said that they thrive in unreality. I think that what the suggestion is take them back
to reality. Force them to fight over the actual things that they're proposing and actual
things that they're doing. Earlier, Kirsten said that transparency is important. I think that's
absolutely true. Autocrats thrive on confusion and crisis. That's what makes the argument
for the strong man. Clarity is your friend in these fights. You want to be a specific and
clear as possible about what the fight is about and to focus on those stakes and how they
affect the various people who are involved particularly the people who are most
vulnerable to the authoritarians’ argument. I'll give you an example of this. Here in the
United States in the state of Oregon, which is in the northwestern part of the United
States, Oregon is one of the most liberal states in the country as a state. More people
vote Liberal in Oregon as a whole than vote conservative by a pretty big margin. In this
state, most of the population lives in the city of Portland which is both the whitest city in
the United States and one of the most liberal cities in the United States. There are no
conservatives elected to any political office in the city of Portland within. It's that particular
legal jurisdiction but more than half of voters lived there. So, the authoritarians have
targeted Oregon because it's a place where conservatives feel they have been
disenfranchised. So, that's what I mean when I say they exploit this feeling of
victimization. If you're a white conservative voter and you live in Portland, you often don't
have a candidate who matches your values to vote on in local elections and so you feel
completely unrepresented. The cultural narrative in the city is one that constantly vilifies
and demonize you. So, right wing groups who say that your champion are very, very
attractive and that they work outside of the rules often through paramilitary formations
actually makes them even more attractive because you can see that the rules as they are
set up are not going to work for you. And then, because most of the rural part of the state
is conservative but the majority of the liberal voters live in Portland, they also make
arguments in those rural areas that the majority liberal community that controls state
politics is the reason rural areas of the state have been victimized and are in poverty
26
which is what is the case there. The reality though is that primary resource attractive
industries where the main part of the economy of rural Oregon, they basically exploited
the natural resources there. They shook people and they took the people in rural Oregon
and turn them upside down and shook them until all the valley came out and then they
scooped it all up and they left. They still own huge tracks of land but they pay no property
taxes and so there's very little bread there. So, when the authoritarians in Oregon make
arguments for their side, they usually do it by talking about race and gender. When we
argue back around race and gender and simply say that's racist or that's sexist, we
basically reapply or make more real for them. The idea that for those who are vulnerable
to their appeals that those are the only paths to power. The only way to win power to
make an argument is by arguing around race or gender when the reality is that the racist
arguments that they're making and the sexist arguments they're making the groups that
they're demonizing like Black Lives Matter for example or feminists have nothing to do
with what happens to rural Oregon and so we have to direct their attention back again to
corporations like Wire Houser or Boise Cascade for example, who are the corporations
that actually got rich off of rural Oregon basically sold their posterity and then left town.
It's that kind of thing I mean, about breaking down the unreality around their arguments
and not allowing them to bait you into debates that the majority ethnic or racial group or
religious group will find appealing because it feeds that sense of victimization. So that's
basically where I think things are. The other quick thing I'll say is that the state of the world
right now is pretty dire. In 2019, I believe it was to be the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy)
Institute in Sweden, a global democracy watchdog group reported that 54% of the people
of the world lived under Democratic governments and about a third of all global
governments were going in that direction. By 2020, they reported 68%of the world's
population lived under autocracy. The majority of the balance were going in an autocratic
direction. Only 14% of the world lived in liberal democracies and only 4% were
Democrats. So, we're losing that kind of global leverage and that's the thing to pay
attention to. They're calling autocracy “viral”. The thing to keep in mind though is that they
also report that since around 2011, mass based pro-democracy movements have
doubled in size and number around the world and are having an impact where majority
still matter. That's not everywhere but in those places where that does matter, they seem
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to be having an impact. COVID-19 slowed them down and kind of shuttered some of
those movements but there's clear indication that they will continue and so we do need
to think about how we protect those movements and expand upon what their demands
are in many places in the United States, particularly throughout Europe though, those
pro-democracy expressions are mostly understood as issue fights - over feminism, over
wage gap, over police brutality, against people of color in the United States for instance -
and not as an overarching mass space pro-democracy movement. We do need to help
groups make that transition and mitigate that thing I described of minority groups going in
more particular directions and the way to do that is to actually something very
counterintuitive in a situation which you're being attacked by authoritarians which is to
reach for optimism talk about good things that we can have together to embrace diversity
to celebrate it as a fact and not as an ideal and to continually make the argument over
and over again around people's actual real interests and not get trapped in debates of
that are dead-end debates about race and gender. We need to confront their racism and
sexism but we can't get trapped in those arguments. We need to figure out how to reframe
those arguments to get them talking about issues that are basically class issues - issues
about power and control and who gets to participate in, who does it, who gets to decide
who is a Malaysian and what does being Malaysian mean, who gets to decide who's an
American and what does being an American mean, and who protects our posterity. Those
kinds of overarching themes seem to be having a real impact in terms of just slowing the
progress of the authoritarians by diffusing some of those tensions and creating the
possibility of competing with them. For those who are most vulnerable to their appeals.
yeah, that's what I can add. Thank you.
Moderator: Thank you very much, Scott. I agree with you. I think the only way forward
for most of us I think in anywhere in the world is to spread positivity and positive values
which can resonate with everyone else. Our next speaker Kirsten, are you ready?
Kirsten Han: Just kind of going off what Scott just said, I think one thing that we've seen
in Singapore that was quite interesting is that during the pandemic, we've seen outbursts
of racism in Singapore which is something that we don't usually talk about. So, it's quite
28
clear that Singapore has a racism problem which has for the most part not been talked
about because our government for a very long time has been controlling and also tamping
down any discussions of race and religion - so, by making it very kind of risky to talk about
race and religion because we have extremely broad laws that just refer to things like
spreading hostility between racial groups and it's supposed to be dealing with racist
rhetoric but the effect is that it just stops people from talking about race and religion
completely. During this pandemic over the last few months, we've seen very overt
expressions of racism – “a middle-aged Chinese man stops and interracial couple of the
street and starts berating them for dating outside their race” and “Chinese woman sees
her Hindu neighbor doing his prayers and then specifically gets a gong to come out and
disrupt it while he's doing his prayers”. These are very “in-your-face”. It's very hard to
ignore and so we've started talking about systemic racism and talking about things like
Chinese privileges to try to break down the sort of power and privilege that as the majority
Chinese-Singaporean that we have and how these sorts of policies are embedded in
government rhetoric and government policies. What we then see is that in the Chinese
language press - the mainstream media Chinese language press - that they while
condemning the young Singaporean and people talking about systemic racism for
importing from the West. So, they say “all these young Singaporean who are like looking
at Black Lives Matter in the US and it's just uncritically importing it without recognizing
that Singapore circumstances are different” but contradicting themselves, they then also
import language from the US to kind of rebut criticisms of systemic racism. So, what we've
seen in our local Chinese-language press is that they have picked up on this Critical Race
Theory debate and they are using it as well. So, they are picking up all this right-wing kind
of talking points and they are writing opinion editorials in the local press. The local
editorials are saying things like “Critical Race Theory in the US teaches people to be racist
against white people and therefore when they import it into Singapore, they're now
teaching people to be racist against Chinese people”, “why do Chinese-Singaporeans
have to act as if we have an original sin for just for being Chinese”. This sort of victimhood
of course that's tied to the to the complexities that there are Chinese-language educated
Singaporeans of the older generation who when the Singaporean government was
stamping out and pushing everyone to using English. Their schools being closed and
29
discriminated against for being Chinese-educated and instead of English-educated.

There's complexity there but they are still kind of co-opting this sort of language from the
from right-wing US politics to use for their own means, to preserve the status quo, to shut
down particular discussions, to skew debates. I think what we learn from that is that
authoritarian tactics and ideas can be co-opted very easily from around the for local
means that this is not about each country dealing with its problems but people are learning
from each other. Authoritarians learn from each other. Conservatives learn from each
other as well. Sometimes, it feels like they're doing it even more effectively and quickly
than people who are liberal people, who are progressive, and people who are organizing
for progressive causes. One thing I think is important is how to work and be in solidarity
with movements across the world, how can we have transnational efforts to deal with
transnational authoritarianism and also how to take it to the ground as Scott said. In
Singapore, we have a lot of difficulty because we have a lot of restrictions on physical
organizing which is why so many people are doing everything online. So, for example, in
Singapore, if you don't have a permit from the police which can be quite difficult to get if
you're an activist, solo protests are illegal. One person holding a placard is illegal, can be
arrested. There's an activist at the moment who has been charged for holding a cardboard
sign with a smiley-face drawn on it and so this pushes a lot of people online. It's very hard
for us to break-away from online discussion because for a lot of people, that is the only
space in which they feel free. What we have to do and I think it’s something that civil
society is still trying to find its way around it is how do we take it to the ground within the
restrictions that we have and without for people who are willing to take more risk. One
thing that I’ve thinking about at least is how to find ways to normalize political discussions
because a lot of Singaporeans self-censor feel like “politics is dangerous”, “let's not talk
about it”, “just don't go there”, “here are things that you can't say in this country”. How do
we normalize the discussion? So it start from this very, very basic level of it doesn't matter
if you don't have fully formed views, it doesn't matter who you're supporting technically in
terms of political party but how can we first talk and how can we talk and listen to each
other and not immediately jump into very personal attacks and how do we learn to engage
and also looking at how to introduce different frames and perspectives in this course. A
lot of time, the mainstream media is blasting out this sort of government narrative but how
30
can we introduce different ways of seeing things? So, the government will say – “this is
not a human rights issue, this is a criminal justice issue on the death penalty” or “this is
about making sure that there's no hate speech, we are protecting minorities actually or
we don't allow you to talk about race and religion in public”. How do we then need to
reframe these arguments and bring in different perspectives so that people at least start
thinking about it? It's for me over the years, the work that I've done when I started out like
10 years ago, it was very like “I'm going to change everyone's minds right away” but I
think now it's evolved into maybe if “it just gets people to start thinking for a bit about a
different way of seeing this issue, a different way of considering what options we have
and what the trade-offs are”. That's a good place to start already because I think someone
changing their mind is a very personal decision and can never really be forced by outside
forces but what we can do is to get people to start thinking and realizing, to broaden that
political imagination to say that “look apart from narrative that's been given to you, there
are other ways of seeing this, There are other ways of engaging with this issue and that
you have a voice and agency and deciding how you want to engage”. I think that's kind
of where my colleagues and I are in Singapore.
Moderator: Okay, Kristen. Thank you very much for sharing. Our final speaker, Mandeep,
maybe you can share your points.
Mandeep Singh: Sure. Thank you again. Well, I think in countering tactics of
authoritarians, I think first thing first what we need to do from the experience in Bersih
and in Malaysia, I think identifying coming to a common agenda first. Different groups,
different individuals, different community may have different kind of different agenda or
different approach but if when we have multiple groups and multiple demands, I'm afraid
that it's normally difficult for us to move forward as a team. We come together agreeing
on let's say two or three main things. First, when we talk about reform for example. Reform
is important but sometimes it’s just for the minority individuals when I say minority, it's not
minority group but we are the minority (as progressives) and we talk about it from so how
do we make this reform agenda. This reform work from minority to the majority
understanding the people. So, when we talk about it from how does how do we relate our
31
campaign, our demand, our agenda to the people so that we get the people that the
masses on our side or we get the message to understand what we are talking about and
what we are complaining about and then we move together as a united front. For me
coming previously from civil society and social movement, I Look at “so be it, it's a political
party, civil society of where you are, we are all as a citizen as we need to be collective to
when we want to move together.” That's number one coming on common and United
Front and this is proven. Somehow in Malaysia whether it’s access or not but I think when
we talk about social movement, we must not forget in 2016 where the citizen's declaration
where you hit, where you have a politicians, individuals, and civil society leaders coming
together to agree on a particular if I’m mistaken that was 45 points kind of stuff but
everybody agreed that at that particular time the need to defeat Najib Razak in the
election. Only by defeating Najib Razak then the country can move together. Then you
come up with policies. Policies are very important. You need offer different policies to the
people but again, don't make things very complicated to the people. Policies is important
but it's being used as a document but we make it simple to make that people understand
while they're using populism, authoritarian government will use populism. We should I will
not say it popular approach but how to make it simple. That's number one. Number two
is help this particular time. Of course, they're using new tactic. I think that some panelists
have mentioned how countries are losing, Nie Ching mentioned about Malaysia when
Yassin became the prime minister, he was very popular because today how we have
controlled the pandemic. 12 months ago, compared to now. We must not forget that
country leaders going to use this pandemic situation, of vaccine in particular, to remain in
power. Malaysian general public are very angry now but I don't know, 3 months down the
road when 80% of the population has been vaccinated, when economy is open back,
when Malaysians can travel again from one district to another district and from one state
to another state, and when money is being given again, money is another part where
they're going to give every citizen. I mean, we see now that patients are receiving money
again but it's different during the Najib era but this will happen again in 3 months or 6
months down the road and then how do we as progressive leaders of progressive
movements keep reminding the public? So, while they're going to use new tactic
reassuring to use a new tactic, we can go to the ground to organize. I'm a strong believer
32
of a grassroots organizing. At the end of the day, you need to go to the ground to organize
the public, to organize the people. I believe in the Theory of Seven where you need to
touch somebody seven times before you can win the particular support of the particular
person for example. In this new normal, I think this is something we can use is what I
would say is social media grassroots organizing. There’re so many platforms – Facebook,
Twitter, ClubHouse – but we also need to understand there is a digital divide. There are
places that the there is no connectivity. There is no device. So how do we make our
message reach out to the rural or semi-rural or the place without the connectivity? This is
very important and this need to be to start now and let's don't send them a book of fifteen
pages the people who are in the ground for them to read in a one page to page and make
them understand. On the young people, I think for the young people, we need to
understand that any part of the world, we also came from the same to 10 years down the
road. We don't want to listen to anybody for us was 10 years ago, what we do we think is
right. This is the young people. This is a phenomenon. It's anti-establishment. They just
want to win. Some of it may say an anarchist group or not but these are young people
where they don't want establishments. But I think the most important is how do we engage
them? We listen to their demands. Engage with this. This is very important also to create
a united force with the young people because in Malaysia, generally, I think the young
people are going to be more than 50% of the voters. How do we actually listen to their
idea and how we will be able to coop everything, and how do we reach a middle ground
with that? Promising is one and then implementing is another side. This we need to come
out whether it's I mean because if you see the uprising happening what happened
yesterday in Thailand, what is happening in Myanmar every day, I mean today is 8888
(August 8, 1988). 33 years ago, that uprising of Myanmar happened and the uprising in
Myanmar is still happening by the young people. We see in Thailand. We see in so many
countries and this will continue. In Malaysia, it's also happening in 21st August. So, and
these people, these young people, they are always doesn't want to be afflicted with
political politicians. But eventually, these young people then will be politicians. It’s a
process. I think lastly, what I want to raise also is the greatest solidarity, young or farmers,
fishermen, even the professionals. Now, it's time to also to reach out to the professionals
whether they're young or not, bringing forces together and greater solidarity among the
33
people only by a united voice, a greater solidarity among the citizens and the people and
only then we will be able to defeat the authoritarian. Whether creating united front with
your enemies, I don't know but we have seen creating united front with people who have
common agenda in Malaysia. We did achieve in 2018 whether it's a game where you
work in Malaysia or any other countries. I don't know. But history has shown when in
China or even went in Stalin, the left formula, we're coming together to fight against
common enemy but again, working together to fight a common enemy, it also can bring
you down easily. We had a problem in Malaysia when we promised a lot of in our
manifesto. We promised so many stuffs but when we came into power, we had a prime
minister to say that the manifesto the bible. And it makes it difficult for the progressives.
It's difficult to then for us to answer to our supporters to say that “it’s the bible” when your
prime minister says the manifesto is not a bible. This kind of stuff when we do promises
when we pick populist that we associate - we will abolish all the tolls in Malaysia and we
couldn't that. How do we learn from mistakes? How do we learn and come back stronger
doing better? It is a long struggle, definitely and looking at the region in Southeast Asia
looking at a situation in Myanmar, looking at situation in Philippines, Indonesia, of course,
Indonesia may be a bit progressive but you see Indonesia, it's falling. We don't need to
explain about Cambodia and Vietnam and I think it's also a different level. I think in the
region our neighboring countries Singapore as well. I think it is time for us to while we
want to achieve democratic change, we want to defeat authoritarian government in our
country. I think in this region as well we need to have a drink in solidarity to build united
forces as well because democracy is failing in Southeast Asia. We need to rise together
in Southeast Asia to be a united front. We only cannot build only a united front of economic
reasons. We must build for democracy as well and I think then we learn from each other
how to build democracy in our country as well. So, with that lastly, I think that, organizing
the people. Keep on organizing because end of the day, the people's power can never
be defeated. It is a long struggle, it may take 10 years, 20 years, 30 years but eventually,
you will win and winning and losing in between in Malaysia. We won and I will never see
the lost. It was stolen from us and I think it was it was a learning process for us. I think
when we come back tomorrow, we will come back stronger and better. The solidarity
between the people as well. What happened in Malaysia probably is a good eye opener
34
that race politics will never succeed. We are seeing it. We have seen it. It's only short
term but in the long term, it will not succeed. So, it definitely must be a collective move
together and from what we have learned today, it will definitely make us stronger to come
back tomorrow. I'm quite confident that Malaysia, we have big wins on the 9th of May, we
can do it again. So, I think what happened in Singapore is also we saw some changes
eventually democracy is noisy. Democracy is tiring. Again, a united voice and united force
can definitely defeat authoritarian and end of the day is that the people's power will bring
the change. Thank you and thank you everyone for inviting me and having me.
Moderator: Thank you very much, Mandeep. We can relate especially for Malaysia. I
think this is a democratic process where we are all learning. Every day is something new.
Our democracy is being stretched and of course, people power is imminent. Scott has
also shared in his in the chat box saying that so we need to be inclusive and we need to
find the middle ground with activists especially younger generation. Yes, once upon a
time we were young rebels ourselves, we don't listen to the oldies. Times have changed
and we don't know if they are listening to us or so but all we can do is we can find a middle
ground and we can advise the new generation of activists and we can only make our
democracy better and democracy is definitely noisy. We have reached to the end of our
session, our webinar. Thank you very much for participating in this webinar. Thank you
very much to our friends who are following us on Facebook as well. Next, we will be
having a World Youth Day on August 12 which will be hosted by DAPSY with the theme:
stepping up youth responses to the pandemic. We will inform everyone for our future for
this coming event. Our activities will be live. Anyway, we will end our we will end our
webinar with the video of the Nang Ei Mon Aung, a member of parliament of Myanmar on
the 8888 Solidarity movement. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Have a pleasant
weekend.
Nang Ei Mon Aung (recorded, translated in English): Good day everyone. I am Ei Mon
Aung from Myanmar. I am a member of parliament for Shan State of Myanmar. I represent
Shan Nationalities League for Democracy. Thank you SocDem Asia for inviting to me. In
coming days, we will commemorate the 33rd Anniversary of 8888 (8 August, 1988)
35
people’s mass uprising which start to plant the seed of Myanmar’s transition to
democracy. Myanmar, our country, gained independence in 1948. It has been 73 years.
But our people have not fully enjoyed human rights, democracy and ethnic equality. For
many years, we have been facing military coups since the time of country’s
independence. Results of the democratic elections were not respected by the juntas.
Looking back into our history, results of elections in 1960, 1990 and 2020, recently, were
disrespected by the military junta. Whenever there is a military coup, the bright future of
our country is taken away. Many aspects of the country get worse day by day. Our country
has become one of the world’s poorest under the junta’s administration. Recently, we had
to face another military coup. Our country is now heading to become a failed state
because of the military coup. Now, in our country, there is no rule of law. There are
rampant human rights violations, and worst, life and security of the people are lost. In the
time of the pandemic, the healthcare system of the country is collapsing. At the moment,
the infection rate of COVID-19 is increasing day by day. And the death rate is also very
high. Despite these challenges, our young people continue to protest against the regime
since the first day of the military coup. Numbers of young people and women taking part
in these protests are increasing. Sadly, a large number of young people and women had
died in the hands of the military. Many lost their lives while participating in protests too.
Our young people have been facing these challenges. We are not armed. But we, the
young people, have not given up. We continue to fight. We keep fighting for our freedom
and justice, our country’s democracy and for the future generations. We will continue our
fight until we win. Despite many challenges, we will keep fighting. What I would like to say
to the world is to listen to the voices of the people of Myanmar regarding this ongoing
military coup. We ask progressive countries that respect human rights not to neglect the
situation in Myanmar, for the sake of Myanmar people’s future. Again, on behalf of the
young people and women in Shan, and in Myanmar, I would like to ask the world not to
neglect our country.
-nothing follows-
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Countering Authoritarianism

Online Training Part 1:

Official Webinar Transcript

Henry Earl P. Manuzon

OFFICIAL WEBINAR TRANSCRIPT

Ei Thinzar Maung ( Recorded and Translated in English): Good morning everyone, I am

discriminated against for being Chinese-educated and instead of English-educated.

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