A man called James

Nope, not James Bond, but Gomez…James Gomez. Who he? Well, in Singapore this name is pretty well known as the latest burr in the saddles of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his dad, the one and only, and now Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.

How did Mr. Gomez manage that feat? In the view of many analysts, the Gomez case made the dominant People’s Action Party unwisely change strategy and focus on making Gomez pay, rather than on explaining its program of government and addressing contentious issues such as the cost of living, health care and public housing facilities.

For most of the 9-day campaign period, the PAP candidates concentrated their fire on the 40-year old Gomez, a politician who allegedly personified the duplicity and lack of vision of the opposition Workers’ Party. Then, two days before the elections, the PAP returned to addressing the issues. That, according to the analysts, prevented a bigger protest vote from voters who thought the PAP was guilty of overkill.

The reason Gomez attracted the attention, and the ire, of the ruling party was that he had accused the Elections Department, which is under the office of the Prime Minister, of misplacing a document required for his candidacy. The PM felt that Gomez put the credibility of the elections, and the government itself, in question.

Subsequently, a videotape surfaced proving that Gomez never submitted the document but put it in his briefcase while arguing strenuously with poll clerks. He apologized for his false accusation, explaining that he forgot all about the document because he had become distracted. End of a somewhat minor matter?

Not quite. Mr. Gomez was one of a group of Workers’ Party candidates for the "Group Representation Constituency" (GRC) of Aljuneid, a district composed of lower-middle to middle class residents. That GRC was also expected to be hotly contested and the opposition ticket was led by no less than the WP’s lady chair.

Perhaps sensing blood–political blood, that is– the PAP launched the attack against Gomez. Lee Kuan Yew called Gomez a "liar." The ruling party asked the WP chief, who himself ran and won in another constituency, to replace Gomez as an unfit candidate. The party chief refused. The PAP chose to downplay the matter but promised a "full public resolution" after the elections.

As expected, the PAP’s candidates, headed by the incumbent Foreign Minister, won Aljuneid. The vote was 56.1 percent for PAP and 43.9 percent for WP. Now that wasn’t quite a squeaker for PAP, but it so happened that 56.1 percent was way below the 66.6 percent nationwide vote obtained by the winning party.

Moreover, the 43.9 percent garnered by the WP was the highest recorded by the losing opposition parties. Under Singapore law, that entitles one of the WP candidates from Aljuneid to become a "Non-Constituency Member of Parliament," or an MP that doesn’t represent any particular constituency. The candidates from the district will select who among them will take the seat. While the lady WP chair will likely get the nod, Mr. Gomez is eligible to be selected for the honor.

It turned out the PAP wasn’t bluffing when it vowed that the Gomez case would be resolved after the elections. After Saturday’s electoral exercise, Gomez tried to leave for Sweden where he works for a Stockholm-based pro-democracy group, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). At Changi Airport, he was arrested and detained for seven hours by the police. He was released after questioning but his passport was confiscated. He won’t be able to leave Singapore until a "criminal intimidation" case brought against him by poll officials is resolved.

Despite the PAP hierarchy’s penchant for training its guns on one perceived villain, analysts do not think Gomez is in for the same treatment the government had for luminaries like former Solicitor General Francis Siew in 1988, Malay candidate Jufrie Mahmood in 1991 and popular "firebrand orator" (according to Straits Times columnist Chua Mui Hoong) Tang Liang Hong in 1997.

Gomez doesn’t have the stature of former SolGen Francis Siew, a former friend of Lee Kuan Yew, who eventually fled to the more hospitable intellectual climes of Harvard Law School. Neither does he have the popularity, drawing power or oratorical skills of a Jufrie or Tang. Ms. Chua says Tang eventually left the country, but doesn’t say what became of Jufrie, who seems to have disappeared from the political firmament.

But Gomez is a known critic of the ruling PAP. What’s more, while the PAP justifiably calls its 66.6 percent performance at last election’s results a "landslide," the opposition parties look at it another way. At least a third of the people now support them, they claim, and they predict that ultimate victory in some constituencies is just a matter of time. Analysts think, however, that the process will be a long and uncertain one.

What does all this have to do with the Philippines? Let’s make it clear, first of all, that, for better or worse, Mr. Gomez’s guilt or innocence will be determined under Singapore law. Moreover, political observers there do not believe he is likely to become a rallying point for the opposition. After all, he did apologize for accusing election officials of misplacing his "minority certificate" and admitted forgetting to submit it in his "distracted" state. Such absent-mindedness is somewhat unappealing in a putative leader.

But the reason he attracts attention is that he is known to be an irrepressibly vocal critic of the PAP and its leadership. His work for IDEA also marks him as an avowed democrat. The fact that he managed to divert the PAP to attacking him during much of the campaign, rather than addressing the issues that mattered to people, supposedly also led to a larger sympathy vote for the WP in Aljuneid, which in turn made one of the WP candidates eligible to sit in Parliament.

Clearly, there is change occurring in Singapore, especially with a younger voter base emerging as a factor for future elections. That nation’s advantage, and Lee Kuan Yew’s enduring achievement, is that, as it works through this change, it will do so as one of the world’s best examples of a truly prosperous nation which has lifted its people out of poverty. Its government also has a deserved reputation as one of the cleanest and most efficient in the world.

But did that nation, in the process, sacrifice some of the liberties that democratic peoples claim as their birthright? Yes, it did, unquestionably. But Lee Kuan Yew makes no apologies for that. Instead, he points to such theoretically free but "chaotic" societies and corrupt governments like ours to make his point. Maybe he’s got something there. Others, who take a longer view, swear he doesn’t. We get more into this next time, and we start with elections.