A couple of days ago, our school had a little debate among the students in a 'Moot Parliament' setting to discuss whether there is freedom of choice in Singapore. I was asked to comment/say something about the issue during the debate but I have to hold back because I'm not one the humanities teachers who arranged this so I'm not sure where are the OB markers and most important of all, some of my students are in the debate team. If you are curious about my remarks about the topic, then read on. Otherwise you could look forward to another post full of photographs sometime in the near future.

Singapore do not have freedom of choice? I think before I discuss in depth about this question, I have to make clear what are some of the key words in that question.

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Choice - What are the choices that we have to consider here? There's a few layers to this word that we have to look into so that we can define our boundaries well.

First, there are good choices and bad choices. Obviously, when we talk about the freedom of choice, we would only be considering freedom of good choices. There's no point in arguing in stuff such as guys can choose not to go for National Service as long as they give up Singapore citizenship and not return to Singapore. Indeed, that is a choice that we can make but for the majority, I would say that this is not a good choice at all. Having said that, I have opened up a can of worms as how do we define a good choice. What about neutral choices? In order to cut to the chase, I will use my own common sense to tell me what is a good choice. Your mileage may vary though.

Next, what are some of the choices that are important in our considerations? Not all choices are born equal, for example, the freedom to choose our political leaders will rank way above the freedom to choose dunk'in donuts instead of donut factory in Singapore. The reason that the opposition couldn't muster a good debate was that they fail to define the boundaries for the question. As the judges mention too, some choices are trivial. So how do we know which are the important choices to consider? I suggest we use Maslow's hierarchy of needs. It may be an old model but it's useful nonetheless.

The most important choices are those that affects our physiological needs, followed by choices for our safety. Choices that are important in our considerations are those that make a huge impact on the hierarchy. Political choice is one that affects our safety needs greatly so it is very very important. As for the dunk'in donuts, well, there are other donuts and other food choices to satisfy our physiological needs so it is irrelevant.

Having said that, a good choice to an individual may not be a good choice for the society at large. Take for example the recent debate about 377A of the penal code that was also brought up in the debate. The choice for a homosexual male to live a homosexual lifestyle that includes sex with another willing adult male may seem good for the homosexual male as it satisfy the physiological and love needs for the individual making it an important and good choice to make available for homosexual individuals. But by legalizing this choice, it will affect morality issues that religious individuals hold so dearly that is ranked all the way up in the self-actualizing level in Maslow's model. So there is plenty of grey area in the choices opened for debate. It just makes things more complicated as homosexuals are part of a society.

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Freedom - To have the freedom to make a choice is to be able to have good choices or alternatives available when you choose and your choice is not affected by external controls, regulations and interference. During the debate, there were much discussion about the earlier interpretation as the teams went on to discuss about the list of choices available. Unfortunately, the later point was not developed fully.

To give an example, we may have the choice to protest in Singapore but we do not have the freedom of choice to protest in Singapore. To protest, there are many regulations and interferences. For example, protesters could only do so indoors and there will be interference from authorities if you choose to do so. There are many real examples that I could quote here (IMF indoor protest, Myanmar protesters filmed during their peaceful walk and warned against repeating their act etc) So yes, we can protest in Singapore, just that we do not have the freedom to do so.

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Singapore - I thought this was obvious, we are talking about Singapore only. The argument for the freedom of choice to choose things overseas is a valid but rather weak point to start of with.

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Once you look at the terms carefully, I think there's nothing we can debate about whether there is freedom of choice in Singapore. But the lack of freedom of choice may or may not be a good thing. But that's another topic for another day.