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Singapore THE MEDIA
The government did not normally censor the press, but
it owned
the radio and television stations and closely supervised
the
newspapers. Under the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act
(NPPA),
passed in 1974 and amended in 1986, the government could
restrict--
without actually banning--the circulation of any
publication sold
in the country, including foreign periodicals, that it
deemed
guilty of distorted reporting. These laws provided the
legal
justification for restrictions placed on the circulation
of such
foreign publications as the Asian Wall Street
Journal and
Time magazine's Asian edition in 1987. The
government also
restricted the circulation of Far Eastern Economic
Review
and Asiaweek in 1987 for "engaging in the domestic
politics
of Singapore."
Singapore had seven daily newspapers at the end of
1987: two in
English, The Straits Times and The Business
Times;
three in Chinese, Lianhe Wanbao, Shin Min Daily
News,
and Lianhe Zaobao; one in Malay, Berita
Harian; and
one in Tamil, Tamil Murasu. With the exception of
the
Tamil Murasu, all were published by Singapore Press
Holdings
Ltd, a group that comprised Singapore News and
Publications Ltd,
the Straits Times Press Ltd, and the Times Publishing
Company.
Daily newspaper circulation in 1988 totaled 743,334
copies, with
Chinese language newspapers accounting for the highest
number
(354,840), followed by English (340,401) and Malay
(42,458)
newspapers.
The Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) operated
five
radio channels and three television channels. Established
in 1980,
it provided programming in Singapore's four official
languages--
Malay, Chinese, Tamil, and English--and was supported by
revenue
from radio and television licensing fees and commercial
advertising. Each of four of the five radio stations
broadcast in
one of the four official languages, while the fifth
alternated
between English and Mandarin. The television stations,
which
provided a total of about 163 hours of programming a week,
also
broadcast in separate languages. Channel Five's
programming was in
Malay and English, Channel Eight's in Mandarin and Tamil,
and
Channel Twelve's in English. In many cases, programs also
were
subtitled in several languages.
By 1989 Singapore's leadership had been in place for
three
decades, during which it guided an extraordinarily
successful
program of economic development and physical rebuilding.
In the
1990s, a new generation of leaders would take over, and
the debate
over the need to change the political system that had been
so
successful in the past would grow. Some elements of an
increasingly
prosperous and well-educated population, who took
Singapore's
national viability and survival for granted, questioned
the elderly
leaders' assertions that a host of pressing dangers
justified their
authoritarian and paternalistic style of governance. To
the
leaders, however, the country's prosperity and their
continued
electoral victories demonstrated the correctness of their
policies
and methods of rule. They envisioned a new generation of
leaders
who would continue the proven practices established by the
country's founding fathers. The inherent tensions between
generations and between the advocates of change and those
of
continuity were likely to mark the politics of the 1990s.
* * *
Basic information on Singapore's form of government is
provided
by the annual volumes published by the Information
Division of the
Ministry of Communications and Information, such as The
annual
editions of Singapore and Singapore Facts and
Pictures. The same division's monthly Singapore
Bulletin
provides brief coverage of a wide range of events in the
country,
and its sister publication, Mirror, publishes
longer
articles on selected topics, focusing on industry and
education.
Singapore's internal politics attracted little attention
from
foreign scholars in the late 1980s; the basic sources were
produced
by local scholars affiliated with the National University
of
Singapore and the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies.
The most
comprehensive is Government and Politics of
Singapore,
edited by Jon S.T. Quah, Chan Heng Chee, and Seah Chee
Meow. This
is complemented by Peter S.J. Chen's Singapore:
Development
Policies and Trends. Raj K. Vasil's Governing
Singapore
takes a more analytical perspective and includes
information based
on interviews with senior leaders. The annual country
summaries
published in the February issue of Asian Survey and
the
Far Eastern Economic Review's annual Asia
Yearbook
provide authoritative coverage of politics and foreign
relations.
The quarterly and annual Country Reports for
Singapore,
published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, contain
timely and
succinct political reporting. The weekly Far Eastern
Economic
Review and Asiaweek regularly cover Singapore's
politics
and social trends. (For further information and complete
citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1989
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