singapore just had elections which im sure no one who lives outside of the country gives a shit about but they are unequivocally undemocratic.
40% of the population voted for opposition parties and yet approx. 90% of our seats in parliament will be filled by the ruling party.
Elections are called mere weeks in advance of polling day; and candidates are only allowed to campaign for somewhere in the ballpark of 1-2 weeks despite the overwhelming advantage that gives our incumbent ruling party (PAP) who have been in power since the 1960s.
We recently had debates where the PAP had 4.5 minutes alloted for each response and opposition parties were only allowed to speak for 90 seconds each in response.
Smear campaigns against the opposition; abuse of state controlled media to influence outcomes; fearmongering waged against older voters who are perpetually afraid of the consequences of a non-PAP parliamentary majority; the bankrupting, prosecuting, and jailing political rivals is all part and parcel of electoral politics here.
Anyway: i bring all this up because its funny that everyones happy to yell until they're blue in the face about how US/western imperial sponsored coups and sanctions against venezuela bolivia iran dprk china etc etc are justified on the basis of "anti authoritarianism" but are totally silent about totalitarian one party states in US-allied, imperialism-sympathist countries. Almost like theres some other dimension at play when discussions are held surrounding democracy and human rights. Almost like theres a reason some authoritarianism is "UNACCEPTABLE WE MUST FREE THE PEOPLE" and some is "this is fine actually nobody look over here".
Singapore is considered one of the least corrupt countries in the world by most mainstream accounts - yet the ceo of our states sovereign wealth fund is the (former) prime minister's wife. This most recent prime minister is the son of Lee Kuan Yew; another former prime minister of Singapore who ruled over the country for decades.
I'm not saying like. Singapore is uniquely bad; or even particularly egregious as an example of abuse of power. Im not even saying one party states are necessarily inherently *bad*. Im just saying that its possible what you have been taught to consider brutal repression and authoritarianism necessitating foreign intervention is perhaps not an accurate reflection of reality. And there is a reason that Singapore is able to get away with all this and also coincidentally is a free market tax haven with close to no labor protections and no minimum wage. Anyway.
