Remembering Mr Tang Liang Hong
I had never felt so disgusted in my life. What I saw went against every sense of morals and decency that I knew. I was even ashamed of witnessing all that persecution as a Singaporean. No, I’m not talking about Annabel Chong. It’s the late Mr Tang Liang Hong. Many youngsters don’t know him. I wouldn’t call him a hero, but he was an exile and a martyr.
Tang Liang Hong was a candidate for the opposition Workers’ Party in the Cheng San Group Representation Constituency at the 1997 general election. The Workers’ Party team in the constituency was defeated by the team from the governing People’s Action Party (PAP) by 45.2% to 54.8%.
Mr Tang Liang Hong (邓亮洪) was a Workers’ Party candidate for the Cheng San GRC in the 1997 Singapore General Election. The PAP government and leaders accused him of being an “anti-Christian Chinese chauvinist” and claimed he posed a danger to Singapore’s multiracial and multi-religious harmony.
Anti-Christian Accusations
Specifically, PAP ministers alleged that he had made anti-Christian remarks in the past. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tang had publicly criticised certain Christian pastors and church leaders. He reportedly accused them of being too politically active and interfering in secular matters. One oft-cited remark (from his speeches/writings) was that some Christian groups were trying to “impose their values” on Singapore society. In some legal disputes involving churches, he had made sharp comments about the conduct of Christian organisations. In response, Tang Liang Hong said he had only criticised specific Christian leaders who, in his view, had overstepped their role by venturing into political or social activism. In other words, what he had simply criticised certain Christian leaders for being politically or socially interventionist. The PAP seized on these remarks and framed them as evidence that he was “anti-Christian,” which then became a powerful campaign weapon in multi-religious Singapore where the media is a government mouthpiece.
Chinese chauvinism
He also criticised government policies which, in his view, downplayed the role of the Chinese language and Chinese culture. He was outspoken about what he perceived as the erosion of Chinese education and the declining status of Chinese-speaking Singaporeans. Tang had written essays and made speeches lamenting the erosion of Chinese language and culture under the education system. Tang Liang Hong argued that he only wanted fair treatment for all communities, and that speaking up for Chinese concerns didn’t mean he was hostile to the minorities. He accused the PAP of deliberately twisting his cultural and language advocacy into a charge of racial chauvinism, in order to frighten Malay and Indian voters into rejecting him.
During the heated campaign, then-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and other PAP leaders repeatedly warned voters that electing Tang would endanger racial and religious harmony. I was in Cheng San, witnessing how shamefully biased our newsPAPers and news channels were. I was still writing for and to the Straits Times during the mid 1990s. I put it on record that GE1997 was the year I stopped reading and contributing to the newsPAPers altogether.
In the aftermath of GE1997, the political swords were unsheathed. Tang Liang Hong was hit with a series of defamation lawsuits from PAP leaders (including Goh Chok Tong, Lee Kuan Yew, and others) over what he had said during the campaign. The damages awarded against him reportedly exceeded S$8 million. Bringing in the legal sledgehammer, the government also invoked the Mareva Injunction to make sure that Tang could not escape financial ruin. What is a Mareva Injunction? It’s a court order that prevents a defendant from disposing of or transferring assets before a judgement is enforced. This injunction froze all his local and overseas assets up to the claimed amount. Reports at the time noted that the injunction covered Tang Liang Hong’s properties, bank accounts, and investments, effectively paralysing all his finances except for the cash he was holding. Financially paralysed and facing certain bankruptcy, Tang left Singapore soon after and lived in exile in Australia.
I write all this with a heavy heart. Those were not good memories. I was too young to know about Operation Cold Store, I didn’t have a chance to hear the other side in the Marxist “conspiracy”, but the Cheng San saga took place in the internet age. There weren’t many people on the internet back then, but the voices of thinking, reasonable people were loud and clear even though we were not legal experts.
Tang Lian Hong was fiery and opinionated, but the only danger he posed seemed to be for PAP domination and not Singapore as a whole. I may agree with him on some issues, disagree on other issues and still have him coexist with MPs with differing opinions in Parliament, right? Whether it’s because of what the government-controlled media had been feeding people’s minds or there were too many people happy with having only one voice in Parliament, WP lost in Cheng San. End of story? No way. They have not just won. They have won big and they still want to 赶尽杀绝. I’m probably in the minority, but I can’t imagine myself sleeping well if I had gone all out to dig for faults and use legal sledgehammers to ruin a competitor who had already lost. I have no issues with Mr Tang Liang Hong losing the elections, but I found it horribly shameful that they should use such tactics on him even after he had lost. The very next election, the part of Cheng San I was in was drawn into AMK GRC. No gerrymandering? Stop insulting my intelligence, Calvin Cheng.
Ironically, parents here are concerned about bullying in school. Recently, there have been a spate of kicking and other bullying incidents that preyed on the elderly. But aren’t we all living under the threat of strong-arm overkill tactics against those who refuse to be meek? Do you really want your kids to stand up to bullies? I guess it depends on how powerful the bully is, right? If we accept that as reality, then how can we expect any compassion in this country?
Read also this article by Chris Lydgate, a freelance writer commissioned to write for Asia Online. The report submitted by Chris Lydgate was not published by Asia Online.