Famous people series 1,Singapore, part 1 - : George Yeo Speech 1a

SPEECH BY MR GEORGE YEO,
MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
AT BALI DEMOCRACY FORUM,
10 DECEMBER 2008

Democracy as a Means towards Good Governance

1.

We need good governance at all levels. To overcome the current global financial crisis which is threatening to become a global economic crisis, we need good global governance. The institutions established at Bretton Woods after the end of the Second World War are not well suited to the realities of a 21st century multi-polar reality. At the national level, many governments in the world are not functioning properly. Large numbers of their citizens are forced by economic hardship to migrate to other countries in search of a better livelihood. In countless villages around the world, far away from the influence of central authorities, there is oppression and injustice.

2.

In a sense, the struggle for good governance is the story of mankind. Unlike animals like apes and chimpanzees, our social structures are only partly hard-wired in our DNA. We are a species that can organise ourselves in almost limitless ways depending on our history and the challenges we face. We do this through culture and institutions. The human beings living today are not much different genetically from the human beings living, let us say, two thousand years ago. But our social organisations have become much more complex. In two thousand years time, provided we have not destroyed ourselves, we would have developed vastly different social systems to colonize space.

3.

Against the sweep of history, democracy represented a major advance in human organisation. It has never been the only way to organise human society. Even in Greece where it first flowered, it was a fragile innovation which did not last. Conditions only became ripe many centuries later in Western Europe for democracy to strike deep root and spread. In some ways, we can see the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War as contests between the democratic idea and autocracy of one kind or another. It was principally a struggle within Western society but its effects quickly influenced the rest of the world. In China, Sun Yat Sen established the Xingzhonghui (“Revive China Society”). In Indonesia, the Budi Utomo organisation was formed. It eventually led to the end of empires and the establishment of new nation-states.

...to be continued...