P EO PL E
CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE The new Exco and
committee were elected by a show of hands after the
old Exco was deemed to have stepped down; Former
NMP and Aware stalwart Braema Mathi, who had been
summarily dismissed by the Exco, being embraced by a
supporter; Former Aware president Margaret Thomas
was ready to lead a walk-out if the Exco members
continued to block points of order; Voting on the
no-confidence motion began at just after 4pm, but it
was 8pm before the results were announced; Placards
and information sheets were handed out to those
attending; Flowers were handed out to Old Guard
supporters and opponents alike
BY now, just about every pundit who can put pen to paper has weighed in on
the saga of Aware (Association of Women for Action and Research). The historymaking Extraordinary General Meeting last month pitted roughly 1,500 “old guard”
members (a misnomer, as many had joined in the previous two weeks) against a
cabal of evangelical Christians from a “charismatic” Anglican church with an antihomosexual platform. The women, all professionals, were led by a 71-year-old soidisant “feminist mentor”, who, according to past employees and associates, has rather
unconventional methods of communicating with the Lord.
In recent years, Aware had shed its firebrand image and was settling down into a
comfortable middle age. Since its founding in 1985, the group had agitated for – and
often got – legislation that protected women in all walks of life and under many
circumstances. Their batting average wasn’t perfect, but the group dragged Singapore
feminism into, if not the 21st century, at least into the 1980s.
Aware, I feel, began to be taken for granted. I was involved in a project honouring
prominent women in Singapore; when Aware past president Constance Singam was
nominated, the person heading the project shied away from her: Singam was too old,
too been there, too unhip. Instead, she opted for a parallel car importer.
There was also a change in feminism; it had shifted from the old days of bra
burning and consciousness raising to a kind of “lipstick feminism”: good jobs, good
education, good looks, good shoes, designer bags. How you got the jobs, the money,
the bags, the shoes did not seem terribly connected to the earlier generation which
had founded Aware.
expat | june 2009
WESTERN VALUES?
PHOTOS YVONNE LOH
IT MAY SOUND LIKE PARANOIA, BUT THERE REALLY IS A
RIGHT WING FUNDAMENTALIST CONSPIRACY OUT TO GET YOU.
JUST LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED TO AWARE, THE SINGAPORE WOMEN’S
GROUP THAT GOT CAUGHT WITH ITS KNICKERS DOWN.
JOANNA HUGHES LOOKS AT THE TAKEOVER, THE FEISTY WOMEN WHO
FOUGHT BACK AND WHAT WAS BEHIND THE FURY AT THE EGM
At the same time, Singapore began to see not just the rise of Christians among its
populace (14.6 per cent in the 2000 census) but the rise of the mega-churches.
Sometimes allied to a particular denomination, sometimes independent of any
ecclesiastical body, these congregations number in the tens of thousands, usually
meeting in theatres or convention centres: City Harvest Church, which counts
27,000 members, managed to gather enough tithes to erect its own centre in Jurong
West, with Singapore Expo taking up
the weekly overflow. New Creation
Church has some 8,000 members; Faith
Community Baptist, whose pastor
Lawrence Khong is also a magician and a
polo player, 10,000; and Church of Our
Saviour, helmed by Derek Hong – more
on him later – 4,000.
These churches hew closely to a
literal interpretation of the Bible – or
at least selected passages that support
their conservative agenda. Like many
of the feel-good evangelical churches
in the United States, they also preach
a prosperity gospel; City Harvest, for
instance, offers outreach programmes to
business people so they can heed their
calling in the marketplace.
In recent years, however, these churches
have mustered their not inconsiderable
power base to take the Singapore
government to task on a number of
issues, from stem-cell research and
allowing casinos to decriminalisation of
homosexual acts. One major influence has
come from the US in the form of parachurch groups like Focus on the Family.
Right-wing, socially conservative and
with an off-beat take on the separation of
church and state, these groups zoom in on
june 2009 | expat
P EO PL E
“dangers” to family life: sex education that consists of more than
abstinence, drugs, abortion and homosexuality, which they define
– as do many people here – as a lifestyle choice.
HELL IN A HANDCART?
It was the issue of homosexuality and not the role of women
that led to the takeover at the Aware Annual General Meeting
last April. At a news conference, the Exco and its president, DBS
Bank executive Josie Lau, and their self-styled “feminist mentor”,
law firm director Dr Thio Su Mien, cited attempts to give male
members of Aware a vote as evidence of a “homosexual takeover”
of the organisation: “So there is this sudden shift to give men
the vote. Why? Are the men masquerading? Is the homosexual
activist man coming under the umbrella of Aware?” said Dr Thio.
New Honorary Secretary Maureen Ong told the press
conference she decided to run for office in Aware “because
somebody told me that something is happening that affects
children and I am a mother of three children. I don’t want my
children to say that oh, it’s all right to go and experiment with
homosexuality, to experiment with anal sex, to experiment with
virginity or the pill or even pre-marital sex.”
Dr Thio is the mother of Thio Li-Ann, a lawyer and a
nominated member of parliament; her nephew, Dr Alan Chin
is married to Josie Lau and is allegedly the author of an email
that begins “Dear praying parents, For your immediate attention.
Fwding [sic] some more info that (prayerfully) can help us see
the aggressive and thwarted works of the Evil one thru the well
meaning but totally brain-washed old guard of Aware.
“I’m extremely saddened and concerned and I felt compelled
to share… just last Monday, my son in ACJC had for his GP
lesson the topic on alternative family structure frm [sic] MOE.
They were given notes for discussion on topic of same-sex
marriage and same sex parents with adoption of children to form
a family unit, with this new terminology PINK PARENTS.”
Additionally, six of the Exco members, including Ms Lau,
were also members of the Church of Our Saviour (COOS),
which runs Choices, an “ex-gay” ministry, Dr Alan Chin (Lau’s
husband); and the mother of NMP Thio Li-Ann. Both Dr Chin
and the younger Thio have regularly made public their negative
views on homosexuality. Ms Lau, as a vice-president at DBS
Bank, was revealed to have run a credit card promotion scheme
to benefit Focus on the Family which led to a warning from her
employer. (Focus on the Family is a parachurch that is “dedicated
to nurturing and defending families worldwide”).
HOOLIGANS?
An EGM was called for 2 May to oust the Exco; the intervening
weeks saw unprecedented media coverage for a woman’s group.
Aware membership grew from 300 to nearly 3,000, and the
venue for the meeting had to be changed three times. One
choice, the Singapore Expo, was nixed by the police citing
law and order issues – the presence in the Expo of a religious
conference 1-2 May. Aware “old guard” leadership (now called
We Are Aware) asked to meet with the Exco to discuss logistics;
they were rebuffed.
So by the time some 2,200 voting members (men and –
“foreign” non-PR women cannot vote) turned up at Suntec
City, anger had already built up, despite We Are Aware urging
members to behave with dignity and graciousness.
The anger wasn’t only about the hijacking of Aware,
per se. Many women saw a strong element of racism in the takeover. “If it had been an all Muslim committee, they would have
found themselves in jail,” fumed one Malay professional. The
all Chinese, all Christian Exco signified more than exclusivity
CLOCKWISE FROM
FAR LEFT The crowd
was quick to react and
very vocal; The new
president of Aware,
writer Dana Lam; The
new Exco and committee
WHEN THE VOTE – TWO-THIRDS IN FAVOUR OF THE NOCONFIDENCE MOTION – WAS FINALLY ANNOUNCED, THE EXCO
STILL RESISTED RESIGNING. THEY ASKED FOR MORE TIME;
GIVEN FIVE MINUTES, THEY DISAPPEARED FOR HALF AN HOUR
in Aware; for many Malay, Indian and Eurasian women, it stood for a Chinese-centric
attitude pervading much of Singapore.
The meeting – which started half an hour late to allow busloads of new Aware
members from Church of Our Saviour to join up and attend – started acrimoniously
with the Exco refusing to turn on microphones and bypassing the agenda with a
president’s statement. “So that’s how they’re going to play it,” mused one highly
respected lawyer. “Well, that’s what they’ll get.” The by-now infamous “Sit down and
shut-up” directive issued by Exco member Sally Ang was the tipping point.
The place erupted. Lawyers in suits, medical doctors, housewives, writers, artists,
publishers went from waving placards to shaking fists. When Dr Thio took the floor,
she was booed and heckled, especially after demanding that the audience “respect their
elders.” The crowd were referred to as hooligans; questions from the floor were evaded.
Eventually the meeting, which ran for seven hours, developed into a waiting game
while the votes on the no-confidence proposal were being counted. During that time
challengers from the floor were able to worm out of the Exco that they had spent at
least S$90,000 in five weeks in office (despite a constitutional limit on spending of
S$20,000 a month); that they had changed the locks on the Aware offices and that they
had abruptly sacked long-standing committees and their chairmen. Dr Thio again tried
to take the floor – and literally the microphone – from another speaker and was again
shouted down. Male members of COOS wandered up to the microphone to
make disjointed statements about sandwiches and women
being emotional; a gay man chided the Exco for having such poor diction.
When the vote – two-thirds in favour of the no-confidence motion – was finally
announced, the Exco still resisted resigning. They asked for more time; given five
minutes, they disappeared for half an hour. Even the high-end lawyers hired by the
Exco couldn’t reach them.
By the time they returned, a motion had been made to kick them out based on their
non-appearance and a new chairman, Exco and six committee members elected by a
show of hands. At the podium, Josie Lau interrupted the chair to announce that the
Exco had graciously decided to step down and adjourned the meeting, which prompted
shouts and applause.
AFTERMATH
In the newspapers (yes, the newspapers), on the blogs and on the net there was
exultation for the first few days. By Tuesday, however, there was more sober discussion
about what the Aware saga meant for Singapore. Some questioned the behaviour of
attendees, others defended it by saying it was democracy in action. A main theme was
the victory of the rule of separation of church and state, a secular, multi-racial, multiethnic Singapore.
But there are very pragmatic reasons why things turned out the way they did.
Nothing on Saturday could have happened without the tacit approval of the
expat | june 2009
Singapore government. At any time the
event could have been shut down for any
reason you care to consider: public health,
overcrowding, law and order.
The Singapore government has a very
strong interest in not letting any group
– especially a fundamentalist Christian
group opposed to initiatives such as stem
cell research, family planning and casinos
– get out of line. One blogger quipped
that the angriest person in Singapore
would have to have been Minister Mentor
Lee Kuan Yew, whose title of “mentor”
was usurped by Dr Thio.
But the Christian Right isn’t finished
yet. Alex Au, a prominent spokesman for
gender equality and gay issues, says there
is anecdotal evidence that some teachers
– not science teachers, but English
teachers – in the Singapore school system
are advocating Creationist thinking.
Children are given an assignment, perhaps
in the guise of discussing current events,
to research and report on the literal
biblical account of the creation of the
world. Parents, urged on by reports spread
on the net, are demanding the Ministry
of Education review what is being taught
in sex education classes; currently, the sex
education programme Run by Aware
has been suspended. Focus on the Family
in Singapore is sticking to a politically
acceptable line, but there are still reports
of attempts to “convert” gay men and
women away from what the rightwingers view as a “lifestyle” choice. And
in typically conservative Singapore, even
educated professionals are reporting that
“the gays” are recruiting young children,
trying to turn them into “gays”.
It ain’t over yet.
june 2009 | expat