speech or silence; voice or quiet

Managing political dissent
by Catherine Lim
Jan 20, 2006

For a small island state eager to take its place among the most successful nations in the free world of practising democracies, one would have expected to see a steady increase in political freedom, an ascending line from its virtual non-existence in the rough early years of brute survival, to the emergence of incomplete but distinct forms in a still evolving ethos, to an end point of full functioning in a mature society.

But there has been no such clear path. Instead, we see only a thin ragged line, rather like a small weakly meandering stream that sometimes disappears into the ground.

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