By Tim Hamlett

D

iplomats are usually shy, retiring creatures. I used to run into them occasionally at official receptions. They were the people who hid behind a pillar rather than mingle with a lot of strangers.

There are a few countries, though, which expect their representatives to keep a high profile.

South Africa has dropped off the list. Israel is still there. Controversial countries, perhaps, with a lot of scope for public "information".

The most surprising inclusion, though, is Singapore. The Lion City is not only sensitive to criticism but officially and formally so.

This is a serious burden for publications which cover Singapore regularly. As a result, they are subjected to a steady stream of official responses to any observation which is less than adulatory.

These are too long for the average letters page but have to be printed anyway under Singapore's innovative press laws.

Reading these missives reminds you of Sir Henry Wotton's venerable joke: "An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country."

Oddly enough, they all seem to be quite similar, although the return address is always of your local Singaporean diplomatic outpost. It seems Singapore's Foreign Office (or whatever they call it) has a central letter-writing department.

Because they are so similar, I frequently do not bother to read these little offerings, but one printed last week rewarded the trouble.

This was in response to an article pointing out some curious features of life in Singapore, notably the mysterious legal accidents which befall anyone who stands for parliament as an opposition candidate.

Really, I do not think it is worthwhile arguing over this. The syndrome is well established. The number of cases has reached the point where we do not need to consider individual instances, we merely have to take a commonsense view of the trend.

There is an old military saying that if something bad happens once it is a misfortune. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

But the original piece had also drawn attention to an announcement that residents in any constituency which had the temerity to elect an opposition MP would go to the back of the queue to have their public housing units modernised.

Frankly, I expected the local Singapore spokesman to denounce this whole story as another scurrilous calumny perpetrated on his city by an unscrupulous international press.

Quite the contrary. He admitted it and claimed this was normal. It is, at least in the view of the Singapore Foreign Office's letter-writing department, a routine feature of life in democracies that public works are lavished only on those constituncies which elected members of the government.

I suppose that if they can get funny ideas about life in Johore Baru then we can hardly expect Singapore's leaders to have a good sense of countries on the other side of the world.

Of course, in places where representatives come from territorrial constituencies, there is often an expectation that the MP or congressman will do his best for his patch.

We suppose these efforts usually cancel each other out, but they are certainly made.

Parties which depend on farming votes look after farmers, just as parties depending on business backing look after business.

And occasionally you hear rumours of more cunning stuff. I remember when a Labour government in Britain gave the go-ahead for the Humber Bridge there was some comment on the number of marginal constituencies at each end of it. Britain has not had a Labour government since the bridge was finished so the trick, if it was one, was not successful.

But this sort of thing is emphatically not to be regarded as business as usual. It is a form of election malpractice, a wilful muddying of the waters of democracy, and a most inefficient way of running a public works programme.

Some of this sort of thing is disreputable but legal. Some of it is a crime.

I do not think there can be anywhere else in the world where it is official government policy - formally explained and defended by spokesmen in distant consulates.

It should not be necessary to say this, but just in case the matter comes up in the future, there is one word for using the public housing programme to bribe the electorate: corruption.