24 Mar 1996 Senior Minister Lee's recent speech to university students has a disturbing implication. If, as SM Lee says, using public funds to obtain votes is the essence of politics, then the converse must be true as well. That is, using votes to obtain public funds is also the essence of politics. Neither can be true alone. Yet, the latter is exactly the 'irresponsible' voting behaviour against which we are continually warned. One who asserts that 'X-is-the-essence-of- Y' seeks to persuade listeners that Y makes X inevitable, and to put X beyond question. But, what is, is not necessarily what always will be, much less what ought to be. Nothing remains unchanged forever, and the same is true of politics. Slavery was part of the essence of race relations for centuries. It was accepted that 'superior' races enslaved 'inferior' ones. Only two generations ago, colonialism was the essence of international relations between the West and much of the rest of the world. Fortunately, all those supposedly immutable structures have been swept away by changing norms and ideas. It is important to remember that the essence of any social or political structure was once invented: rules were made, myths manufactured, and customs laid down. This means that such structures are changeable. It also means that we have the power to choose the rules for any game, including politics. To come back to the original point, Singapore has successfully avoided the worst forms of patronage politics that plague many political systems. This was due in large part to the belief that public funds should be spent on public goods regardless of the distribution of votes among the constituencies. That old essence of politics now seems to be making way for the new essence, which consists in using public funds to obtain votes for the party in government. If so, we can expect voters to begin using their votes to obtain public funds. The consequences hardly need stating. Do we really want to go down this road?