A very difficult contest is shaping up in Aljunied GRC, and no matter how I look at it, the only losers will be the citizens of Singapore.
On both sides are superbly qualified teams, the PAP team led by Foreign Minister George Yeo, and the Workers' Party team led by NCMP Sylvia Lim and former Hougang MP Low Thia Khang.
I think that the capacity and willingness to serve is not in question for either team, and that is the true tragedy of the situation, that voters will have to choose one or the other. No matter who wins this victory, it will ultimately be pyrrhic, because we lose good people either way.
Even as a voter not from Aljunied, I realise the difficulty that the voters there face. The contest boils down to a team with a track record, and a team with the heart and intention to agitate for change in a Singapore increasingly fraught with the twin evils of rising costs and stagnating wages.
However, I think it is patently unfair to call upon the voters of Aljunied to be the sacrificial lambs to vote an opposition in simply so that there will be an opposition voice in Parliament. The residents of Aljunied are like those in any other GRC. They have the same worries, the same concerns, that their flats will be upgraded and their precincts maintained, and that their MPs will be receptive to their feedback. They cannot simply be expected to think of the big picture and ignore their own interests, to "advance" democracy at the cost to their own welfare.
It is plainly obvious to all that the opposition is not at a stage where they can form enough A teams to offer voters enough choice, such that they have to stake all their chips in one GRC to take the fall so democracy in Singapore can progress. Sure it can, but we have seen what happens to opposition wards. Just look at Hougang and Potong Pasir. I am not sure that having 5 opposition voices in Parliament is any better than having 2, but I am sure that it will force the PAP to reconsider the merits of the GRC system by reminding them that the system is no longer a surefire bet to keep anchor ministers in Parliament, which may become the biggest takeaway from these elections. In that sense, it may be a watershed.
I have had the good fortune to meet Minister George Yeo in person, and interacted with him for an extended period of time. He is a humble man, an urbane intellectual through and through, and a man who is in every way deserving of his appointment. He is well-regarded because he is a good man, and anyone who disagrees is simply being overly cynical, and not judging him on personal merits, rather their grievances with the party he represents.
In my honest opinion, the true fault of the system lies with the GRC system. By preventing every single MP from contesting on merit, it allows underqualified people like Ms Tin Pei Ling to slip through at the expense of people like Mr Chen Show Mao. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has often qualified the need for a GRC system simply based along the lines of race, but often he has forgotten that we are not Chinese, Malays or Indians. We are Singaporeans. The more you politicise race, the more divisive it becomes.
For a very good explanation of what politicising race has done to Singapore, look no further than this video. It may be by a man generally regarded as crazy here, but I think he made several very good points.
Race only matters because we make it matter. If we were not so hard up about it, if we simply identified ourselves as Singaporeans, a lot of the perceived divisions we had would simply melt away. Examples of being hard up on race? The HDB race based housing quota. Why do we even need a quota? If anything, it simply disadvantages the minorities by limiting the places in which they can stay.
Do you honestly think that if people don't stay together, they will form isolated enclaves? Singapore is only this big. You can't escape the different races in Singapore, try as you may. You will see them on the MRT, at your workplace, in school, at the market. You will even approach them to buy nasi briyani and roti prata. What the fuck is all this rubbish about not interacting between the races about? I ask Singaporeans to start thinking seriously about these issues, because we cannot keep letting the PAP do the thinking for us. In many ways, they are wrong.
In addition, I find that PM Lee's stance on the opposition is too hardened, such that he forgets to consider that all MPs, whether from the PAP or opposition, are working in the same direction. The opposition is meant to offer alternative viewpoints, and their role is not just to block PAP policies from going through, only bad ones. Being from the opposition doesn't necessarily mean that they will veto every single PAP policy, that is not being an opposition MP, that's being an idiot. He has become so used to having the absolute say on everything that he has forgotten that governance is meant to be an inclusive process, not a top-down one.
As much as I feel for the voters of Aljunied, I realise that the contest is really moot, because the first-past-the-post and GRC electoral voting system has rendered democracy in Singapore a limp-wristed facade. Call me overly cynical, but I have little more to say if I have to choose to kick qualified candidates out of Parliament simply because the system doesn't accommodate for them while allowing undeserving people in.