A rock and a hard place

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.

Don't patronise me.

It takes two to tango.

But it appears that political polemic in Singapore is inevitably linked to two discrete parties that are embarking on a souring discourse; a politically disaffected populace, and a ruling government with an increasingly shaky mandate.

Democracy is often trumpeted by liberal leaning youths enamoured with Western ideals, but demonized by the leaders as an ineffective political system, with salient examples in our newspapers every day promoting the argument about how democratic governments worldwide are gridlocked because of their inability to secure clear majorities.

The implicit assumption is that a one-party system is efficient, and the best system of government in the interests of Singapore. The message seems to be “let us do our thing, because you elected us into office on merit.”

However, it does not take a very bright person to realize that most members of Parliament enter their offices uncontested. The prospect of a certain Ms Tin entering at the expense of a certain Mr Chen Show Mao may come to mind. Nevertheless, the general sentiment on the ground is one of withering apathy - Withering, because despite a professed apathy, negative criticism is often too easily forthcoming.

People question the validity of the Group Representation Constituency system. Over the years, the political tripe used to validate their presence has gone along racial lines, the need for proportionate racial representation in Parliament. I would like to ask then. Half of Singapore is female. Should half the MPs be female too? After all, I would not argue that gender-specific issues matter less than race ones, in any population. One only has to look at how pregnant mothers still have insufficient protection from bad employers, or how birth rates still refuse to climb despite everything the PAP throws at them.

I mean, how would they, when you have a bunch of pompous men trying to do things right for women when they hardly spend enough time with their own wives? Or the fact that it is oblivious to the ruling class that it is becoming too expensive to raise a kid in Singapore these days, hence the reluctance to procreate.

I believe that the best candidate should serve, be he Chinese, Indian, Malay or otherwise. Race is only an issue when one decides to make much of it. I believe the true reason that GRCs still exist is really how the PAP is unwilling to relinquish power to the opposition, even if that is not in the best interests of the people.

I charge that the PAP has forgotten that it is here to serve. It has become more interested in protecting its own survival. It has become obsessed with serving, but only on its own terms. It is how it justifies paying itself millions, while people struggle to buy HDB flats. It says that it does so to retain the best talent. But to me, if the talent going into the government is only interested in a huge paycheck, they should not be the people we are voting into government.

Public service demands sacrifice, and it demands heart. We don’t want mercenaries. If that is the case, go run a business. I find it sad that sometimes, our leaders forget that by giving themselves such ridiculous paychecks, they punish the poor, whom they are supposed to help.

It doesn’t help that despite paying all our MPs such ridiculous salaries, we have little choice on how they are voted into Parliament much of the time. It is almost adding insult to injury that we have to silently accept people that we did not vote for, and yet pay them ridiculous amounts of money.

And that is what has really gone wrong for me for the party. When it has become more about them than us, it is time for change.

A fundamental paradigm shift is needed here. The mentality that youths here have is, politics is not my thing, it is best left to the leaders, because they know best. But a look at the word politics, and its Greek origins, suggests otherwise.

The word politics is derived from the Greek word poli, meaning 'citizen', and the Greek suffix -ics, which denotes a body of facts or knowledge. So, the word 'politics' literally means the knowledge of being a citizen. It basically means that as a citizen, we are responsible for our own affairs within a city state, and fighting for our best interests. We cannot expect anyone to do the job for us, and if we want change of any kind, we have to be prepared to work for it.

There is a difference between political power and political rights, which often underpins the heart of many an argument about political issues in Singapore. Not everyone can have power, or similar levels of it. Even within democracies, the concept of people power, or the power of the masses, is largely more an ideal than a reality.

No matter who you are, as a citizen of Singapore with an elected government, you are vested with a number of immutable political rights, in layman’s terms, the right to have a government that is always acting in your best interests, which is why you vote them in the first place.

It is often claimed that there is no point in trying to change the status quo, because a lack of political access or privilege makes change all but impossible. However, significant political change is never effected as large grandiose measures, more as movements of attrition, hard work over extended periods of time, tinged with successes and failures in equal measure.

It was the case in South Africa, where black citizens had to overcome being treated as less than human. It often logically follows then, that the worse living conditions are, the greater the agitation for change.

I wonder sometimes if the relative comfort we live in has made it possible for us to get away with being lazy to think for ourselves, to make sure on our own terms that no one is giving us the runaround. Or has the fact that we have so much to lose by sticking out as a sore thumb in a largely politically mute populace actually made us afraid of doing what is needed to bring about real change? Or is it the much maligned education system, both feted and discredited, which is often claimed to breed a subservient populace.

Without dialogue, or participation, the message to our leaders is one of implied consent. And ignorance is often the reason behind a lack of incisiveness or currency in the questions posed to the ruling elite. How can we talk about issues we do not understand? Worse, how can we articulate issues if we do not even know what they are?

Recently, SM Goh challenged NTU’s students to help create a future for Singapore as a city of buzz. However, the key factor for buzz is a intellectually vibrant populace. Singapore’s culture for conformity and rote-learning is a mind-numbing enterprise, trained to create a populace that is subservient and willing, rather than one which will step forward to effect change. Despite that, there is a generation that is starting to intellectually come into its own. A worldly-wise generation, that has seen what the world has to offer, beyond the microcosm that is Singapore.

And they are taking the social media by storm, becoming quicker at turning political sentiment than the patronising spiel handed down to us in the national paper. The PAP has forgotten that to buy our vote, they have to convince us first, not talk down to us. We don't need you to tell us that HDB flats are affordable. We know whether they are, and they aren't. We can do the thinking for ourselves, thank you.

And because of that, my vote will be for their opponents.

Saving this for posterity

Because it's worth it.