'Cause you said, said he was the one
Baby yes you said, said you were in love
Back to basics: Step 1
Arthur
JJC
Outgrowing 17
Dreamer
Poet
Lover
Atheist
Left-Handed Saggitarian
My passions: Step 2
Food
Company
Writing
Movies
Music
Debates
What i am: Step 3
Strengths:
Confident
Sensitive
Eloquent
Weaknesses:
Paranoid
Unorganized
Careless
Dreams of a globetrotter wannabe: Step 4
Paris
Shanghai
London
Gold Coast
Japan(Tokyo)
Rome
Taiwan
Hong Kong
New York
San Francisco
South Korea
Wishlist
My own domain
Scholarship
To publish a book
Want to know more about me?
Read my blog and you would start discovering fragments of me
P.S. All the works here posted belong to me unless stated otherwise. If you want to post them elsewhere, please seek prior permission from me before doing so. Thanks.
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More Political Freedom in Singapore?
Sunday, August 24, 2008, 11:29 AM
This talks about the increasing political freedom in Singapore. Do we really have more political freedom? Should we already had been entitled to this long ago? Should we have more? Can we take it? Is PAP trying to maintain dominance through these legislations? Hmm... I question PM Lee has announced that we will be having more political freedom in Singapore. Yay. Let's clap.
Now, before we all get too happy, let's think about this in greater depth.
Podcast, videocast and election materials will be permitted, finally. Probably because of the increasing pressure from the people to liberalise the political scene here. These materials have to be factual though. The reason given for banning these materials in the past was because the government felt that visual materials would interfere in our decision making process and influence our decision making process as compared to cold hard words where we are supposedly able to make a more informed and better choice. Really? Should we all then stop visiting the theatres and youtube videos and turn to the thick volumes of books that had been collecting dust in the library for our facts? Really, the minimum age limit set there for electorates isn't just for show. Given that the electorates are of a certain age and know the seriousness of the matter, they would make an informed decision and I personally don't think they would be so easily swayed just by visual images because afterall, it's not some mindless decision making process. People do think through their decisions even after watching the images. That's of course assuming that our people are concerned about politics in Singapore.
If these people aren't really concerned about politics, I think they would just vote for anyone and most likely PAP because of the fact that they are already the ruling party and because they have been running the country pretty well in terms of economic growth and development. These visual materials wouldn't make much of a difference to them, I feel. The convenience of convention. Sigh. Besides, that sort of a rule would only put the ruling government in a position of advantage, regardless of which party it is because the spotlight would be on the ruling government most of the time and people would know them best as compared to the opposition parties which tend to be rather alien if you don't really bother to read much about them.
Political apathy in Singapore? Right on. It's a vicious cycle. Most people are apathetic, I feel, because of the lack of the need to care because the ruling government is doing a good job and the opposition isn't given much room to advertise itself . We don't have the chance to look through the profiles of all the parties. When we go shopping, we look at all the products and we make a decision. But you most likely wouldn't go to some isolated area and check out the prices of their products too. In fact, you most likely don't know much about them and have a distorted impression of them. I think the same goes for politics. We shop for the best party to bring us the most benefit and serve us well in the future to come. There isn't much to care about when you aren't really engaged in the process of selecting a political party because you don't really have a lot to choose from, particularly if you are someone who dosen't bother to read up about the opposition or find out more about them which is made worst by the fact that we are very comfortable with the way of governance of PAP in many ways more than one. There's nothing much to get you to think and thus the apathy. But if you were presented with a myriad of information, you would have to process the information and look through them and leaves little room for apathy to operate. So elections after elections, we would go in circles and circles until one day we get more chances to participate ACTIVELY in the election process. Now that the government has loosened up a little on this already, hopefully this would come to an end.
Now, we allow more free speech but only at Hong Lim Speaker's corner... Who really goes there? I personally haven't been there and I don't think many people have been there. That's speaking in my own capacity of course. Personally, I don't know much about the Speaker's corner. Apathy? Perhaps.
On a whole, these "additional" liberties that we would be entitled to, note the use of the word additional, are a good thing and it's an improvement from the past. Whether it's sufficient, I leave it to you. Perhaps, we would get even more liberalised in this scene. If PAP is truly worthy of being elected as the government, then it should not have to worry about losing to the opposition and should liberalise our political scene to a greater extent, that's of course assuming that they are doing some things to secure their position in the government which I have no concrete evidence to prove nor strongly believe in for these actions taken by them do seem to root from the need for greater good.
If PAP is truly worthy, we would elect for PAP no matter what kind of videos or podcasts the opposition will try to shove right in our faces. Ultimately, my point is that I think there is not much need for trying to somewhat "suppress" the political scene here because I think it's not necessary. I still think that the restriction on the fact that the speech should not be about language, religion and race is still something that needs to be in place. With such restrictions in place, we already have bloggers that go around making derogatory remarks about the other races or religions. Think about what would happen if we lift such restrictions. That would be sinking ourselves waist down into quicksand. More should be done for the political scene but let us still be thankful for what has been done.
Labels: Apathy, Corner, Hong, Lim, National Day, Opposition, PAP, Politics, Rally, Singapore, Speakers