Wednesday, September 30, 2015

GE2015 Reflections - The Pendulum Swing

There are prominent people who have talked about the unfairness of the electoral system and blame this as the main reason for bad result of opposition in GE2015.

A letter has been sent to UN and a petition has been raised by Gilbert Goh while Dr Chee Soon Chuan has raised the point of the need to revamp the whole electoral system before we could have any meaningful contest.

While I agree that there are a lot of unfair practices within the current system, like PAP was given prior advanced knowledge of where the polling stations would be situated while opposition parties were made to wait. ... etc. , but the fundamental question is, 70% of Singaporeans allowed this to carry on. They didn't view these unfairness as a BIG DEAL.

In fact I think that this is a wakeup call to opposition parties that internet which has been viewed as the important tool for Democratic development is really over rated in Singapore's context.

The Myth that progressive increment of support for opposition from 2006 to 2011 is due to post-65 voters which will peak at 2017 and that will bring about political change for Singapore should be discarded. Even young voters, first time voters might have switched their votes to PAP.

The brutal truth derived from this year's GE is that majority of Singaporeans do not have a strong belief of the need of Democracy or Democratic development for our country. This is the fundamental reason why PAP can go on gerrymandering and vote buying using government funding but yet get away with all these nonsense; because Singaporeans allow it to do all these without repercussion from the poll.

This is why I concluded earlier that for my party, we may have to put in more effort in promoting our belief of Separation of Five Powers as the tenets of Real Democracy. When political education on Democracy is lacking, we will never have enough Singaporeans who really believe in Democracy to help us evolve and develop Democracy for Singapore.

Having said all these, PAP should not be too happy. The reason is that they will be facing an electorate who has no loyalty or political belief of any sort, except of self interests. The swing voters could swing as they like or dislike. They will become more demanding and policies will naturally have to become more populist.

Such a big swing signifies a bigger variance and may become a source of instability for PAP. It will become a big pendulum swinging to and fro. This may just become the biggest source of uncertainty and instability for us all.

Goh Meng Seng

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The brutal truth derived from this year's GE is that majority of Singaporeans do not have a strong belief of the need of Democracy or Democratic development for our country.
Goh Meng Seng

Yes, that may be the brutal truth but have you ever wondered why this is so?

And has it not occur to you that the Sinkie opposition parties are one too many, and also weak, disunited and needless to say, not ready to be govt?

And with that, how can you blame the majority of Sinkies for not voting for the opposition and for the Democratic development for our country?

Anonymous said...

Goh Meng Seng, when you formed the PPP, do you seriously want to really win to serve Sinkies, or just want to "test the market"?

And having "tested the market" and finding out the horrible outcome, where do you intend to go from here?

Anonymous said...

Bukit Batok by-elections. One party has not been forthcoming about what he does for a living. Writing and selling books? Could he be funded by some groups ? BB had their concerns and we have every right to be!