Grumbles from a pointless undergrad with nothing better to do

so polling day is finally here. Uni is killing the "future leaders of singapore" (translate that into chinese pls) into insipid thoughtless creatures that couldnt care less abt elections. (read: exams). it struck me as i was walking round Holland V the other day that i'm essentially very fond of this nation, because it is my Home. i've spent exactly half my life year now and saying that i love my nation because it is my home isn't some cop out argument or PAP diatribe about loyalty. i've grown up here, my teenage existence has been spent wandering round the likes of holland village, bukit timah and orchard road.

regardless, i feel particularly bleak when i think of PAP continuing as the ruling party for the next donkey years or so. erm not really bleak. i quite like pap considering i owe much of what i have now to pap, i'm truely grateful.

But let me be honest and say that i well and truly feel fed up, frustrated and oppressed here too. i know, i'm not some pakistani woman in a rural village with a husband that beats her, so perhaps i'm unjustfied in claiming that i feel oppressed in the traditional sense. i feel oppressed because i feel for the repressed dissidents, i feel indignant that because they do not believe in the mantra of staying together, moving ahead, they're made bankrupt, exiles, criminals or all of the above. and even though i haven't taken to walking around with a placard declaring my views on the death penalty and the like, it feels like with each opposition party member that they squash, they extinguish a little bit more of the soul of another singaporean. should i really take issue with a party that promises to create opportunities for Singaporeans, give our young the best start, encourage every citizen to play a role, do more for low income singaporeans, help older singaporeans to lead full and active lives or even, provide affordable healthcare for all? do i want an opposition, for oppositions sake?

i would say yes, because along with that carrot, there's always a stick of the removal of more of my civil and political rights. i don't feel like voting for a government that enforces conscription, the death penalty, unabashedly controls the media, detention without trial and (on what could be percieved as a trivial note), an inability to air my views in public places without first getting a permit by the police and having my speech vetted. i don't wish to vote for a party that has created a climate of fear and at the same time as successfully managed to placate people by telling them they'll get economic prosperity in exchange for the removal of their rights. logically, one can presume that then my rights now have a monetary value. perhaps its not the government's fault that people have sold out so easily, i mean considering that we were once a third world nation (gasp! shock! horror!), it's easy to go along with the plans of goh keng swee.

i'm pretty sure, we're no longer in that stage where i can place my right to development above my civil and political rights. and i'm sick and tired of hearing that we'll become like indonesia, thailand, philippines or whatever if we don't remain competitive. i think what the indonesians, thais and the lot of our apparently horrific neighbours have that we don't, is a whole lot more soul and fulfilment. yes, the poverty and corruption is appalling, but so is cronyism and repression. i really really liked gayle's argument [i hope you don't mind if i put it up here] because she's said it so well. the fact that they can snub Thaksin by not showing up for polls is a statement of pulbic rejection of the government and a poignant declaration of disappointment. It is also fascinating, isn't it, that people who warn us about the dangers of too much freedom always neglect to mention why so much chaos is happening in the first place. The Thais flooded the streets becaus they were angry at nepotism, possible corruption and the lack of transparency. They protested because of the lack of democracy, not because of its presence! The rioters in Nepal are mobbing because of martial law, because someone is trying to steal their freedoms! Arroyo's opposition is pissed because she might have resorted to underhand tactics to buy votes! Anger and instability happen where there is insufficient democracy. We in Singapore should be working to improve our democractic mechanism in order to safeguard ourselves against that kind of danger, not to wave it around like some sort of didactic forewarning of doom if, god forbid, the people have power. I'll be fair, yes, democracy is a pain in the ass at times. The Europeans in particular take to the streets for the stupidest reasons. But pointing to Thailand and the Philippines is just underhanded, exploitative and misrepresentive of the real and underlying reasons behind the unrest, many are very real and pressing in their own right .
And the best thing is, this isn't the first time they've done the look at us look at them thing. The scare tactics is dismal. it's even scarier when you hear people in hawker centres buying into the rhetoric. but then again, can you blame them when the media only reports one viewpoint and the political apathy works in your advantage because no one's going to find the real reason for the troubles. Are you also insinuating that the opposition is corrupt?

Another thing that really bugs me is the fact that civil liberties, human rights, etc are 'western' and therefore undesirable.lets be honest, individualism is irritating, americans are particularly frustrating when they go on about 'my rights', 'my rights', 'my rights'. but swinging to the other extreme doesn't seem to be an adequate response to selfish behaviour. and just because when one gets indiviual freedoms, we'll become selfish, neglect our parents, the state, or whatever. political and civli rights give people the opportunity to draw attention forcefully to general needs and to demand appropriate public action. states that failed to provide an adequate level of freedom seem to be terribly dysfunctional ones. living in singapore is probably close to living in stepford. seriously, at the end of the day, the poor excuse of economic prosperity in exchange for rights is as i mentioned earlier, putting a price on a universal belief system and more over giving a government adequate mandate to be a repressive, big-brother-esque state.

i'm kinda fed up with a lack of acceptance of other viewpoints and a constant need to be beligerant and declare that the PAP's values and policies are sacrosanct and cannot be subject to scrutiny. it feels like whenever the minister for life is questioned (recently by those journalists), the response is always quick, rapid and harsh, as if they have no right to do so. get off your high horse because you're not exempt from scrutiny, you're not a god, you're not perfect and when you make bad decisions or questionable ones at least, you should be questioned because you represent us. anyway, maybe that really is an asian trait, a complete objection to being scrutinized and told that you might be wrong. how disturbingly obstinate, not to mention self-righteous.the opposition needs to be there as a check against the PAP. with the excutive and judiciary being so intertwined what chance does one have should the government one day decide to invest in some failure half-arse project in china (oops too late) because friend of hsien loong is running the construction. someone should be made to answer for a loss of tax payer's money and cpf... completely contrary to the initial goal of helping people of lower-income families might i add [i don't believe the PAP knows best]. the opposition needs to be there to check that the PAP isn't always redrawing election boundaries, rewriting laws and constitutional practises that rob people of their rights more and more [currently we dont' have enough of an opposition to challenge anything that gets passed in parliment]. the opposition needs to be there because i want to see singapore surviving this socio-political cancer where we've become such a fugly society. we're ugly, and i honestly think that our government's got a big part in ensuring that we're competitive (read: meritocractic) to the point where we always need to one up our neighbour (read: malaysia) because if we don't we'll die because we're a small nation wiht no resources (scary.) if being singaporean is being kiasu then i'm not too keen on being singaporean. i think it's admirable to constantly improve oneself, lovely government mantra there, but either we take it to the extreme (read: education system) and have this awfully high suicide rate right up there with the south koreans.

yes, the opposition are a scary scary lot. but you know, i still have an immense respect for men like jbj who can still walk around day in day out and take the shit they throw at him. not too keen on chee though. i may not( in fact i dont)agree with some of their policies, or actions, but damn, they're brave brave souls. they're admirable because they're standing up for something that a lot of singaporeans don't give a damn about.sure they do really stupid things and we criticize them for it but i think singaporeans miss the plot a lot when we continually bash them down.they're doing something that needs to be done in this country and for that the pap wasn't returned to power today.my point is really you need more of them around, they seem stupid because it's just a couple of jokers right now, but what they're trying to put across is principally sound and does have just cause to be said.