Sorry I dun get you. They (volunteers?) only did door knocking after they know WP was going to win?
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No Basis for S'pore Opposition Parties to Mimic M'sian Opposition Coalition
- Thread starter ray_of_hope
- Start date
Sorry I dun get you. They (volunteers?) only did door knocking after they know WP was going to win?
What kind of warp logic is this? Dun attend means support ISA?
And about Ah Low using ISA, do you have reason to believe he WILL misuse if given the authority?
Yah walk the ground during election campaigning period.
And yah brings up issues ONLINE.
If you are correct then what happened? Why were they not elected?
Had it something to do with their almost non existence ground work in the first place?
Maybe you are correct. Maybe you are not.
So while we can continue debating whether they will be good Parliamentary material or not, why dun they help themselves by helping the voters to know SDP and its candidates better by covering 100% of the voters like A+ Sylvia and girl-next-door LLL?
Agree totally.
And dun make me start with those fancy press conference in posh hotel ballroom.......
Which of the parties already had a seat in parliament?
Get what I mean? Which party is the most likely to get into parliament?
Chee was tarred by his NUS episode, more so if he wants only to portray himself as a torch bearer for social ideals, human rights, accountability etc. That episode was a bad starter. Then again later, he shot himself in the foot with his hunger strike and glucose sip. Knowing PAP, if you want to run for political office, you have to keep a squeaky clean closet and a impeccable moral slate, like Chiam, LTK and JBJ except that on the last, the Old Man had to clutch at straws to cast ambiguous aspersions on his magistrate time and his career stymie, and when they found that it didnt cut ice with the voters, they fixed him with lawsuits etc. which the voters can do nothing about.
In JBJ's case, people could see grave injustice and unfairness, and people empathise with him, even pity him, for they saw that the only thing he was doing was fight against injustice etc. But in CSJ's case, the people saw him coming across as a self-serving academic in NUS, and later on,he taking on the PAP as a personal vendetta. That is exactly the public image that the PAP wanted to etch on him, and they succeeded with control of SCM.
It would have helped imho if he had done things in those early days that would have ameliorated this image and regain voters' trust, such as helping residents with their appeals, problems, etc. to show that he was prepared to acknowledge his error and start a new leaf. And doing it facelessly, humbly, and pro bono, so as to build some powerbase for the future. But no. He staged a coup that ousted Chiam and then took on PAP full throttle and raised the ante by his court exam of the Old Man, and for many weeks, crowed about how uninvincible the Old Man was, and how he outwitted him in court.
I mean, Chee may be more brilliant academic than LKY but as a strategist and tactician, he is an infant. Politics is ugly, and unless you can also dream and scheme, have a Machiavellian streak, you wont succeed in politics. Merely being a goody two shoes will get you run over and crushed.
In JBJ's case, people could see grave injustice and unfairness, and people empathise with him, even pity him, for they saw that the only thing he was doing was fight against injustice etc. But in CSJ's case, the people saw him coming across as a self-serving academic in NUS, and later on,he taking on the PAP as a personal vendetta. That is exactly the public image that the PAP wanted to etch on him, and they succeeded with control of SCM.
It would have helped imho if he had done things in those early days that would have ameliorated this image and regain voters' trust, such as helping residents with their appeals, problems, etc. to show that he was prepared to acknowledge his error and start a new leaf. And doing it facelessly, humbly, and pro bono, so as to build some powerbase for the future. But no. He staged a coup that ousted Chiam and then took on PAP full throttle and raised the ante by his court exam of the Old Man, and for many weeks, crowed about how uninvincible the Old Man was, and how he outwitted him in court.
I mean, Chee may be more brilliant academic than LKY but as a strategist and tactician, he is an infant. Politics is ugly, and unless you can also dream and scheme, have a Machiavellian streak, you wont succeed in politics. Merely being a goody two shoes will get you run over and crushed.
Human rights and political fairness are very closely related. In fact the right of the opposition ward to receive the same amount of funding for public projects as PAP wards is also a human right. A lot of times these are the same ideas in disguise. The fact that people now have more freedom than in the 90s has made a lot of people more aware of human rights issues, as well as the importance of preserving your political rights by fighting for them.
I don't think it's that complicated. If you want to serve the people, you can be a do-gooder like Vincent Cheng and get fucked like Vincent Cheng got fucked in Operation Spectrum. Or you can do it within the system and hope that the system allows you to do the right thing.
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The ambit of human rights is too broad and it does not sync with the masses. When the opposition targets specific issues like how the GRC is unfair, or targets AIM, People' Association, use of taxpayer monies for partisan purposes, etc, people can understand. All this comes under the concept of a fair political playing field, which all parties including WP has openly espoused.
This is precisely what I meant by SDP translating abstract issues into concrete examples of power abuse by the PAP. If SDP does not engage the grassroots architecture, they can never ferret out such malpractices. Better still, send in moles to the PAP's grassroots and discover their sins.
There is absolutely no way to tell beforehand what a politician will do with the ISA when he gets into power. When LKY was in the opposition, he also made speeches against the colonial authorities for using the ISA and look what happened after that.
My guess about why LTK does not talk about the ISA is this: there is the old opposition and the new opposition. The old opposition were the fringe elements, argumentative people like most of us here in SBF, more than happy to challenge authority for its own sake. The PAP would use the ISA to fix them and people would just look the other way while the "old opposition" got fixed. The "new opposition" are a significant minority, maybe even majority of the people getting fed up with the PAP. In any case, way too many people for the govt to "fix" using the good ol' ISD. If LTK keeps on harping on the ISA, he could be aligning himself too much with the "old opposition". The passing of the torch from JBJ to LTK is a very symbolic one, and represents the transformation from the "old opposition" to the "new opposition".
You can go ask people like Teo Soh Lung, Vincent Cheng, francis Seow if they thought that their episodes in detention were abstract. Or the question of managing foreign labour. Maybe people don't see the connection - if they allow foreign labour in Singapore to be treated badly and paid like shit, it has an effect on all labour in Singapore, via market forces.
Maybe "abstract" here means "it just happens to other people".
You keep missing the plot. Their episodes were of course real, but to them only. How can you make them real to people who were never affected, that's the trick. Merely repeating that their sufferings were real does not mean that pple will see them as they did, or you did.
Why do you keep distancing yrselves from hard ground work but choose to preach from pulpits? The way you guys are going, you will never make it in a hundred years.
Why do you keep distancing yrselves from hard ground work but choose to preach from pulpits? The way you guys are going, you will never make it in a hundred years.
Merely stating a fact here.
Obviously I can kaopeh all I want and people will never change and continually refuse to understand the importance of human rights.
The same way you can kaopeh all you want and the SDP will never change its ways.
Obviously I can kaopeh all I want and people will never change and continually refuse to understand the importance of human rights.
The same way you can kaopeh all you want and the SDP will never change its ways.
That is a key point. There is a major irony and disconnect here: SDP has the most impressive website and uses other online portals to very good effect and, yet, not once has it been able to capitalise on that advantage by exposing any "malpractices" not already known. All SDP does is provide comments on publicly available information. This tends to suggest that SDP is a very small outfit and its members are not in any sensitive jobs or influential positions to become whistle-blowers. If SDP cannot do any whistle-blowing then it can hardly expect others to do so, and all this results in suggesting that, despite all the grumbles, this place is in fact squeaky clean.
Nicole Seah didn't do any groundwork. Before GE 2011, she was a virtual unknown. Yet within the short space of 1 month, she almost upset GCT in Marine Parade.
Groundwork is important but it pales in comparison to having candidates who have that X-factor. Also important is to choose PAP opponents who have a high negative Z-factor (e.g. Tuck Yew !!!).
Groundwork is important but it pales in comparison to having candidates who have that X-factor. Also important is to choose PAP opponents who have a high negative Z-factor (e.g. Tuck Yew !!!).
But look at the way Nicole connected with the voters there. It's about ability to connect with voters. I did say one has to know where to pick a good fight, and what issues will connect with ground sentiment. I wont bet on Chee even if he stands against Lui.
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Lui make look like an ogre and probably is an ogre, but his publicised walking on the ground in the MRT stations following the big MRT breakdowns have made him one of the lesser disliked PAP MPs. That was a positive example of media management.
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