Hey guys
I don't post here often, but Robert's summary really added to my thoughts, and in following his point-form style, I can't help adding a few more points:
1. Singaporeans are descended from coolie and peasant stock, and 50 years of economic progress and a supposedly first world education has done nothing to change that. I don't even have to mention the incumbent's social engineering; just comparing our public toilets to nations with a similar GDP per capita makes my point. FYI, Switzerland has a lower ranking than us - just search for 'gdp per capita' on a search engine of your choice.
2. Having a generations-old tradition of non-thought and non-democracy, means that the concepts the SDP fought so ferociously for in the 2001 and 2006 elections, such as the freedom speech, the freedom of press, the freedom of elections (keeping in mind the word that so many of my colleagues have never encountered before: gerrymandering), and the accountability of governents, etc, are concepts that are alien to most Singaporeans - and by 'most', I mean 'almost all.'
In fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), of which these freedoms, amongst other freedoms, are accorded to citizens of every signee nation (such as Singapore), is a concept that Singaporeans can't even be bothered into discussing about.
3. This is also demonstrated by the fact that although most Singaporeans attend Primary 1 thru Secondary 4-5, almost nobody knows what 'to build a democratic society' really means, despite mouthing that sentence every day in school - except in the terms of 'you live in HDB and so do I, so that means we're democratic!'
4. Despite the overriding concerns of the nation as a whole, of which the forumers here know so well, the electorate could not look beyond their constituencies as a measuring stick for their voting decisions. 'My constituency is doing ok what' is the overwhelming justification for many voting decisions, even though they are aware of the various mismanagement, ineptitutde, and immorality of the incumbent.
5. Which brings me back to points 1 and 2. Due to cultural factors more than anything else, despite the pressures of adopting democracy as the accepted norm of governance (the concept of which has grown to become a hegemony or even a fascism of some sort in the rest of the world); despite the democratising potential of new media; despite (our illusion of an) economic prosperity; despite the rebelliousness and disregard of consequences that are expected of the youth (but are not forthcoming from our own); despite the lack of a pension and of a minimum wage; despite the insufficient allocation of resources for the disengaged; despite the lack of respect towards the decades that our elderly have contributed to the building of our nation, we wonder what is wrong with our society - then take a spit at a robust democracy, and wonder when we'll strike the lottery.
