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Maybe you haven't heard of the Singapore Democratic Alliance. Not to mention Indonesia under Sukarno which was a tripartite arrangement between Communists, Nationalists and Islamists. That ended in a lot of bloodshed, of course, but it lasted for 20 years.

Recent UK politics. 2010 elections: First party Conservatives, Second party Labour, third party Lib Dems. So the Lib Dems will have to decide which party it partners to form a coalition. Whichever party it partners will form the government. So they were trying to decide. They chose Conservative...

Sorry hor I forgot I'm talking to a typical Singaporean who doesn't understand sarcasm. Just a few years ago, hope your memory is not that short, it was unthinkable that an opposition party would win a GRC. Similarly today it is unthinkable that a non-WP opposition party will win a seat in...

No, I meant both. They think they are special because they are the only opposition party not talking about unity, and also they think they are special. No, that's not what the WP is saying at all. They have said, you go your own way I'll go mine. They did not say let's have a coalition, I'll...

That is absolutely unthinkable. That would be just like an opposition party winning a GRC.

No, the WP is even special in this respect. They are the only opposition party not talking about opposition unity. No, people are not necessarily talking about alliances yet. Alliances are pretty extreme. Even when we talk about informal meetings, exchanging notes, political discussion...

One thing I think even the WP will not do is they will not go into a place where the opposition is the incumbent. For example a Potong Pasir seat when CST was still around. Unless they are even more arrogant than I give them credit for. The relationship between the opposition parties is a bit...

Yeh it's not like the SDP have behaved very well in the past but if the WP were to keep on slagging off the SDP, they would also look more bad than the SDP. Opposition unity is optional but avoiding confrontation is mandatory. If I were LTK or SL I would have slapped you for saying you want SDP...

Well you clearly don't understand tactical voting. People who dislike the WP would vote PAP because voting PAP causes more damage to the WP than voting DL or KJ.

SDP most probably (since I don't talk to them) knew that there were two most probable outcomes. 1. SDP gets more than 10%: that would have been a bad outcome for WP, WP would have lost that election. It would also be bad for SDP, because they would have been blamed as the spoilers, and during...

You do realise that if KJ had gotten 10% of the vote, they would have come out of LLL's share, and she would have lost. That is the real reason why he would not even have gotten those 10%. Just out of curiosity: what did he say about WP at Yale?

Why don't you join the PAP? That way you can stand against the SDP wherever they're fielding a candidate. I heard that these days it's easier to join because they can't find the people.

They pulled out, and it was a great decision. They made horrible mistakes but they did not make the most horrible mistake of all. They turned away from the cliff. KJ on the other hand walked off that cliff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Tactical_voting Tactical voting takes place to an even greater extent in first past the post than proportional. At least in proportional system there's an incentive to always vote for the party you want. In first past the post, there is an...

Well, there are people who always get deserted by their own party members, but still manage to get elected time after time. People like Chiam See Tong. K Jeyaretnam, at least for me, still made a lot of good points querying what happened to all the Temasek money, and feeding questions to...

What I want is a better government. If the voters can bring about a better government, then so much the better. But if they can't - and from the way they've been unconditionally voting in PAP time after time all these years, you know about how much you can trust them. Kenneth Jeyaretnam had a...

No, it is exactly the same as the situation everywhere. Everywhere it is both national issues and municipal issues, although the town council has shifted the balance towards the municipal issues. Newcomers have to bear the burden of municipal issues and that creates the barrier to entry that the...

Yes, but it only turns into a good thing when you capture the majority. Until then, the only way you can stop the bulldozer is to stir up shit in parliament.

That is very interesting. Basically this means that he was a proponent of the "opposition unity" idea that made Chee Soon Juan look like such an ass in January. As well as that "the WP can call me if they want to" bullshit that made the SDP look like a bunch of political blunderers. Also the...

Wrong. Asking probing questions is about changing the behaviour of the government. The problem is that you are still fixed in the mindset of "how are we going to get seats in parliament" and not yet the deeper question of what people in parliament are actually supposed to do. Parliament...