"If we call ourselves WP supporters" ...

[metalmickey]

I think she has a simplistic notion of what democracy is and how one should aim to support it. The goal for Singapore is bring about democracy as it should be. Our situation is very unlike all the matured democracies where a free contest with many parties would not lead to a single dorminant party.

In our situation, we should be appealing for everyone to back the strongest opposition candidate. If such calls were intense and reflective of society at large, the saner parties will voluntarily step back and megalomaniacs like KJ and CSJ will pressured to pull back. Idiots like Desmond will lose their deposits.

She obviously does not understand that democracy requires people expressing their views candidly rather than curse under their breath and write what she thinks is politically correct opinion piece.

I'm agnostic about the question of whether the SDP should contest. The downside is the split vote between the opposition parties. In a general elections, it is possible to avoid 3 corner fights. In a by-election, it is harder because everybody wants to take their car out for a drive.

The upside of a straight fight between WP and PAP is that the WP will have the opportunity to get one more seat in parliament. But the chance of that happening, unlike Hougang, is not very high. The downside is that if the WP does not get an impressive result, this could even be seen as a step back for the WP. Now we are arguing that the best person should stand for elections in a straight fight. But why is that best person - say Lee Li Lian and not - say - Paul Thambiah? It is very presumptious to say that it's necessarily WP. Furthermore, when you say best candidate, you have to ask yourself if the person who gets in on the back of party branding (WP) rather than on slightly better substance (a SDP heavyweight, if Chee can find one) is really a "best candidate" and therefore "best for our country".

The upside of a multi-cornered fight is that you get to hear from every party out there. Every party will get battleground experience. Planning, logistics, etc. This is like a war game, any opposition party who participates in a BE will be more prepared for the next GE. Then the results that will come out will be a report card for the opposition parties. None of the opposition parties will get a seat, but they will grow and develop in their own way.

So here is the difference between Hougang and Punggol East. Any non-WP opposition party who participates in Hougang will be depriving WP of a seat and that is a big big loss. A multi-corner fight in Punggol East may or may not deprive WP of a seat, and that's why the reaction this time is so different.

Until 2 days ago I would have said it doesn't matter if SDP contests, no real gain and no real loss. Now after what CSJ has said, the damage to SDP is so severe that SDP had better stay out of this contest. They won't win a lot of votes, and they'll go into GE2016 in bad shape. Best method of damage limitation is to pull out and hope that this is a distant memory by 2016.

Unfortunately this means that somebody else can say, SDP is not contesting, why not me now. Maybe an independent, maybe RP or whatever. Now it has become important for WP meet - secretly - with whoever wants to go in and work things out and make sure that things get resolved without any bad blood.

 

[metalmickey]

Well said. And this exemplifies the reasons why the young impressionable self-fashioned liberals and their dead-set principles will cut no ice with the masses if they do not consider the context. Ditto for minimum wage, immigration and human rights.

Young impressionable self-fashioned liberals tend to grow into old self-fashioned liberals when they get older. People don't change that much. There will be a change in political thinking in the next 10-20 years. The young punks will come into positions of authority, the older guard will retire or die. Human rights will be of growing concern, don't know about minimum wage. Many people see organisations that fight on the behalf of foreign workers as pro-immigration. That is wrong. They are actually anti-immigration, the enemy is the system which exploits foreign workers.

By the way, liberals are called "left", not "right".