I'm not bickering with eremarf. Most of the bickering in this thread ended around 2 weeks back. I just want to say, people can criticise the national conversation all they want. The PAP has shown that it is probably a big wayang. But most citizens who go into that conversation aren't willing or able to ask all the tough questions. Those who can ask the tough questions either are too cynical to participate, or there are too few of them. The failure is on the side of both the PAP and the people of Singapore. It's still too early to condemn the National Conversation as a total failure. And my opinion is that people who want the national conversation to end are just not interested in democracy.
And no government can ever give the people what they want if the people do not know what they want. Not in this day and age. To me the people have failed to articulate what they want and are still dependent on the government to provide the vision. You probably won't hear this at an election rally in 2016 when all the opposition parties are lining up to tell you guys that you deserve the best government. The fact is that Singaporeans have never deserved anything. The PAP literally fell down from the sky onto their laps in the early years, and provided plenty of economic progress without Singaporeans having to work as hard as other people for it. The PAP were repressive but never as repressive as the military governments of Taiwan or South Korea or the Eastern European countries. We've had to struggle for freedom but never had to struggle as hard. We only ever had a small handful of dissidents being jailed. We turned a deaf ear to Chee Soon Juan's hunger strike, Tang Liang Hong and JBJ being made bankrupt. There has never been any rioting in the streets. Once there was a real fight at the ballot box, the PAP started backing off. Many opportunities existed for kicking out the PAP in the past but were not taken. Maybe times are getting tougher, and maybe Singaporeans will do something truly heroic but that is probably in the future and not the past.
Your never-imagined internet was invented in the early 70s. Way before 1995, when the internet became widespread, the Singapore government, the PAP had already grasped the power of the internet and the implications on its hold on power. That is why your internet is configured to run on a proxy server.
Democracy is not only about kicking people out of power, otherwise China would be a democratic worker's paradise today. What we also need are citizens to be well informed, not just reliant on their leaders to find solutions, but having opinions, expressing them, doing some of the leading, rather than just shooting down the incumbents. I don't see that happening yet. There is a challenge for citizens to be met and I don't see it being met.
