Sad news just in:: SDP has just withdrawing from the by-election
It is not sad news. It's a huge blunder.
The SDP is, in effect, disallowing the PE electorate from exercising their democratic right to vote for the candidate or party they support. This is not "democracy".
It is match fixing. Democracy is when people and parties are free to contest on their platform of competing ideologies, policies and ideas and the electorate judges and votes accordingly.
The SDP has a compelling political visions and ideas. Unlike the WP, it has the guts to speak up and should be more than able to compete in the marketplace of competing political visions, ideas and ideologies vis-a-vis other parties. It has squandered the opportunity to do so.
The proposed candidates have wilted from the party's culture of beliefs, convictions and iron clad resolve. They have shockingly wilted under the thuggery of the platoon's worth of WP's astroturfers, Chinese chauvinists and race bigots. In effect, the proposed candidates see themselves as even lousier candidates as compared to LLL.
This is something I could never imagine would happen. When you join a political party, you would have known about the party's culture and ethos. Surely, those proposed candidates must have known about the ethos and iron clad resolve of the SDP prior to joining it. Withdrawal will not bring the party any plaudits. It will earn the party even more criticisms and contempt from the WP platoon's worth of astroturfers, the WP's Chinese chauvinists and the WP's "Guess the race" racial bigots
You can expect Chinese Chauvinist Low and WP's Princess Megawati Sukarnoputri to treat the SDP and other political parties (except the PAP) with even more contempt from now. The moment they have enough candidates to deploy, they will simply bulldoze, like what they did in the SDA's Punggol East, into any "territories" as they see fit.
But the good thing that has come out of this is that the WP's Chinese chauvinists and "Guess the race" racial bigots will be unable to point a finger of blame at the SDP when it loses the PE by-election. They will, instead, reveal even more of their chauvinism and racial bigotry. The intensity of their racial bigotry will increase against the minority Malays and Indians.
The Malays, Indians and what's left of the Eurasian community, will do well to carry out their calculations carefully.
My call to my Malay, Indian and Eurasian brothers and sisters is for them to cast their votes for parties other than the WP and its race bigots. Even the known PAP devil will be better than the WP and its race bigots. At the very least, they can be assured that the known PAP devil, as bad (and hated) as it is, will know its limits and will be committed to multiculturalism. It will safeguard the Malay and Indian and Eurasian interests as minority communities against the worrying trend towards Chinese chauvinism and the racism,chauvinism and racial bigotry as exemplified by the WP's "Guess The Race", "shitskin", "m&ds" bigots.