WHAT DOES THE BUKIT BATOK BY-ELECTION RESULT MEAN?
The day after - a time for sobriety
Now that Mr Murali Pillai of the PAP has scored an expected easy victory with 61.2% of the votes, we can reasonably draw 12 conclusions about Singaporean voters:
1. Voters trust the PAP fully and are willing to continue to leave the running of their country to them unquestioningly.
2. Voters think that a Parliament dominated overwhelmingly by one party is good for them.
3. There is a large group of voters who have no inclination to actively participate in the governing of their own country and who are largely unaware of their own political beliefs, but they are forced to vote because voting is compulsory.
4. Voters are not looking for a representative who shares common political beliefs with them. They are also not concerned about exercising their own political rights through this representative. They are merely looking for a capable candidate with good character to be their MP and are quite willing to allow his party to manage their political rights for them in whatever way the party sees fit.
5. Voters continue to think that they are doing a candidate a favor by voting him into Parliament rather than think that their MPs are doing them a favor by representing them in Parliament. They do not realize that an election is more about the voters identifying and electing the candidate who can represent their political interests rather than it is about the political ambitions of the candidate.
6. Voters do not vote along racial lines.
7. Voters vote for the PAP despite the poor moral qualities of their MPs in two recent episodes when they were involved in alleged extramarital affairs with their own party activists.
8. Voters believe that MPs can discharge their political duties fully even if they are only part-timers.
9. Voters will always reject those candidates who were said to have made mistakes in the past.
10. Candidates whom voters rejected in SMC contests can suddenly become acceptable to voters if these same candidates contest in GRCs later.
11. Voters are not concerned about whether undesirable tactics employed during election campaigning may mislead them into voting for the wrong candidate.
12. Voters tend to view their MPs more as estate managers rather than representatives of their political interests, of which they are highly ignorant.
It is highly creditable that voters here do not vote according to racial lines, but the other 11 conclusions make me have serious misgivings about the political realities in Singapore. Given that they are unlikely to change much in the foreseeable future, participants and would-be participants in our political arena should think very carefully about the part they should play in order to help develop Singapore society and secure its future.
I must say that given the state of our electorate , we are extremely fortunate to be ruled by the PAP who have, at least, ruled Singapore sensibly and ensured the material well-being of Singaporeans. But, if the party becomes corrupted or totalitarian in the future, our electorate will be incapable of saving itself even if we have free and fair elections. In the light of a highly ignorant and sometimes self-sabotaging electorate, we must pray very hard every night that the PAP stays honorable and conscientious.
Singaporeans are generally a savyy lot and can smell a undesirable and dishonest person from a mile away. This is because we, as Asians, tend to have a Confucian-centric value system in the way that we size a person up, as opposed to the Westerners who tend to be more easily swayed by populist rhetoric. This difference between how Asians and Westerners respond to populist rhetoric and how they respectively choose their political leaders, can be most starkly seen in the ongoing US presidential elections and the recently-concluded Bukit Batok by-elections in Singapore.
ReplyDeleteLook at Donald Trump. That clown of a presidental candidate makes for a very terrible President(by political analysts and think-tank standards) if elected, yet, many Americans are swayed by him and his speeches. On the other hand, in Singapore, Singaporeans size up a potential political candidate not so much by what he says, but first of all - by what their gut feeling and intuition tells them about that person's character - is he an honest person, first of all? I can tell you, Singaporeans are not as stupid as you think - they can tell from their gut feeling that Murali is the more honest person of the two. Whether or not a person is a good and honest person, reigns supreme in this part of the world when it comes to choosing political candidates, let me tell you. Singaporeans are smart enough not to vote like the Americans do. In fact, it has always been this way since we gained independence. This is the way we have always elected political leaders in Singapore - not by being swayed by populist rhetoric and speeches, but mostly by our gut feeling telling us which person among the slate of candidates is the most honest one. Sizing up a person based on who is the most honest person of the available choices is a very sound way to elect political leaders, so you don't have to worry about dishonest people sneaking into parliament to 'eat money', because the day they do that, they will be booted out by the people at the next election. Singaporean voters are more savvy than you think. They are not stupid at all, contrary to what you may think. And it is precisely because they are not stupid that they voted for Murali. Same goes for a candidate like Mr Chan Chun Sing. Smart people who know how to size up a person based on whether their gut feeling tells them that the person in question is honest or not, is what got Mr Chan Chun Sing into parliament, ultimately. Honesty in character ranks supreme among all election voting criterion when Singaporeans decide who to vote for. This is why Singaporeans vote the way they do.
The declining number of votes for, and the loss of Punggol East from the Workers Party's hold shows very clearly that choosing political leaders based on how much of an honest character we size them up to be is more accurate of a criterion than anything else, even above speeches of populist rhetoric.
Dear bugmenotjournal, I appreciate how you emphasized at length the differences between the "Asian" way of judging a politician by his character and the "Western" tendency to be swayed by populist rhetoric. I think such a distinction is unjustified stereotyping and a superficial over-simplification, but that's not the point. The point is: if you judge a politician by his "character", it means that you don't understand politics, you don't understand your role as a responsible voter, you don't know how difficult it is to judge a person's character and you don't appreciate how easily you can be influenced by people with ulterior motives into demonizing some candidates while angelizing others. If you read my article more carefully, most of the answers are there.
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