Residents complain about massive, wasteful display of PAP flags
WRITTEN BY Christopher Ong on Apr 24, 2011
Residents complain that such massive displays of political banners before Nomination Day is not only wasteful, but also possibly contravenes election laws.
Elections are less than two weeks away, and if you think that you might be able to stay clear of politics as long as you avoid the newspapers, think again.
Days before the Nomination Day on 27th April, a massive display of political flags belonging to the incumbent People’s Action Party (PAP) have surfaced in most of the heartland districts across Singapore.
At a time when prudence in governmental spending and budget becomes one of the key topics of the election, some Singaporeans are riling against the wasteful display of PAP flags along pavements and roads.
For instance, at Block 140 Tampines Ave 2, some 20-30 PAP flags line a street not even just a few hundred meters long. A resident subsequently took photos of these flags, flooding carparks and playgrounds alike, and posted it on his blog.
Others have also mentioned a possible contravening of election rules — where political advertisement and campaigning may only occur during the period between Nomination Day to Polling Day.
According to the handbook for Parliamentary Election Candidates 2011, political candidates or parties may only display political banners after Nomination Day until Polling Day.
To strike a note of fairness, however, the putting up of political flags may rather be a work of the grassroot team. However, it is also not clearly known if the decision to display the flags was made by solely the grassroots team.
Despite some netizens threatening to call the police to forcefully have the flags removed before Nomination Day, there have been no cases of such removals thus far.
*Edit: One of our readers has pointed out the cost of planting the flags may be borne by the party’s campaign fund. Although it was never the article’s intention to suggest that the cost was part of the government budget, we realize that some of our readers may be led to misconstrue it as such due to the phrasing of the article. We sincerely apologise if this was the case.
The article instead sought to suggest that prudence should be exercised in all forms of budget — whether government or party’s — this General Elections. We thank, however, our reader Overseas Singaporean for astutely pointing a possible misreading out.
