UK GUARDIAN News: " A Missed Singapore Chance"

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Pass this to people whom you think voted for the Pappies.

You Say You Want A Revolution: Singapore’s General Elections

Posted by esmerized on May 6, 2011 · Leave a Comment



It is a dangerous act in a country where graffiti can fetch eight strokes of the cane, and more dangerous still in that it parodies the leader of the long-term ruling Lee dynasty.
With a few deft applications of spray paint, Skope One finishes a pig-head depiction of the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, with a Nazi-styled SS logo on the lapel and an Uncle Sam-inspired banner emblazoned with the words “Lee Wants You”.
“We shouldn’t be scared any more – it’s about time something changed,” says the 35-year-old artist, known locally as the founder of Singaporean graffiti. “We need to have this freedom of alternative speech.”
Singapore is known worldwide for its censorship and corporal punishment. But in the runup to Saturday’s elections more and more people have started to speak out against the clan that has ruled Singapore for almost 50 years. Parallels with the Arab spring are striking, even if revolution is not just around the corner.
Most murmurs of discontent can be found online: fear of reprisal is diminished for an anonymous blogger. On internet forums, blogs, Facebook and Twitter, grumblings about high housing prices, the widening gap between rich and poor, immigration laws and the salaries of government ministers (among the highest in the world) are hot topics.
The parliamentary republic’s incumbent People’s Action party (PAP) has been in power since independence in 1965, and is widely recognised as having turned this colonial outpost into a financial behemoth in a few decades. But it knows it has a battle on its hands. On Saturday, it will contest 82 of its 87 parliamentary seats, up from 47 of 84 seats in 2006.
One in four voters in Singapore’s 5 million-strong population is under the age of 35, and the internet is a main source of their news. For the first time, political candidates have been allowed to campaign using social media, and the effect has been far-reaching: many Singaporeans say this is the most debated and politicised election they have seen.
But not all young people will be using their mandatory vote to go against the grain. Some, such as 22-year-old economics student and first-time voter Sofina Toh, are swayed by the PAP’s recent apology for past mistakes and promise to do better.
“The PAP has done so much for Singapore – just look at the country now from what it used to be,” she says. “Shouldn’t we give credit where credit is due? They’ve promised to make changes. Maybe we can give them another chance.”
Others are not so convinced. “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” tweets a management student, Ong Rei En.
At the political rallies, for which turnout has arguably been the highest in Singapore’s history, the energy is electric. An estimated 50,000 people crowded together one last time on Thursday at an outdoor stadium to wave blue flags and wield inflatable hammers, the symbol of the opposition Workers’ party. As the crowds chanted for change and raised their fists in hope, police with machine guns watched awkwardly nearby, the sweat on their brows betraying the night’s humidity.
Rally attendance does not always translate to the polling booth, however. In 2006, despite large crowds at opposition speeches, the PAP won 67% of the popular vote. Many Singaporeans have voiced concern that their ballots will be traced and their mortgages or jobs taken away from them if they vote for the opposition.
Asked if Singapore is another Egypt in the making, Skope One furrows his brow as he bundles his spray-paint cans into a backpack. “We don’t want the same problems,” he says finally. “But we definitely echo the same feelings.”
[published by The Guardian 6 May 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/06/singapore-elections-internet?INTCMP=SRCH]
The crowd goes wild for speaker Chen Show Mao of the opposition Workers' Party

Edging for a closer look at the speakers, Serangoon Stadium

Security bewildered by the crowds

Watching the speakers on the pitch below, Serangoon Stadium

On the way to the Workers' opposition political rally, May 5. A record 10,000 people were thought to be outside the stadium

The 50,000-strong rally on Thursday, May 5, for the opposition Workers' Party

Skope One puts the finishing touches on his mural

Cooling off young audience members with the Workers' Party 'Hammer' pamphlet

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Filed under Photo Essays, Society · Tagged with graffiti, lee hsien loong, singapore, singapore general elections, skope 1, skope one, workers' party


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A Missed Chance? Singapore’s Election Results

Posted by esmerized on May 9, 2011 · Leave a Comment


PAP candidate Tan Chuan Jin delivers a speech at a recently rally, a photo of PM Lee Hsien Loong behind him. Copyright Edwin Koo

It never promised to be a revolution. But Saturday’s election, which threatened the 50-year-stronghold of Singapore’s People’s Action Party, did portend a potential watershed.
Singaporeans have been ruled by the one-party PAP — or People’s Action Party — since independence from the British in 1965. Founded by Lee Kwan Yew and now presided over by Lee’s son, Lee Hsien Loong, the PAP is widely recognised for having turned this so-called third world colonial backwater into a first-world financial dynamo. The country now earns some $250bn in GNP every year.
But that success hasn’t come freely.
Dissent here is carefully and constructively muted. Lee Kwan Yew — who is regarded as the ‘father’ of Singapore — curbed any political discourse by bankrupting his critics through fines and defamation suits. Many of them were former colleagues working under Kwan Yew in the government, like the Singaporean lawyers JB Jerayetnam and Gopalan Nair. Jerayetnam was stripped of his ability to practice law after speaking out agains the PAP and went on to form the opposition Reform Party; Nair was jailed for three months for his views and later sought asylum in the US.
The over-arching result has been a populace of silent, zombie-like obeyers. Having been told first what to do by their colonial rulers, Singaporeans followed suit by obeying their new parliamentary leader. Rules were established, fines and sentences meted out. The lack of opposition, of dialogue, of energy, represented itself in its poor art and culture scene, lending the nation the (derided) moniker of ‘Singa-bore’.
That is why this year’s general election — which just came to pass on Saturday, May 7 — was such a significant one in this 5 million-strong nation. Some of the ‘zombies’ (as they are known to the expats who work here) had woken up and started to ask questions. They were speaking their minds — both anonymously, on the web, and outwardly, and called for lower house prices, higher wages and greater restrictions on immigration.
People in the West drew easy parallels with the Arab Spring, during which citizens afraid to speak out also turned to the anonymous internet to relay their qualms. As for Singapore actually engaging in the violence or revolution side of things, well, most everyone scoffed at the idea. “Revolt is very un-Singaporean,” one former government official told me. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t want more freedom.”
One (student) journalist, writing a response to my piece in the Guardian (http://tinyurI.com/5wx7374), asked a very valid question: “Can any Singaporean honestly say the she/he can conceive of a fellow Singaporean setting himself or herself on fire along Orchard Road or Shenton Way, as a result of desperate economic pressures or financial constraints?”
The answer, the author insinuates, is No.
The truth is that Singapore does not feel the same “desperate economic pressures or financial constraints” that many of those revolting in the Arab world have done. But does that mean that Singaporeans are not oppressed? Not in the least, one local told me. “When your basic needs are met, as ours here in Singapore are, what do you fight for next?” the 42-year-old office worker, wishing to remain anonymous, asked me. “You don’t fight for bread. You don’t fight for a roof over your head. You fight to be able to afford a flat. To be able to eat out once in a while. Under the government’s current economic policies, such niceties are not available to the majority of the population.”
How does one measure oppression, anyway — by how little food or money is available to a person? By how little freedom is available to a nation?
Whether they are Tunisian, Libyan, Bahraini or Singaporean, those revolting have shared one thing: rules that limit their dissent. As the Greek philosopher Euripides put it so many years ago, “This is slavery: not to speak one’s thought.” Should this still be the case, nearly 2,500 years later?