MS LEE Li Lian said something interesting yesterday about respecting the voters. Punggol East voters had rejected her, and it didn’t make sense for her to stay in Parliament as a Non-constituency MP (NCMP), she said. Some people applaud her for her principled decision, others wonder if this was just an excuse for her disenchantment with the election results.
She doesn’t want to be a voice in Parliament, never mind that she only lost by a whisker. If she takes up the seat, she would be the first rejected incumbent in Parliament, unless you count Mrs Lina Chiam as a proxy for her husband Mr Chiam See Tong in the last Parliament.
Actually, her position isn’t so different from how the Opposition viewed the NCMP scheme when it was first introduced in 1984. NCMPs can talk in the House but they don’t have the critical powers of voting over money Bills or constitutional amendments. The several loud objections to the scheme was considered a sop to the losers, and the resistance waned until it looked like a prize to be fought over within political parties. Remember how there was some talk that Mr Eric Tan wanted to be an NCMP but the Workers’ Party decided that the seat be given to Mr Gerald Giam? That seems to have resulted in some kind of rupture in the party.
In fact, the scheme appeared to have honed the political instincts of past NCMPs and given them a taste for the cut-and-thrust of debate. It is worth noting that the three NCMPs of the last Parliament have been extremely active in engaging the front bench. They took their jobs seriously, although it might be said that without a constituency to attend to, they have more time to bone up.
Never mind Ms Lee’s motive for rejecting the seat, the key phrase she used is: “respecting the voters”.
In this case, she behaved far better than Reform Party’s Kenneth Jeyaretnam who acted like a petulant child when he realised which way the wind was blowing on Polling Night.
“All this is, is a mandate for authoritarianism and brainwashing. It shows what you do when you control everybody’s housing, you control their savings, you control their jobs because you’re the major employer, you control all the media and there’s no independent elections department.
“So all I see is similar margins in North Korea and China, it’s just like the Chinese Communist Party and I guess Singaporeans get the government they deserve so I don’t want to hear any more complaints.”
That was highly disrespectful of the voter. Whether a person likes or dislikes the results, the fact that cannot change is that close to 70 per cent of voters voted for the PAP. This was not a split electorate. That’s the way the cookie crumbles in a democracy with a first-past-the-post electoral system. Live with it.
Most opposition politicians were, in fact, stinting in their remarks about bowing to the will of the people, preferring to attribute that collective will to the worry of a freak election result, the Electoral Boundary changes, the AHPETC and the propensity of the population for bribes. No one said that perhaps, their policies and programmes didn’t resonate with the people, that they had read them wrong, that they would have to recalibrate their positions to win them over. If they did, they didn’t say so in the fulsome way the PAP did after GE2011 – an expression of abject humility.
The WP’s Daniel Goh, however, was one person who took the humble route: “The people has spoken and the collective wisdom is always right. Analysts will fall over one another in the coming weeks to discern the hearts of voters. For me, the meaning of the results is clear. It is a ringing endorsement of the PAP’s programme of going back to its centre-left roots and PM Lee’s leadership”.
“It is also a nod to WP’s brand of rational and responsible politics, since the seats won in GE2011 were returned. But with caveats: work harder, and buck up, in both town management and Parliament; less egoism and opportunism, more depth, humility and courage, more listening and walking.” (PS. He got the bit about seats returned technically right; the one lost SMC was from a by-election).
Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam was very polite when he said that “it was important that the opposition reflect on what happened – not just in terms of whether the electorate didn’t know better or the electorate made a mistake – but how they could have done better in their strategies”.
You wouldn’t expect the PAP to advise the Opposition on how they could have better strategised, but one sure thing is this: Don’t always believe social media. This GE2015, social media distorted the extent of Opposition support. TNP quoted an academic based in Australia who said: “Imagine if you read the Facebook comments whacking PAP. Many PAP supporters would think it better to keep their mouths shut before they are (verbally) abused.”
In other words, the silent majority kept silent.
Singapore Democratic Party’s (SDP) Chee Soon Juan was quick to think of the future. He suggested a closer working relationship with the WP in preparation for the next GE. This will probably depend on, among other things, whether the WP will forget his earlier proposal that they collaborate in contesting the Punggol East by-election two years ago by having the SDP in Parliament and the WP run the town council should their candidate win.
Let bygones be bygones?
This seems to be the rallying cry of the PAP leaders post GE2015. DPM Tharman noted that shorn of the rhetoric, the Opposition proposals aren’t too different from what the PAP is doing. (Maybe this is a backhanded compliment: that the Opposition can’t come up with anything too different). The PAP seems keen to embrace the diversity of viewpoints and the need for alternative voices, which it probably realises it shouldn’t dismiss despite its huge mandate. You can view this cynically: it wants to co-opt opposition voices into its fold. Or you can keep an open mind and see whether it holds to its promise to engage the people more fully and, more importantly, early.
You have the younger leaders such as Mr Heng Swee Keat and Mr Tan Chuan-Jin calling on all sides, including Opposition supporters, to find common ground.
Given the way the (not metaphorical) wind is blowing, there’s plenty. There’s the haze above ground, for starters. We can at least close ranks against that!
Source: http://themiddleground.sg
