In case you can’t read Chinese, we’ve (amateurishly) translated this interview published today in the Chinese morning daily:
“We do not view them as enemies,” said Dr Goh, revealing his attitude towards going up against the PAP. To him, as a credible party, the Workers’ Party’s goal is to push for constructive politics via debate and innovative ideas. He pointed that politics is not only about winning or losing, and it is not the Workers’ Party’s intention to stand simply in opposition to the ruling PAP.
The night before, an anonymous letter has turned this Workers’ Party candidate into an overnight talking point. But, after spending an entire night answering queries from the media and denying the allegations of an affair, he did not cancel our scheduled interview yesterday, and met with us at a coffeeshop in Bedok North to discuss with us his thoughts on constructive politics.
Dr Goh is an Associate Professor at the NUS Department of Sociology. For an academic sociologist to emerge among the candidates of the Opposition, this has made many curious. During the interview, Dr Goh approached many topics; at times with the perspective of a sociologist, at times offering ideas from the perspective of a legislator. He switched between both hats comfortably.
Dr Goh said he did not view the PAP as enemies. Just that he believes that the PAP is a party that operates on a particular “thinking framework”. He believes that constructive politics is a kind of “game theory of ideas”, and not about “mutual criticism and obfuscation, nor about “finding candidates or putting together a team at the last minute”. He said: “That kind of talk is for the purpose of ‘winning’, to see who wins and who loses. That’s something I’m very much against.”
Social “re-politicisation”? Not allowing Singapore to lose its advantage
In GE2011, Mr Low Thia Khiang’s decision to switch from Hougang to Aljunied won him a GRC. By beating out PAP’s team including the then Foreign Minister George Yeo, the party’s victory was viewed by many as a “watershed” moment. Since then, Singapore politics had entered a “new normal”.
To Dr Goh, this “new normal” or social “re-politicisation” will not cause Singapore to lose its advantage, or cause it to decline. He pointed out that the PAP’s warning that a two-party state would cause the country to stagnate and create friction, in fact, was a sign of its own fears. He said: “This type of thinking sometimes is a result of a kind of distrust towards citizens. To me, that’s very odd.”
Dr Goh joined the Workers’ Party as a volunteer in GE2011. In talking about the elections back then, he said that Mr Low’s decision to contest in Aljunied was to send a strong message to voters for them to consider: did they really believe that Singapore needed an Opposition? At the time, perhaps voters took a long-term view and believed that a party in power for so long would ultimately fail due to corruption. So that’s how they made their decision, Dr Goh suggested.
Dr Goh said that even if the Workers’ Party had failed, it would have allowed voters to imagine the possibility of a different future. To him, this was the greater symbolism that GE2015 held.
In this election, Dr Goh may be fielded in East Coast, or go at it alone in Fengshan. But in all honesty, he said, when he started helping out, or even after he joined the WP as a member in 2003, he had never thought of becoming a candidate. He had joined purely with the desire to help the party become more professional and improve its internal processes.
He described his decision to stand in the election as the result of feeling some kind of “spiritual calling” after GE2011. He also viewed it as a kind of “national service”. He said the biggest difference between a politician and an academic was that a politician, in a way, is more like a “future academic” – someone who has to look at the future and consider different scenarios.
Dr Goh is married and has one son. Yesterday, during the interview, he did not speak much about the poison pen letter. But he had strong criticism for “gutter politics”, and said that on the journey to improving Singapore political culture, the development of the Parliament and media was very important.
Daniel Goh makes police report about poison pen letter
Dr Goh has denied the contents of the letter, calling it “baseless allegations”. Yesterday, he posted on Facebook to say that he had made a police report in his neighbourhood police station. Last evening, he posted yet another note, saying that a Zaobao reporter had been in touch to say that he had a limited amount of time to refute the letter’s allegations, or else the paper would run the story.
He said: “In my communication with the Zaobao journalist last night, I was given till a certain time to refute the poison pen letter or the story will have to go to print. The story went online some time before the time given to me. This forced my hand to respond to the baseless allegations and rumours.
“Once I made the public statement to refute the allegations, the other media outlets reported the statement, and thus the rumours.“
He said in the same post: “Our media system is broken, but I trust we have good journalists in it from my interactions so far. We should debate and discuss how to fix it.”
Zaobao responds
Regarding the letter, Workers’ Party Central Executive Council member Png Eng Huat told Zaobao: “I think, we welcome anyone who wants to scrutinise our candidates. If you have any evidence, come and talk to us. Because over the Internet, over email, social media, these are all anonymous. If you have any evidence, please come and tell us.”
Responding to Dr Goh’s Facebook post, Zaobao editor Goh Sin Teck said: “Regarding Dr Goh’s Facebook post, we wish to clarify, in fact, that night we tried to reach him more than once to get his response to this matter. The first time he responded was that night, August 27, around 10 pm. Our reporter had a deeper conversation with him to try and find out the truth. Our reporter told him, in order to meet the off-stone time, if he had any additional comments, he would need to contact us before 11.20pm.
“But because there was a miscommunication, Zaobao Online, based on his first communication, uploaded the story before 11.20pm. We realised this oversight later, which was why at 11.15pm when we received his last communication, we immediately published his rebuttal. We also published his response on the print version of Zaobao on August 28.
We wish to thank Dr Goh for not cancelling our scheduled interview, and for believing that in this incident, we did not act with any malice or ill feeling.”
Source: http://themiddleground.sg
