THE TEMASEK REVIEW

From our Correspondent

[This article was adapted from a reply given to a reader]

In a previous article posted here recounting the PAP’s flagrant abuse of the GRC system to serve its own partisan interests, we were criticized by a reader for harping on the past without providing any viable ideas for building the future.

The past is equally as if not more important than the future because without understanding our own history, we will be ignorant about the deficiencies in the present system and hence remain contented with the status quo.

Only when we look at ourselves from the mirror of history we will realize how much more we need to do to prepare for the future, a future when all Singapore citizens can participate freely in contributing to the nation without the constant fear of reprisals from the ruling party.

The most important factor to help the opposition make any sort of progress lie in the citizenry.

An informed, educated, thinking and proactive citizenry is absolutely essential if we want to build a two-party system in Singapore.

If the citizenry remain ignorant, they will forever be deceived and misled by the lies, spin and propaganda of the state media.

If the citizenry do not bother to think, then they will never realize the importance of their civil and political rights.

If the citizenry is not proactive, we will never get young and promising Singaporeans to join opposition politics to contest against the PAP.

That’s what we have been trying to do – to tackle the root cause of our political malaise. How can we expect the political tsunami of Malaysia to reach our shores when most Singaporeans are disinterested in what is happening to their nation?

Our site is visited by many secondary and JC school students. Sometimes we received emails from them informing us that they never knew about the PAP’s ugly past from the history books till they read our articles which change their perspective completely.

Young Singaporeans born in the 1980s and 1990s came to know about Singapore’s post-independent history only through the glasses of the history textooks, journals and media approved by the ruling party. Very few of them had heard of Tan Wah Piow, Francis Seow, Jeyaretnam or Lee Siew Choh.

So we need to get down to basics, to make sure our young generation do not forget the past, such as the detention of Chia Thye Poh for 32 years without trial, the introduction of the Newspaper Printing Act in 1975 to control the media, the castration of Singapore’s Law Society in 1988 by LKY leading to the exile of Francis Seow and the injustices perpetuated on Tang Liang Hong.

Only when we have an informed electorate will the opposition even stand any chance of disloging the PAP. The young do not owe any allegiance to the PAP. They will have an open mind to discern the rights and wrongs for themselves. It is our moral responsibility to preserve the truth for posterity.

In a way, this site will be a barometer of the political awareness of Singaporeans.

In Malaysia, the alternative news sites are all ranked within the top 100 of their nation’s traffic. Once our alexa rank reach 100 and below, then we can be sure that the new media revolution and the political tsunami which hit Malaysia will arrive here. Right now, our traffic rank is only 945 which is far off from Xiaxue’s blog (197) and Today online (502). With such a pathetic traffic, the impact of the new media will be minimal.

What does this show? That Singaporeans are still more interested in mundane stuff than politics and current affairs. How can we expect them to lend their support to the opposition when they are not even aware of its existence and relevance in the first place?

It will take time to inculcate political awareness and knowledge in our youth, but we believe we will succeed eventually because we are on the right side of history.

As Sun Yat Sen once said during his endeavors to topple the Qing dynasty – those who did not follow the world trends will soon be rendered obsolete and one-party authoritarian states are becoming obsolete just like a century earlier when feudal dynasties are being replaced by modern republics all over in the world.

Everywhere in Asia, the previously impenetratable walls of repression are showing signs of cracks and are collapsing one by one from South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and now to Japan.

It is only a matter of time before an Obama emerge in Singapore and kick the PAP out of office like what the DPJ did to LDP, the Japanese version of the PAP. It may take 10 or 50 years, but one day we will be there and our most important task right now is to keep the PAP’s unspoken legacy alive for our young minds for they are the voters of the future.

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