Daily Lessons from Life 05 May 2011 - Last Day of Campaigning

Did the tide turn for the ruling party after its leaders apologized?

I am not sure. The key question in the mind of many must surely be: what give? why did it take that long to apologize?

It is not unreasonable for this doubt to linger. Even the ruling party folks would have reacted the same if they were in the same situation.

It is good to see that many of the candidates have spoken. Some are more skilled in public speaking than the others. Yet, it is important to remember that Singapore politic cannot be like that of the USA where a single good performance on national TV can swing many voters!

It is indeed down to 2 schools of thoughts.

1. do not change what worked. What worked are: a. relatively clean and definitely fairly efficient government and bureaucracy; b. policies were conceived and passed very quickly with the belief that the elites had given enough thoughts to them and that they were the best policies; c. the recipients of the benefits of these policies will therefore be grateful mainly though there were some very small minority may get the wrong ends of things!

Vs.

2. it is not just about dollars and cents. People want to be respected. People want to be involved. People want to know why the best paid politicians in the world can be measured in a different standard when they expects to be measured with an even stricter standard? There must be accountability and fairness and justice for all. If there are more ungrateful citizens who enjoyed the benefits of the policies implemented by the government but were unhappy at not being explained to, then perhaps our educational system had failed.

Looking forward... If there is indeed some more opposition MPs after the polling day, may I wish that they perform their critical role of being critical and provocative but NOT confrontational. May the majority ruling party leaders realized that it is better to work with the new reality and learn to really harness the power of diversity. It may take a longer time to get more consensus at times but it will be worth it. Nature simply says a single organism cannot live forever without integrating with others.

So, there is a 3rd school of thought - extract the best of both schools and discard the worst.