It's about time!
- well, not actually. It's really about elections
I have decided to blame the lack of updates on this blog on the impending Singapore general elections. How exactly the elections could have caused a neglect of this blog is anyone's guess at the moment. An announcement is expected any day now. At any rate, it is therefore not without a certain degree of irony that today's post will be about the general elections.
PARTY TIME! - an election round-up for those who don't really care about the elections
The first real hint that there would be a general election called soon occured in October last year, when a high ranking government official showed up in Aljunied - unique in that more than one person contests a seat there - and said, in not so many words, that the government would be spending $132 million renovating the flats ... so you better vote for them.
Since then, a whole bunch of other places have received similar renovation promises.
Not content with just the mass home renovation, the incumbent government also announced that it would give people free money... for nothing. They just felt like it. Of course this is not how they phrased it. Theirs was something about how they were sharing the fruits of an improving economy, or they were sharing the economics of improving fruit or the improving fruits of economy... something like that.
Nobody really knows the official reason. Everyone just assumes it's because the government wants you to vote for them.
So, for the same reason people love money falling on the sky, the average Singaporean loves elections.
The upcoming one - Apr 15 is the best guess at the moment - will be the Prime Minister's first election since coming into office and, gosh darn it, he wants to make it a good one. To achieve this, the governemnt have deployed a cunning two-fold strategy.
1. Give people a lot of money/renovate their flat for no reason
2. Tell them that the opposition political parties want to ruin the country
The first strategy - as I already elaborated - is fairly straightforward. They give you money/renovate your house and you vote for them. It's an age old election gimmick, executed to perfection here.
In fact, sometimes I wonder if the whole idea of building lifts which don't stop on every floor is just so they can come and improve it every time there is an election.
The second strategy employed by the government sounds simple, but is a little more problematic. Problematic because, the government does not want to win by virtue of depicting the opposition as a crap bunch of lazy slack arses who have not prepared properly, are completely fixated on getting their deposit back and are so incompetent that the country will implode in a wild unruly debt-ridden, racial rioting mess should they ever get into power. Not that they don't want you to believe that. They do. But they also want to beat credible opposition.
On the one hand, they want you to know that if you vote for the opposition. the country will be destroyed. On the other, they want it to seem as if the oposition is quite attractive and they won because they are great. You understand the dillemma.
All this leads to somewhat schizophrenic interviews.
Journalist: Sir, what do you think of the opposition's latest manifesto?
MP: It's a steaming pile of horse doo-doo that reflects their poor understanding of what makes this country great. And the people know it.
Journalist: So, how do you rate your opponents?
MP: They look very prepared this year. They are very talented people. I expect a very strong fight. Much more so than in the past elections. We cannot take anything for granted.
Journalist: And how do you see the voter split?
MP: I am confident of getting at least 99 per cent of the vote, which leaves about maybe 11 votes for my opposition. Hopefully he can get enough to get his deposit back. Maybe if his whole family, all the uncles and aunties get together...
In the meantime, the opposition has not been sitting still. Last week they banded together and had a top level "pow-wow", planning and going over every little nuance and detail of how they intend to lose this election badly.
The first order of business was whether they intended to lose it on nomination day by not fielding enough candidates or wait till after the polling to lose. It is thought that losing on nomination day would help the candidates who actually run lose less badly, on the assumption that once the overall winner is already known, people pay less attention and may accidentally vote for them.
In the end, after many tense hours, they decided to field candidates for more than half the seats - which increases their chance of winning the elections from "not a chance in hell" to ... wait... no...it's still "not a chance in hell".
A friend once wisely said: "It's like a story book. When you know the ending, the process isn't quite as interesting"
