chicken rice with a side order of PAP

All we wanted was a nice Sunday family lunch. But we got a little more than that when we got to this Joo Chiat chicken rice stall (really yummy by the way...it's right next to the Esso/Mobil petrol station on the corner of East Coast Rd and Lorong Stangee, fyi).

The PAP team was doing their walk-about, garnering votes for the upcoming election.

They came to every table, shook our hands, gave us a flyer each, and said 'Remember to vote PAP'. That was it. No attempt to even engage us on their politics or anything. [Oh yeah, except for the fact that before handing me a flyer, the guy took one look at me and said that i looked like i was too young to vote, which i took as an insult, considering i am 27. He dutifully handed me a flyer after that.]

I wonder if all the politicians looking for votes go through this procedure in their walk-abouts. That would be too bad. You'd think these kinds of moments would be the best times to actually engage the electorate, talk to people about how they're feeling about the elections, what they think about the political party's platform, what they're happy with, what they're not happy with, etc. Especially since there are no other real opportunities during election time to do this. Election rallies are mostly a time for grand-standing, which is fine, i don't have a problem with that. A rally space lends itself more to masses of people listening to a few select speakers. It's not really an ideal space for public dialogue. And there are no public forums or election debate sessions, not even televised ones, where politicians can debate their platforms and where people can challenge politicians to state their position on specific issues.

This experience just felt like advertising. I couldn't get a closer shot, but in this picture on the right you'll be able to see that the walk-about-ers were accompanied by more folks dressed in the PAP's signature white clothing on a lorry with the easily-identifiable lightning bolt symbol. They chanted "PAP, PAP" with their fists raised as the lorry drove past. They were accompanied a little later by more PAP-ers on bicycles. All this man-on-the-street stuff is ofcourse quite deceiving - you need to put up quite a bit of money to be able to run in the elections in the first place, and we all know the gross disparity between Ministers' salaries and the salaries of the majority of the population.

In any case, chicken rice with a side order of PAP that you didn't ask for sure makes for interesting lunchtime conversation.