thoughts before Polling Day

Only a day left before all Singaporeans, or at least all Singaporeans living in a contested ward, get to exercise their democratic right to vote. Oops, I mean democratic duty. Now there’s an oxymoron for ya. Voting is compulsory in Singapore, which, to me, is not very democratic. Doesn’t having the right to vote also mean that you should have the right to not vote?

The last 9 days of campaigning have been extremely frustrating.

The Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) has spent the entire campaign period refusing to discuss real issues and simply engaging in the “politics of distraction”, as James Gomez so succinctly put it. From suing the SDP for defamation to boasting about ‘First World’ politics to the James Gomez-minority certificate saga, the PAP has spent the last 9 days bashing the Opposition political parties and playing up their own ‘accomplishments’ as the ruling party of Singapore since Independence. They’ve continued to claim responsibility for the rags-to-riches story of postcolonial Singapore (but whose rags? Whose riches?) and continued to dangle sweet crunchy carrots (lift upgrading) and wave threatening sticks (electing Opposition equals chaos and Singapore’s ‘successes’ going down the drain) to try and get re-elected.

Meanwhile, the Workers’ Party (WP) has begun to prove itself as a formidable Oppositional force, gaining popularity (have you not seen the pictures of the turn-outs at WP rallies?) and spending a lot of time talking about things that affect peoples’ lives. They haven’t really said much about their position on international and foreign policy issues like Free Trade Agreements, American imperialism and resource wars, but I’ll consider forgiving them for that considering that Singapore’s geographical small-ness makes for a General Election where all local, national and international issues are compressed together, which means that people will be more likely to focus on stuff that they are closest to on the ground. I’m particularly impressed with the fact that the WP has challenged the incestuous relationship between the trade union bureaucracy and the government. As far as I know, Singapore is the only country in the world where the trade unions support a right-wing conservative, pro-business, anti-worker political party. I’m not saying trade unions elsewhere aren’t full of screwed up politics, but usually if they support a political party it’s a social democratic one that at least claims to want some reformist policies that benefit workers. Maybe this is where the Singapore Tourism Board got its inspiration for its slogan – ‘Uniquely Singapore’.

In another corner of the ring is the Singapore Democratic Party, which may not have done a good job of garnering support from many voters, but has continued to push the envelope on exposing the excesses the ruling party and the rest of the ruling class by refusing to back down on engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, even at great cost to its members.

Finally, there is the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA). In my mind, this is the weakest political party we have. Aside from the enigma surrounding Mr Chiam See Tong for being one of only 2 Opposition candidates currently in office, no other SDA candidate has made any lasting impact and they don’t really have a firm platform on anything.

This is where I believe the WP slogan ‘You Have A Choice’ fails. In a context where one political party has ruled the country for years without strong contest, simply posing an alternative to it is very meaningful, certainly I would agree with that. But we also have to ask what kind of alternative? Cos there never is just one. There are many other ways the country could be governed. There are many other ways we could live together in this society.

And that’s another thing about this General Election, and also the political environment in Singapore generally – people rarely mention anything about ideology. We don’t hear the political parties being classified as left-wing or right-wing or centrist very often; in fact I’ve never heard it done in the mainstream media. I find that bizarre, although not altogether surprising, since when you mask your ideology you mask your intent, and if your intent is to stay in a position of power then you’re not going to be too popular with the masses.

So anyway, I still can’t decide how I’m going to vote on Saturday. It’s funny cos I’ve never really taken any meaningful interest in electoral politics before, partly because I’ve never had the opportunity to vote, partly because I’ve never really seen what difference my one vote would make, and partly because I believe democracy is about a lot more than simply voting for someone to ‘represent’ you (as far as anyone can represent any group of people – which is not very far) once in a while.

The ‘choice’ in my constituency is between the PAP and the SDA. Like I said before, I don’t think the SDA is much of an alternative to the PAP other than in name. However, I do see the value of voting Opposition as a way to send a message to the ruling party that it doesn’t have complete and total support.

I’ve also thought about spoiling my ballot. There would be uncountable ways to do this – marking an X on both parties, not marking anything, marking a question mark, writing a message across the card, I don’t know, something like ‘This is not a choice’ or whatever. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some legal clause somewhere that says spoiling your ballot is illegal. I’m sure there are people who do it; I wonder how many. Cos ballot-spoiling can be a pretty cool mass action to point out the inadequacies of electoral politics.

Now there’s something meaningful to think about over the next 32 hours.

ps: It's way past my bedtime so my apologies for not adding any links. You're just gonna have to google it if you don't know what i'm referencing.