GE2015 COMMENT: Elections a time for big issues and big ideals

Kirsten Han is a Singaporean blogger, journalist and filmmaker. She is also involved in the We Believe in Second Chances campaign for the abolishment of the death penalty. A social media junkie, she tweets at @kixes. The views expressed are her own.

Elections are looming – we know this for sure because the police have already come out to warn against mixing Hungry Ghost Festival events with political rallies. It’s the biggest democratic exercise that Singaporeans get to participate in, yet once again there are somewhat depressing and even alarming comments being made about elections in Singapore.

First, we have candidates talking, as usual, about things like covered walkways, lifts and swimming complexes, as well as comments on the running of town councils – doubtless a swipe at the Workers’ Party over the never-ending Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC) saga.

Then we have the People’s Action Party (PAP) talking about “leadership renewal”, trying to position this upcoming general election as a question of determining the next generation of leaders – assumed to be PAP, of course. In fact, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean even said that the election is not about opposition voices in Parliament, since the Singapore Constitution already guarantees nine members of opposition in Parliament under the Non-Constituency Member of Parliament scheme. He also added that the opposition presence had “no bearing” on PAP’s policies.

If general elections are merely about amenities in HDB estates and leadership renewal in the PAP, then why bother having them at all? We could simply elect town councillors and do away with parliamentary elections completely, leaving everything in the hands of the party and the nine token members of opposition with limited voting rights. Candidates for town councils would then be free to talk as much as they want about pools and fitness corners, and the PAP-dominated Parliament would be free to enact its policies without the hassle of having to seek a mandate every four to five years.

A general election is a time when citizens of a country determine the direction in which the want to go for the next term. It is a time when we should be gathering, not to take petty potshots and swipes at one another, but to talk about what we want to see in this Singapore that we all live in.

There is no better time to talk about what values our country should have, and how we would expect our elected leaders to act accordingly. We need to decide on what qualities we, as voters, want to see in our Members of Parliament, and not just what different parties tell us to expect. Beyond the useful facilities in HDB estates we should be thinking about national issues such as the affordability of healthcare or discrimination against minority groups, and even matters of foreign policy relating to Singapore’s position in ASEAN and the rest of the world.

Parliamentary elections give us the boot up the bum that we need to think about big ideas and big ideals, and the makeup of the house in which our laws are debated and passed into practice.

Voters are not responsible for a party’s leadership renewal; it is the party who has to convince us that their new candidates are worthy of being leaders in the first place. The fact that the PAP has formed the government for all of our independent history does not make them a fixed fact of life in Singapore.

It is ultimately all up to the electorate, and the elections provide a range of parties and options from which to choose. In that sense perhaps DPM Teo has a point: the election is not about voting in opposition voices, but about choosing the voices we think need to be heard, even if they are from the opposition.