11/22/2010

SDP and three doctorates

Who says SDP is a lost cause? Many may have the impression that with Chee Soon Juan at the helm and the associated bad press and publicity in the media, the SDP is like dead horse. And in the coming GE the SDP could just be another no horse run. Just when people thought the SDP is a goner, in came two doctorates in the form of Vincent Wijeysingha and James Gomez. The trinity of doctorates will now helm a revived and revitalised SDP. SDP can now claim to be able to attract talented individuals and professionals to join its ranks, something that the Workers Party has been quite successful recently. In Vincent Wijeysingha there is a history of pro establishment blood in his father, the renown ex principal of the famous Raffles Institution. Passing through his hands during his tenureship were several ministers and many MPs and luminaries of the Singapore society. With such a scintillating background, it is not easy to throw mud at him and get them stick. James Gomez is no small weight either. His entanglement with the Elections Committee in two previous elections have made him a household name for good or for worst. His experience in the academia and his overseas stint could be put to good use in the coming election. Resourcefulness and financial resources will be his strength and SDP could benefit from them. Spending so many years overseas, in Sweden, Australia and Japan speaks well of his finances and networking. Now that the SDP have two additional bigwigs of no lesser mantle than the PAP candidates to show, they could produce more surprises when the election approaches. More names of professionals could appear at the same time as the PAP introduces its slate of new candidates. The Workers Party should have some good candidates in their sleeves. SDP too will not do too badly when its full deck of cards are revealed. The next GE would be an interesting poker game for now.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can be sure there will be furious diggings going on in the backyard.

You can also be sure that there will be people checking the cupboards for skeletons.

You can also be sure that, like the guy who challenged the Presidency years ago, some black soot will be thrown at them soon, maybe by past colleagues, acquaintances or boot-licking journalists, to tarnish their gleaming reputation and pedigree lineage.

Or, if that cannot work, you can be sure they will tell voters that academic qualifications no longer is the most important criteria in choosing Parliamentarians.

Don't worry. They have the best fixers in town.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

I'll be very surprised if any of these parties can form govt.

I looked at their economic policies, especially "It's about you" -- sure matilah singapura one. i.e. within 20 years (my guessimate) Singapore will be a steaming turd floating aimlessly at the arse end of the Straits of Malacca -- SE Asia's saddest story of one time economic superiority, completely fucked as all the capital has been squandered or taken off elsewhere.

The PAP, if they lose, will deserve their loss. Their (Lee Kuan Yew's) biggest error: underestimating Singaporeans and treating them like children. After awhile people have had enough of his bullshit, his neurotic fixation on muzzling any dissent, criticism of himself, his party his "better-than-perfect" government.

Add to that, the censorship, the ball-licking whores of the local media, government capitalism (GLC's)...and a suppression of freedom of expression, civil liberties, the use of the police and courts to advance political agendas.

Their big mistake put simply:
You can't separate ECONOMIC LIBERTY and INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM -- because they are integrated (abstracts).

Because the PAP are such motherfucking assholes -- and arrogant no less -- about civil liberties and individual freedom, they are going to kena wallop as the majority of Singaporeans are educated, wealthy, well-travelled and have options.

The other consequence of PAP failure is that they've pushed their "silenced" citizens to open and waiting arms of the left -- the western-style progressive/ social liberals -- who, sure, will give people the freedom of expression, speech and dissent...even throw in a free press, gay rights and a minimum wage for good measure, but tax and regulate the economy until...well...matilah singapura.

These folks on the other side commit the same cognitive error: trying to separate economic liberty and individual freedom. Here they "give you" individual freedom, but control the economic liberty.

Singapore is far too small and vulnerable to have "less than" open economy. And it is too fragile to run a welfare state.

But Doctors x 3 are certainly going to try. And lest anyone forgets:

The people get the government they deserve.

I don't vote, so I don't care, and thus am not to blame.

Whoever gets in and forms government are going to do what they are going to do, and any which way it swings, the people will get "an experience".

I'll be by the hotel pool sipping my mocktail and surfing the net, and getting a massage by legal-aged twins in thongs

Anonymous said...

WALAU Ooi..........
never expect Redbean to be so elitist man!
Doctorate damn big meh, doctorate means good, competent calibre meh ??

No paper qualification means no brain, no heart and no ball lah ?

The educated scums are causing all the woes in the world with their sickening scheming intelligence.

The Local Cabinet(Parliament) is also filled with scholarly worms.

How do You like them ?

patriot

Anonymous said...

I don't believe any other party will win a majority to form a govt in the next GE unless there is a fluke. Oh dear, a fluke seems quite likely at the moment.

If our system can withstand a change in political leadership just because a new party is elected to run this place, then the PAP has failed in what they were doing all these years. By now the system should be stable enough to take the changes as part and parcel of a democracy. We are no longe a third world country. We hav enough talents at all levels to keep the system going.

Patriot, you are quite right in a way. The most dangerous people are the highly qualified people. The financial experts are ruining the world's financial system and are more fightening than the lawyers and doctors and insurers, and the politicians of course.

Ok don't worry about a doctorate. I can get you one quite easily: )

Wally Buffet said...

Doctorates or no, I really hope that they would make up their minds and not flit from one party to another like dragonflies.

We hear it so often about political opposition luminaries jumping ship from one party and the next moment, he has joined another. WTF.

And the thing that escapes me is how all these opposition buggers cannot somehow get their act together and coalesce into one solid party to face off with the encircled thunderbolt. Simple thing like this also cannot do, how to run a country when they are actually elected? Guess, compared to the developed democrazies of the US, UK, Aust and NZ, we are still little boys playing political masak masak.

This inability to do big things collectively means that all these opposition figures are more interested in their own personal agendas and on a ego trip rather than solving the problems of the nation.

While the incumbents are by no means perfect, it makes sense to be with the devil you know rather than the angel you don't know.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

Wally

> it makes sense to be with the devil you know rather than the angel you don't know. <

In 1950's Singapore there was this young, fiery, eloquent, overseas-educated lawyer named Lee Kuan Yew who was honing his political muscle by cutting deals all over the place -- with the communist party, barisan, unions -- you name it -- he had to form a power-base or the objective of self-determination would be lost.

You simply cannot have politics which are "clean" without the deceit, power-plays, jockeying for positions and all the delightfully "dark-side' of human behaviour coming to bear. Not possible. Human nature is what it is: essentially socio-political APES with large brains and overly-large adrenal glands.

Anyway, many of my dad's clients were the towkays and they were clearly worried about this young upstart on the political scene. Under the Brits they had free markets. They used to tell my dad: "We don't care about politics. All we want to do is to be left alone to make money".

The PAP nearly killed off this true-blue Singaporean spirit of entrepreneurship and priate enterprise. When the PAP came in -- as SOCIALISTS, don't forget -- they went on a rampage seizing private property and trying to "dissolve" family (for "social programs") businesses which had been built up over generations, hammer any opposition to them (using gangsters) and wacking former political allies -- unions etc.

So, anything goes post-election. Alliances in politics are short-lived. The ends justify any means needed to achieve those ends.

The first casualties of political action are individual freedom, civil liberty and private property. You need all three as unfettered as possible if you are going to have real, sustainable wealth-creating CAPITALISM.

Whichever party or individual wins, are going to control the above: they will tell you what your freedoms are, they will tell you what your civil liberties are, and they will define for you what you can own and how much "extortion" (protection money) you need to pay the state to "ensure" your ownership.

Anonymous said...

Let's give the PAP a good fight in the next general election.

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

for this GE, I'm going to get fancy, since S'poreans are now more "sophisticated", stylish and classy, and therefore love all things European:

"Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite"
try it!

Original documented Author: A guy called "Joe"

Learn it in French so you can impress your fellow pseudo- intellectuals when you hang-out at Dome, Starbucks, Spinelli's (Orchard Road one famous for "poseurs"), Coffee Bean and Kopitiam (for the fake mat salehs with their fake FM-radio mat saleh accents to do "reverse psychology" and become fake locals).

These days you are not a true Singaporean until you can out-slang an ang moh. :-)

Anonymous said...

All this talk about sentiments on the ground being heavily against PAP, doctorates and PhDs in opposition camps.... Have we forgotten that at the end of the day it's still the PAP that deliver the ballot boxes to the Counting Centres? Anything can happen to the ballot boxes in those high, massive, buses with tinted windows especially when the opposition parties aren't allowed to have anyone on board to escort the boxes to make sure PAPs monkeys don't do anything funny like stuffing ballot slips.

The opposition also better invest in modern, holographic tamper resistant stickers used to seal the ballot boxes.

Anonymous said...

Be wary of clever crooks and cunning politicians, these folks have no conscience.
Singaporeans should know them well by now, they are everywhere in Sin.

Anonymous said...

The Opposition Parties should be wary.

Political parties have always been destroyed from within.

The Chinese have a wise saying that roughly means: Taking care of outside thieves is easier than coping with thieves living in the same house.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

I got your message. Many don't.

Anonymous said...

I'm feeling really positive for SDP this round and the elections to come! I think they are going up!