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Thursday, May 4
Sitting silent wearing Sunday best.
The streets of Singapore as we know them are currently littered (for lack of a better word) with posters and banners screaming political propaganda. PAP signs reminiscent of the tags on our kindergarten uniforms; banners reminding us that we're united or something like that. Yet my SBS bus zooms past and nobody takes a second glance.
Election Day, whatever else it may be - is to most merely a slightly less celebrated public holiday. This whole kerfuffle over contesting is just a big show, if you ask me. I mean, if you really consider it seriously. Like seriously.
Workers' Party against the PAP?
That's like the next door coffeeshop western food stall vying with Mcdonald's for market share. Completely pointless and futile. I'm not saying Macs is the best - they can substitute beef patties for cardboard and sell them as cheeseburgers, melt their ice-cream and call it a milkshake, steadily add extra to the value of their Extra Value Meals - but still we know they're gonna rule the world someday.
As long as people get their Hello Kitty toys once in awhile (read: progress package), are allowed to tap their ez-link cards to earn points, and manage to be wholly convinced that they're lovin' it - who's gonna complain? We all know we're living good lives. We've progressed from a little fishing village, yada yada... We're comfortable. Who's gonna really make a stand about the democracy we never really had, when life inside this cage protects us from the jungle out there.
It's easy to poke fun at our pseudo-democratic system, its easy to say that we should have freedom! But when it really comes down to it, I think stability comes at a price. Every government has it shortcomings, nothing is perfect. Democracy sure as hell isn't - look who the US got out of it.
So complain all we like, I say the PAP is here stay forever and ever amen.
Least until the Japs decide to attack us again and there emerges a new hero who brings us all out of our impoverished state and builds HDB flats on any landspace he can find.
Cast your votes, friends.