Thots on the PE BE

WP wins Punggol East by-election - CNA

Certainly a watershed moment that has gotten everyone talking about a general election more than 3 years away.

WP is talking a good talk, saying all the strategically nice, calming, non-threatening words which have served them well so far.

The PAP, predictably, sounded a little surprised and deflated, but also a little bit petulant. Can't imagine what Michael Palmer is feeling right now ...

I recall PM Lee saying at the last GE (in a pseudo-threat manner) that if there were too many opposition MPs, he might have to think about fixing them, etc etc, instead of properly governing the country.

That's bollocks, in my view. You either sign up for the long term and do your best, or you lose the elections. The next bunch of people coming in, are not coming in to destroy the country anyway. If they do a bad job, then they get kicked out in 5 years, and you come back in. That's why it's called a democracy. You campaign on good policies, and Singaporeans are intelligent and educated enough to decide whether your policies are crap or not.

The fact that the PAP still lost (and by a huge margin, too), despite pulling out all stops, campaigning in a gentlemanly fashion (I do give the campaign strategists credit for this), announcing big friendly policies, and having almost the entire PAP top brass stumping for their candidate, is quite a wake-up call.

Looking ahead, I predict the PAP will have to shift gears. Can't imagine that they would resort to tactics of old, so perhaps they will resort to even more populism. That would be a mistake, because there are real problems to be solved, and those solutions, if any, will definitely take time.

Hopefully and realistically, this should make the PAP (at least those in government) realise that their answers to the big issues so far have been far from satisfactory to the common man. And hopefully, this will lead to more well-considered policies, or even tweaks which make it easier to foresee a future for all of us living here.


Then again, I predicted a comfortable PAP victory, so what do I know?

/ac