Rebuttal to Kirsten Han's blog

Kirsten Han joining GE talks, but a bit out of tune.

This is her starter :
<<The upcoming general election is not about electing opposition voices into Parliament. Or so the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) would like you to believe. No, the upcoming general election is actually about electing the next generation of PAP leaders to govern the country.

That this completely misrepresents the point of parliamentary elections should be clear. But what is more troubling for Singapore is the way in which the PAP is treated as a fixed point in the country’s political landscape, a certainty that voters are expected to facilitate (if they know what’s good for them).>>

By her disagreement with what PAP says, we understand her that this coming election is really about electing opposition voices into Parliament.

She is more pointed in another paragraph way below. So our understanding of her assertion that GE is about electing opposition into Parliament is not very far from the truth. This is what she said subsequently :

<<This might be acceptable for some time, as it appears to have been to the electorate for over 50 years. But the power imbalance leaves us all in a vulnerable position, where we just have to cross our fingers and hope that those in power continue to make good decisions and share the values that ordinary people would like to see in our society.>>

Never in the history of democracy is General Elections about electing oppositions into Parliament. By the way the reason why there is such a thing call "Opposition" is because of "Failure".

General Elections will always be about forming government. You go to the polls because of the expiry date of the government. These are the absolute defines of General Elections. All else are interpretations thereof.

So why is having "Oppositions" a result of failure? The basic failure occurs when contesting parties fail to win over all citizens to its side by means of votes.

In reality getting all people to agree in all things is never a possibility. Not even two persons can agree on all things. Where in democratic competition, political parties must foremost endeavour to satisfy all people, not some people. Hence all political parties must put forth itself the capacity and ability to run a government, and not cutting itself to a smaller role of catering to special interest.

This is idealistic thinking, as idealistic as in the proposition that all parliaments must have opposition parties.

There is a place for opposition parties to cut themselves small, representing special interest, not because it is the absolute political model, but the system is open enough to accommodate, to be inclusive even if this is not the ideal nor the best democratic competition we can have.
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