Article (government)

http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~lohkaidi/cat_lim_10may2005.htm

It relates to the political issue of political openness, the ability to have free expression to the government and political apathy among the young today. This article is worthy of discussion because it is still relevant in our times today.

Firstly, it seems that the government is limiting us the right to speak freely, to critique them as we want to. For example, do you see any mass protest against the government in Singapore? Do we dare to? It seems that the government is limiting our right to free speech even though it set up the “meet-the-people- session” which actually serves not much purpose. The “meet-the-people” session is a laughable attempt for the government to engage the people as no one would dare to tell their MP what they think of the government. Even if the people dared to do so, if the problem the people address cannot be solved by the government, the MP would just accept what the people had to say, wait and hope the problem would get resolved by itself.

With this limited right to critique the government, it comes as no surprise that the younger generation begin to care less about the government, perhaps to the extent that they just ignore the government. For example, if you were to ask me who our Health MP is, I would be unable to answer as I am more focused on my studies than to care about who my MPs are. This will lead to political apathy in Singaporeans and this is a serious problem as Singapore is a democracy and it uses elections to get the government into office. If we do not know who we are voting for, how do we know if the government we are voting for is a strong one? Even if we try to justify that we will always vote for the PAP, how do we know that perhaps one day, the PAP would be corrupted and if we still vote for the PAP, wouldn’t we allowing a corrupt PAP to power?

The sensible solution for this would be to allow the people to speak, to critique the government, get their suggestions on the bills they want and balance it against its necessity. However I doubt that the government would allow us to have mass protest as they are afraid that this would just hinder the efficient running of the government. In short, the government is as if stating “You do your job, I do mine”.

Singaporeans must also learn to be more politically aware of the government for us to debate against the government. However, I doubt it would happen as we are more focused on our economical benefits than to bother about the government.

Thus, if we were to create a politically-aware Singapore, the government must play its part to allow the people to speak and the people must be more active in debating with the government.

I apologize if I am too critical of the government as I have my prejudices.