I was taught many folk songs whilst in upper secondary school by Shanta Abisheganaden. I remembered songs such as Red River Valley, Oh Shenandoah, 500 miles and of course Blowing in the wind. Post GE, the departures of GCT and LKY from cabinet echoes the lyrics of BITW: 'the answer my friend is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind'. There were too many why and too few why not.
So I went back to history to try to make sense of some of these tumultuous changes over GE and how democracy evolved through the years. Aljunied GRC started off as a tough touch-and-go situation. GY maximised the use of new media to reach out especially to Gen Y. Arguably, new media worked in favour of the opposition at the speed of light. It is said that 'bad news' travels 13 more times than good news. So we should not be surprised by it's viral effect, be it TPL or Yammy in cyberspace.
While GCT said SG is going to be in trouble if we lose GY, he is mostly correct. But the counter-argument by LTK of 'why have elections when one cannot lose' sat well with the disenchanted. When LKY came in with this 'live to repent' if one chooses the opposing side, it backfired big-time. I remembered a posting on FB immediately after this Gen Y voted. This person said: 'this is demockracy. I just voted. Do I have to repent for next 5 years?'.
So it came to being that Aljunied GRC was reduced to a 'good man who came to a bad end'; Boethius (c. 480-524) in the Middle Ages. In 524, he was charged with disloyalty and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, he wrote 'The Consolation of Philosophy', one of the most widely read book back then. In a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy, who appeared in his cell, he poured out his soul and asked: "If God is, whence come evil things?" She comforted him that from limited perspective of humans, God works in mysterious ways.
In a more recent book "The Belief Instinct", Jesse Bering put it succinctly by saying: "Life isn't unfair. It isn't fair either. It just is".
If we fast forward to the Age of Enlightenment, we have the British Philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who mirrored the laws of human society as would Isaac Newton in the laws of motion and gravity. He spoke of a community that submits to the absolute authority, maybe a king or legislature, and that power is unquestioned. According to him, to be free of chaos, people must put themselves in a sort of prison of their own construction and he warns: "life can be nasty, brutish and short, said over the English Civil War". Of course, he had the King on his side.
The Enlightment period is also a time when thinkers tried to explore and discover better ways to organise society. Hence John Locke (1632-1704) propounded the social contract theory where people gain safety and security for themselves and their property by surrendering some of their rights to government. The government in turn must respect certain rights of its people, preserves the rights to life, liberty and punishes citizens who violate the rights of others. This resembles the roots of modern elected government.
Interesting enough, another character Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) came along before the French Revolution with these famous contradictory words: "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains". He argued that people are basically good and that institutions of society corrupted them over the centuries! So 'shaking the box', said GY, post GE may be a good thing.
So it has been 300 years on as society continues to evolve. Most societies lived under an elected government, whatever its imperfection. The recent GE opened the eyes of the population as more than 90% locals enjoyed the constitutional right to vote the party of their choice.
The aftershock of Aljunied GRC jolted many Singaporeans with some asking for GY to return into parliament, government, the President and be the 'voice of the people'. The die is cast, no replay, no play, play (horsing around) and sadly all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumoty together again.
Some years back, the late Samuel Huntington from Harvard once compared our political system against the Taiwanese. He opined that the Taiwanese political system will survive because it is democratic. Conversely, he thought the Singapore political system will be hard to survive beyond LKY. The buzz and energy generated from the recent GE showed otherwise. That there is already vitality and vibrancy with LKY 'well and alive' bode well for SG.
As Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy can be an exasperating, messy system, the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".
For me, I am still a virgin voter, deprive of my constitutional right as a result of a last-minute walk over!
All the same, we should be proud that our election process is clean, civilised and safe and that the man on the street has the the freedom of choice every 5 years.
So I went back to history to try to make sense of some of these tumultuous changes over GE and how democracy evolved through the years. Aljunied GRC started off as a tough touch-and-go situation. GY maximised the use of new media to reach out especially to Gen Y. Arguably, new media worked in favour of the opposition at the speed of light. It is said that 'bad news' travels 13 more times than good news. So we should not be surprised by it's viral effect, be it TPL or Yammy in cyberspace.
While GCT said SG is going to be in trouble if we lose GY, he is mostly correct. But the counter-argument by LTK of 'why have elections when one cannot lose' sat well with the disenchanted. When LKY came in with this 'live to repent' if one chooses the opposing side, it backfired big-time. I remembered a posting on FB immediately after this Gen Y voted. This person said: 'this is demockracy. I just voted. Do I have to repent for next 5 years?'.
So it came to being that Aljunied GRC was reduced to a 'good man who came to a bad end'; Boethius (c. 480-524) in the Middle Ages. In 524, he was charged with disloyalty and sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, he wrote 'The Consolation of Philosophy', one of the most widely read book back then. In a dialogue between Boethius and Lady Philosophy, who appeared in his cell, he poured out his soul and asked: "If God is, whence come evil things?" She comforted him that from limited perspective of humans, God works in mysterious ways.
In a more recent book "The Belief Instinct", Jesse Bering put it succinctly by saying: "Life isn't unfair. It isn't fair either. It just is".
If we fast forward to the Age of Enlightenment, we have the British Philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who mirrored the laws of human society as would Isaac Newton in the laws of motion and gravity. He spoke of a community that submits to the absolute authority, maybe a king or legislature, and that power is unquestioned. According to him, to be free of chaos, people must put themselves in a sort of prison of their own construction and he warns: "life can be nasty, brutish and short, said over the English Civil War". Of course, he had the King on his side.
The Enlightment period is also a time when thinkers tried to explore and discover better ways to organise society. Hence John Locke (1632-1704) propounded the social contract theory where people gain safety and security for themselves and their property by surrendering some of their rights to government. The government in turn must respect certain rights of its people, preserves the rights to life, liberty and punishes citizens who violate the rights of others. This resembles the roots of modern elected government.
Interesting enough, another character Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) came along before the French Revolution with these famous contradictory words: "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains". He argued that people are basically good and that institutions of society corrupted them over the centuries! So 'shaking the box', said GY, post GE may be a good thing.
So it has been 300 years on as society continues to evolve. Most societies lived under an elected government, whatever its imperfection. The recent GE opened the eyes of the population as more than 90% locals enjoyed the constitutional right to vote the party of their choice.
The aftershock of Aljunied GRC jolted many Singaporeans with some asking for GY to return into parliament, government, the President and be the 'voice of the people'. The die is cast, no replay, no play, play (horsing around) and sadly all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumoty together again.
Some years back, the late Samuel Huntington from Harvard once compared our political system against the Taiwanese. He opined that the Taiwanese political system will survive because it is democratic. Conversely, he thought the Singapore political system will be hard to survive beyond LKY. The buzz and energy generated from the recent GE showed otherwise. That there is already vitality and vibrancy with LKY 'well and alive' bode well for SG.
As Winston Churchill once said: "Democracy can be an exasperating, messy system, the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".
For me, I am still a virgin voter, deprive of my constitutional right as a result of a last-minute walk over!
All the same, we should be proud that our election process is clean, civilised and safe and that the man on the street has the the freedom of choice every 5 years.
