May 1st 2013 is a day forever etched in my memory and the collective memory of the 6,000 Singaporeans gathered at Hong Lim Civic Square. In all of my 68 years I have never sung the National Anthem and recited the National Pledge with such fervour as I did when we brought the bales of signed protest slogans on to the stage to display before the audience. We had to do It simply because it was the heart-felt yearnings of thousands of ordinary Singaporeans who put pen to cloth on an idyllic afternoon blessed by the gods.
For 5 hours we stood at a corner of the Square rolling out bale after bale of white cloth spray-painted with the words "Sign No to 6.9 million" in Malay, Chinese, Tamil, English and even French. To our immense surprise not only did our "shy and reticent" Singaporeans sign with vehemence and feelings on the banners but they also added drawings, pictures and comments on why they feel aggrieved and simply must ventilate those toxic feelings that brought them to the protest meeting. It will take weeks before I can sift through everyone of them and then decide on what to do with them next.
From the young lady who had to support 2 daughters single-handedly and send them to the university on study loans that she need to pay interest at 4.6% to another lady who found her Toa Payoh pool shrunk in size because of half of it has now to be allocated for the training of foreign swimmers, the list of grievances goes on and on. And the question is always: why does our gahmen need to favour the foreigners so much to the detriment of its own local born citizens? Why must they get it free and we must pay through our noses even though we are single mothers struggling to make ends meet?
Mind you many of these folks who signed are not the social media activists. Neither are they the hot-blooded young radicals using language bordering on the profane. They were simply ordinary middle-class Singaporeans whose axes that need to be grounded, were born out of a sense of disenfranchisement and a lack of fair-play. The issues can range from CPF, housing, education, jobs, retirement to the future of their grand-children. They were not there to thrash the government or to chant mindless slogans in support of the fiery speeches of the many ordinary Singaporean speakers up there on the stage. They did of course resonate, cheer, laugh and cry whenever a particular point hit them.
We have to thank Gilbert Goh and his fantastic team in Transitioning who succeeded beyond the wildest dreams to stage the first May Day Protest Meeting not on a tops-down basis but from a bottoms-up spiral that makes the event a truly historic one. Reading his posts of the last 2.5 months since the 16.2 protest conveys to us how gargantuan his task was and how hard he had to slog to bring yesterday's event to life in order to "Change for a Better Singapore".
Equally commendable were the tenacity, patience, creativity and responsiveness of young and old Singaporeans alike most of whom stood for 3 hours to lend support to the speakers like M Ravi, Jolovan Wham, Leong Sze Hian, Tan Jee Say, and Paik Choo. Between the orators and the audience their hearts beat as one. They heard what they wanted to hear and they wrote straight from their hearts. The numbers remain near constant until the dying moments when the Majullah was sung and the pledge recited hands on heart. Patriotism rang through the Square from bottoms up.
For Transitioning to pull this off a second time with an enlarged audience of 6,000 spells a sea-change in our political landscape. It brings hope for the future for a change long denied. How the new political space eked out of this little patch of "no man's land" will evolve is anybody's guess. Undoubtedly the road-less travelled ahead will be a challenging one littered with many pot-holes some deliberately created and some unplanned. But whatever it is the government must recognise that the 6.9 million genie which it released from its own bottle is like tooth-paste once squeezed cannot be forced back into the tube.
Warmest Regards,
Patrick Low
Editor's Note: It was indeed a very successful event. We would like to thank Gilbert and the organizers for that. Good job!