In many ways, the Singaporean government is starting to remind me of China (PRC). China has its great firewall of China, one of the world’s most sophisticated algorithms, designed to filter out anything the Communist Party of China (CPC) doesn’t want the ordinary citizens to read. Censors are employed by different social media companies in China to delete viral posts which are damaging to the Party. Failure to comply may result in a saga of Google vs China. Despite all its complexity, ordinary Chinese citizens still managed to get the news out there to fellow compatriots.
Say what you may about the restrictions or political oppression in China, the Communist Party does take action when they cannot control the virulence of a scandal, or the very least appear to do so. That action will result in the firing of an official due to sex tapes or an investigation in Guo Mei Mei’s case within the China Red Cross. Now take a step back into Singapore, how many of us can say that our government will even give us the time of day? Singaporeans are criticised constantly.
It is not unusual for someone to wander into a PAP MP’s facebook and ask a simple question or make a comment. Sometimes you might get the occasional anti-government troll who makes highly inappropriate comments but mostly just ordinary Singaporeans asking an MP a question or a comment. An MP’s job is to serve the people and be an example for the people. MPs are human and yes they do take offence at anti-government trolls who throws insults at them just for being a PAP MP. Those trolls display inappropriate behaviour. While an MP may actually ask the troll to behave himself and fall in line, nothing done about their pro-government trolls. These pro-government trolls take the time of day to accuse a genuinely interested citizen of being an opposition member. Given the Melanie Tan/Doreen Ang = Alex Tan accusations by a certain MP on a certain page regarding a certain xenophobic article, it has done nothing but give a bunch of pro-government jesters/trolls the licence to insult anyone who has a differing view. The worst case was on that same thread when an obvious pro-PAP jester with a Chinese surname decided to call another poster with an Indian name (who made comments on local purchasing power) a ‘smelly spider’ on a page where the MP was condemning a xenophobic article!
The rest were very obvious pro-PAP posters who drowned out the voices of others until today when this guy ventured in to make a comment of local purchasing power. Why call him a ‘smelly spider’? Is there some racial insult to it? Is the troll trying to say to a fellow Singaporean that his ethnic group is ‘smelly’? I am well aware of that ‘smelly’ is a term as an insult to fellow Indians since primary school. This is absolutely outrageous behaviour. Prior before, there was another Singaporean who got accused of being a Norwegian when the pro-government troll himself demanded that Singapore was to be compared to the likes of Norway. Needless to say, the troll was not interested in a comparison and yet accused that Singaporean of trying to compare. MP Seah himself said “"with online freedom, it does not give one a licence to act irresponsibly and we should certainly not make the situation worse and spread what are obviously malicious and racial sentiments.” Perhaps he should speak to his ‘supporters’ since it is occurring on his own facebook site. While most of these trolls yarn on and on about how they would be banned on alternate websites for being ‘truthful’, they must look at their own behaviour first. It is obnoxious. If they are going to be that insulting and talking down to others, any website will happily ban them.
This brings me back to my point about China and Singapore. In China, if you can amass large support on social media in the Great Firewall of China, the government will at least try to listen and make a compromise. In Singapore, if the masses are complaining too much online, there are MPs and Ministers who will talk down to these masses labelling them anything from ‘trolls’, ‘irresponsible’, ‘too pampered’, ‘too choosy’ etc or there are trolls who will use the words of these MPs and Ministers to deliberately make you feel like voting the Great Ivory Tower of PAP out in 2016. Well look at the mirror! PAP has plenty of useless trolls!
A. Elangovan.
TRS Contributor