Dear The Real Singapore,
I was at the forum.
Baey’s speeches were weak. Pritam Singh presented his arguments very well and most of the audience were on his side. Baey tried to dodge difficult questions and ended up looking weak. He made remarks like “Life is never fair” and “This is the system” when pressed for his stand on the politicization of grassroots organizations like the PA and CDC/CCC.
The other two opposition parties didn’t send very strong speakers. The NSP guy made an analogy about the Matrix which my friend and I didn’t understand because we didn’t watch the movie. Ms Chee from SDP was okay but she seemed more concerned about the civil rights issue. She mentioned the problems with HDB prices, population and health care but told the audience to ‘refer to SDP’s website’.
That’s not a very helpful answer because the point is lost when the audience is told to refer in their free time. Her speech also touched on the effigy burning issue, Alex Au and last year’s Leslie Chew incident. But these were to reinforce her arguments about the civil rights issue. While it would be good to have more civil liberties, it’s not good to harp on it because Singapore can only mature as a democracy through elections and therefore, winning seats should have a higher priority. Elections here are about selling your party’s ideology. Grassroots outreaches, especially door-to-door visits, are more effective.
To be fair to Baey, he was probably just following instructions. He repeatedly emphasized that he was helpless to change the system, but he would like it to change as Singapore progressed as a democracy.
In all his answers to the students’ questions during the Q&A, Mr Singh always made sure he addressed each student by his/her name. He was quite nice. He stayed behind for a while to answer questions from some students who were not selected to ask their questions during the Q&A.
Anonymous TRS reader