Lawyer Ravi has placed his stake at AMK GRC for the next GE. He is going to stand as an independent. His stand, Singapore for Singaporeans and compulsory and equal importance to the four official languages. I think no Singaporean can disagree with his mission. His Singaporean First message is similar to Jee Say’s Singaporean First Party mission. The two can surely work out something if Ravi cannot find enough candidates to stand with him. For the moment there are natural and ready candidates like Roy Ngerng and Han Hui Hui. In fact he would have too many to handle if he were to include the other few who were charged together with Roy for the Hong Lim Saga. Just make sure there is no three corner fight.
Have no fear. Ravi already has a team comprising his legal colleagues of Charles Yeo, Liew Zheng Yang and Rubendran.
As for the promotion in the use of the four official languages, it is timely with all the changes taking place. This would preempt the call for other major languages to be included as official languages like Hindi and Tagalog. Luckily Chinese is already an official language or the PRCs would demand for Chinese to be included.
Looking further ahead into the future, the equality of the language will be a natural thing to be. The population composition could be, just an example, 40% Chinese, 30% Indian, 20% Malay and 10% Others. So getting everyone conversant with all the languages is something to look forward to. The problem is in the details. If English is going to be subplanted, and the other major ethnic groups would insist on speaking their official languages we may have another serious problem in the making. Ravi needs to think through this.
Anyway, let’s wait and see what Ravi can make out of it in his political quest to be the PM of Singapore and winning the AMK GRC. AMK is going to be a hotly contested GRC. Maybe it should be divided into two, then Ravi can contest in one and Jee Say in the other.
Just a glimpse of the future to come.
Chua Chin Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.sg/