Monday, April 4, 2011

Hi there, I'm clueless. Can you care to enlighten me somehow?

Yeah, I admit, I'm close to being apathetic when it comes to political issues in Singapore. Oh, screw it, I'm apathetic when it comes to political issues around the world! I just think that politics are really dirty and difficult, and (let me admit it) I had chosen to be ignorant.

But it's getting harder and harder to ignore the issues when my social media networks (facebook, twitter) have constant feeds on what's going on, mostly angry sentiments of the ruling party, but the occasional ones that appears to say "good job, PAP". It's also getting really hard to ignore the issues when I may have to pick up a pen and make a choice between two people who I don't know about. (Yeah, I'm living in an SMC)

I'm a Gen-Y kid. I'm "Struck by Lightning", a kid born after the year 1965, and only saw the "lightning" political party in ruling all these years. My father was working in a government-linked company for 25+ years before they retrenched him 8 years ago, so you could say we were living comfortably because he had an iron-rice bowl job. My tietiary education was paid first with my father's CPF money (I am paying him back), and my last minor surgery was paid with my Medisave account.

I'm grateful for these "forced savings". Grateful for our libraries. Grateful for safe streets to walk on. Well grateful for a lot of other things also lah, but this blog entry / facebook note is not going to be about that.

This entry is about how clueless I am about how the political scene works in Singapore, and some questions I wish to ask on how it all works:

1. What happens when a member of a political party (either PAP or another political party) gets a seat in the parliament? Do they have to quit their day jobs?

They're going to be given a large portfolio to handle, so I'm guessing, with my logic, that it's going to be a full-time job.But I see one or two members from the opposition parties being owners of businesses. Do they have to give up their business because they have a new job?

2. Is PAP = Government?

After all these years of being "Struck by lightning", it's very hard to understand the following: PAP = Government?

Can there be a scenario such as this: there are 100 seats in the parliament. The PAP got 50, and the opposition got 50. Can there be two political parties deciding on policies and taking care of the country? Is that the way the government of other countries are being run?

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Okay, I'll continue asking questions when more questions come up in my head. But drafting the above entry already cleared some of my questions I had wanted to ask.

5 comments:

Matt said...

Interesting blog, thanks. I'm in the US and don't know much about Singapore other than I've heard the secondary school math program is one of the best in the world.

JY said...

Hi Mat, if you're responding to this: yes, I heard them saying that we've got the best math program as well.

Never mind that I'm not using most of what they taught no more.

Unknown said...
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Brian said...
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Anonymous said...

http://www.christenwings.tumblr.com

I've written something that will hopefully shed some light..