Really sick and tired....

Was surfing the newspaper websites and I came across this in Today online - PAP must address "negative internet". Apparently, newbie MP Denise Phua is concerned about netizens' negative attitude against the PAP and she thinks that PAP should try to manage this (article attached below)

Are we living in North Korea I wonder. My take is that the PAP had severely underestimated the power of the internet during the GE and this had unseated them and their need for absolute control. With voters becoming more internet-savvy, the PAP's control over the media will diminish with every GE. The despicable censoring of opposition views by SPH and Mediacorp will become less and less effective. In time to come, the Straits Times and CNA will be reduced to just reporting news and lose their ability to influence.

It is heartening to see the start of the political awakening in Singapore. The older voters support the PAP because they have seen how the PAP had facilitated the economic growth. I suppose it is quite a big deal to shift into a clean HDB flat with electricity and water supplies, from a squeezy kampong that uses well water. It is not as if the newer generation is ungrateful to the PAP. It is just that we take all these for granted and so we don't think what the PAP did in the past is big deal. AND THE PAP HAS TO RECOGNISE THIS! They have to work hard to win (not buy) our votes from now onwards.

Having said this, I am not confident the PAP will be able to become a people-oriented govt. Views from Denise Phua above show that the PAP has a different agenda. I personally will not fight this, I will not be gungho enough to join an opposition party. Simply because I could not care less and I don't profess to be a patriot. I will just make sure I have enough savings such that once I've had enough of Singapore, I will leave the country and start life anew somewhere else.

David







PAP must address 'negative Internet'
SHE was a new face representing the People's Action Party, but when Ms Denise Phua surfed the Internet during the recent General Election, the tone of the postings stunned her.
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They were overwhelmingly slanted against the ruling party.
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"I know that something has gone wrong when more than 85 per cent (of the traffic) writes negatively about the PAP," she said at a post-mortem of the GE organised last night by the National University of Singapore Society.
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"This is something that the PAP would do well to take into account ... and to manage this channel of communication," she added.
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Ms Phua stressed that she was not dismissing the views posted on the Internet nor even disagreeing with them. Her concern was more that the coverage was not balanced.
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Nowhere, for example, was it mentioned that this particular GE was not a snap poll or that the Opposition had the freedom to hold rallies of its own. But given the fact that cyber-traffic goes out to the world, Ms Phua felt that a foreigner reading about elections in Singapore would only have a chance to hear one side of the story — that too, a somewhat skewed one.
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Again, she mentioned that her party would do well to think about this medium.
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One member of the audience pointed out that if the Internet was skewed in one direction then, surely, the local media had gone in the other direction, giving far more coverage to the ruling party.
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Perhaps, rebutted Ms Phua, this was on account of the fact that the PAP had fielded far more candidates in the GE than the Opposition — and the coverage was a reflection of that.
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Dr Chee Soon Juan, secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party, objected not merely to the extent of coverage that his party had received in the media, but also to the tone of it. He said that even the photographs of his party's candidates used in local newspapers were "not flattering". Someone from the audience mentioned that Dr Chee sounded more "reasonable" than the image he had formed of him. "That is because what you read about me is a relentless campaign of character assassination," said Dr Chee.
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A member of the audience observed that the local media, during the recent GE, had been more balanced than in the past.
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Another issue that cropped up related to voting secrecy. Mr Perry Tong from the Workers' Party acknowledged that he had no doubt whatsoever that the vote was secret and it was "as good as impossible" for someone to find out how an individual had voted.
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Political scientist Dr Ho Khai Leong then said he was surprised that the Opposition had not used this fact to their advantage to persuade more people to vote for them.
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But Dr Chee said the fears did exist.
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"And even if people's fears are irrational, you still have to address them," he added. — Derrick A Paulo