The Constitution Times

I just find it a waste of time. No, I am not the kind who “doesn’t care about what matters to me”. I find Singapore’s political platform bare and hasn’t regrown.

I don’t have anything to criticise the public policy as much as many local political bloggers. This is because from the angle of an independent political observer (in this case — an emerging Radical Centrist) these public policies are just like any policies. Confused? Policies will bring benefits. But thanks to how the universe works (or some prefer to call it — God’s wisdom), ‘good’ policies have there bads. Still Confused? Because whatever that brings good, brings bad too, and vice-versa. Now, are the policies really that bad? Or are you bad at looking at policies. You better realise this by now.

No. I don’t mean you are not bad at looking at policies per se, you are just politically bias. Politically illiterate? Okay, there is such a spectrum in politics, and in such a spectrum lies 2 popular category — conservative and liberal. A conservative will criticise a liberal politics, and vice-versa. Conservatives trade individual security for individual freewill, liberals do the opposite. Liberal sacrifice free market for workers’ right, conservatives do the opposite. Many conservatives are fundamental, some liberals are radical.

In Singapore, Singapore Democratic Party is a liberal party (the name ‘Democratic’ is a bit misleading). Which due relativity, automatically makes their opponent party, the People’s Action Party, a conservative party. The Democrats are trying (very hard) to create a bipartisan political platform here in Singapore, ill-inspired by the already problematic political system in the United States. This is shown by the critical attitude the party have on conservative policies in Singapore (e.g. homosexual bans, public gathering laws, social welfare, internal security laws, etc.)

Indeed, this polices do make the actionists seems conservative. However, from time to time I see them coming out with policies that surprise me. Policies like compulsory saving through CPF, tactical vehicle reduction through ERP, nationalized education through MOE, social bail out through ERS, free opposition seats through NCMP and the list goes on. I must admit these people are just as pragmatic as our executives in the business industries. I agree that some of these policies make our nation seems like a business project. I am confused and that won’t motivate me to praise their policies.

People in the United States are slowly being enlighten — bipartisan politic is a becoming waste of time. In bipartisan politics, politicians merely engage in idealistic debate yet fail to solve any real problem. For example: (1) Liberal replace every traces of oil dependency for renewable sources, while convervatives want things to stay the way it is. A person with common sense knows that oil is there to stay for least the next decade, but there is no harm developing renewable sources to steadily cut down on this dependency. (2) Conservative believes in a free market for everything, including education, something which liberal argues against. Liberal feels that a market driven educational system produces bad teachers, who are interested in making money instead of teaching. Conversative blames the bad teachers on public schools, who are by-product of noncompetition. Now, common sense tells us that the real problem is not private school nor government school, but simply bad teachers.

Once we break out of the bipartisan trap, we can take an objective view on any problem. This ‘Common sense’ politics they call it: the third-way political philosophy, which aims to replace their old bipartisanship.

Now, we have this Singapore Democrat who seems to be bringing us into the old mistake of United States and other Western liberal nations. Almost everything our democrats avocates are classical examples of liberal (not democratic) political ideology. For example: (1) Nationalisation of Health Care, in contrast to the current Health Care Privatisation the government is moving towards. (2) Lightening the CPF regulation, Singapore’s form of social security, which our government use to control proverty. Therefore, I won’t write things to praise these people either.

You see, who can I write for?

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ADOLF LAM, flying off to Taipei