It’s tough being an opposition party member in Singapore, but history undergraduate Bernard Chen of the Workers’ Party is unfazed as he meets voters, organizes events and attends internal meetings.
The 24-year-old is part of a new generation of activists fighting the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has ruled Singapore for 51 years and currently holds all but two of the 84 seats in parliament.
All political parties in Singapore are reporting increased youth involvement as the country prepares for its next general elections, which are due by February 2012 but are widely expected to be held much earlier.
PHOTO: AFP
New voter-friendly measures announced by the government, such as caps on immigration following complaints from citizens about a spike in recent years, have further fuelled expectations of an early vote.
“The PAP started off as being a minority in government too, so it’s all about participating in the process and hoping to win the support of the people,” Chen said.
One of his pet causes is lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 to enable more members of the Facebook and Twitter generation to take part in politics.
Despite getting into occasional trouble with media censors and police, young Singaporeans have indeed become more critical of the PAP on social networking sites, blogs and Web sites like theonlinecitizen.com and temasekreview.com.
Opposition parties are also ramping up their Web presence.
“This interest in opposition politics will in a way require the PAP to raise its game,” said Eugene Tan, a law professor at the Singapore Management University.
He said the ruling party had far more resources than its rivals but believed the PAP was taking notice of young people’s involvement with other parties.
“I think overall a more competitive political scene should be beneficial to Singapore,” he said.
The PAP was founded in 1954 by Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀), who went on to become the country’s first leader, serving from 1959 until 1990. His son Lee Hsien Loong 李顯龍) has been prime minister since 2004.
Despite the PAP’s record of rapid economic progress which has turned Singapore into one of the world’s richest societies, critics of the PAP say the city-state has lagged behind when it comes to democratic freedoms.
Opposition parties are reporting a rise in youth membership, with the Reform Party founded by the late democracy icon J.B. Jeyaretnam claiming 40 percent of its members are now aged 30 and below.
The Workers’ Party Youth Wing membership has increased 50 percent from four years ago, and the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) has likewise reported a healthy increase in younger members.
Jermyn Wee, 27, the webmaster of the Reform Party Web site, felt young members have a bigger voice in opposition parties.
“We have regular meetings with our secretary general, Kenneth Jeyaretnam, should he need to bring up a concern,” the information and communication technology executive said.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
RSS