A curious election campaign trend has emerged in Singapore as the country gears up to vote tomorrow: candidates showcasing their musical chops, or lack of talent, on social media clips.
The displays of musical talent range from clips of opposition star candidate Harpreet Singh playing the saxophone for local broadsheet the Straits Times, to others beatboxing and belting out songs in dialect or giving an awkward rendition of the earworm APT, a Korean and English-language song by Rose and Bruno Mars.
One candidate, Samuel Lee of the People’s Power Party, has become a meme thanks to his self-written tune, badly sung, about looking left and right to find a career path.
Photo: AFP
Some clips are freshly shot this election season as candidates are introduced to media or speak at rallies, others are older clips resurfacing of Singapore’s guitar-playing Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) on stage with a local band, or the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Pritam Singh, singing at his party’s Lunar New Year celebration.
“They want to be relatable, but it won’t work,” said Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, a political scientist from Nanyang Technological University.
“These silly Tiktok videos, these music videos, aren’t exactly the best way to appear relatable,” Walid said. “Just speaking like a normal human being, that would make them appear for more relatable.”
Voters are more discerning, and would pay more attention to parties’ and candidates’ credibility, and what they say about causes that matter to voters, he said.
The vote is the first electoral test for Wong, who last year took over from former Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) as leader of the People’s Action Party, which has ruled the city-state of 6 million people since independence in 1965.
The People’s Action Party is almost certain to win most seats in the election, with candidates fielded in all 33 constituencies for 97 seats in parliament.
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