In the name of Allah, The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful.
The election fever has not died down and while some might have gotten tired of seeing all things election in their social media feed, I am quite addicted to it.
Nothing quite like an evisceration of the pandemic via a different drama offered by the election period, eh?
I made an effort to watch Singapore Votes 2020: Nomination Day Special by CNA on YouTube on my off day yesterday. At the end of it I feel robbed of about three hours of my life but I did take away some Ls.
1) What is social distancing?
Seems like many have forgotten to maintain a safe distance amongst themselves. The rate at which everyone is clumping together makes all the nomination centres look like high-potential clusters. I don’t think the reporters sanitised their recording devices when interviewing different candidates. Jeng jeng.
And seriously, are we not going to talk about how the incumbent East Coast team shared one microphone when the alternative party could use individual microphones? The message I received from that is image > social responsibility by the incumbent. Some heads might roll over this.
2) Don’t forget Red Dot United.
In all of my fervour of following familiar alternative parties, I have completely overlooked Red Dot United. If I didn’t watch the Nomination Day special, I would have completely kept myself uninformed of their presence.
It’s interesting to see a party being led by a female. While both Michelle Lee of RDU and Sylvia Lim of Workers’ Party holds the chairperson position in their respective parties, Michelle is leading her party more obviously than Sylvia. If RDU is clever, they would play the female leadership angle — campaigning the need to have more alternative voices in parliament so as to ensure that women become more empowered in politics. That Singapore is indeed ready to be led by a capable and competent female, and not by one simply chosen by the supermajority. Or that Singapore can indeed have a healthily competitive political playing field.
As for Sylvia, it’s simply tactical on her party’s part. Rather than giving the competition a chance to take cheap shots at her via the old Town Council allegations made against her, they rather put forward a young Indian leader. Who says the young aren’t capable of working in politics? President says she’s not Indian? It’s okay, we have an Indian leader who is interested in representing you in parliament.
3) There is never enough airtime for the alternative candidates.
I kept watching the candidates from alternative parties get cut off during their interviews whereas the candidates from the ruling party get full soundbytes. Honestly, it felt plain rude to me. And to be honest, I’m quite sick of being bombarded with mail from the ruling party. Where’s my mail from the alternative parties? Come on, I’d like to make an informed decision here. If you are confident in your manifesto, you’d never needed to worry about your voters supporting other parties. The more you are spamming me, the more desperate you look to me. And desperate is not a good look.
Additionally, I felt that there were many missed opportunities for many nominees across all the parties in terms of maximising their given airtime. How could you not have prepared better for your nomination speech? You don’t have to be fancy with the team bowing and arm-raising or even trying to ensure the cameras can get a good view of you and your team. You just have to ensure that your message to your constituents is clearly expressed on your ever-so-rare national airtime. Debunk what needs to be debunked. Clarify what needs to be explained. Introduce yourself properly and your mission so that your voters can build a curiousity towards you and want to hear more from you. Yes, you may argue that you don’t have time to fully prepare for a speech due to the short time period of our election events. However, it is not the first rodeo for most of you and you have had five years to strategise and solidify your campaign. The speech comes naturally when you are clear on the direction that your party is taking.
To those of you who are still full-time students: when it comes to class presentations, stop pushing them to the person who always present well. Instead, rise to the challenge and practise your presentation skills lest you should find yourself having to address the nation out of the blue.
Ugh. So much frustration!
Yet I’m still pursuing election news. Oh, the things we do to ourselves.
If you’d like to torment yourself too, here’s the video:
And Allah is Al-Qadir, The All-Able. – MM
Metropolitan Muslimah 