Is race such a problem that the Elected Presidency has to be changed?

Frankly, if anyone were to be the epitome of how useless the political system of Singapore works for the benefit of the minority, look no further than Member of Parliament for Ang Mo Kio, Darryl David, who is Indian by birth and is the minority candidate for the GRC, who is unable to speak any Indian language. How does he represent his racial group apart from being of the same race as arbitrary judged by the minority committee?

Are we saying that in Singapore, so long a community has a person of the same race in leadership positions, that they are represented?

Of course, Mr David would profess that he works for the best interest of the Indian community, but anyone else Chinese, Malay or Eurasian MP would have done the same. Which leads to the question of why is such a divisive system is needed at all. After all, Mr Murali Pillai of the Bukit Batok SMC could prove the long-standing rhetoric of the People’s Action Party (PAP) about racist Singaporeans wrong.

PAP MPs have all used the survey results from Channel News Asia/ Insitute of Policy Studies to justify their point that Singaporeans are inherently racists when coming to choose their political leaders, but yet a Blackbox survey showed that people were more than happy to have someone like Deputy Prime Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam to move up to become Prime Minister.

Furthermore, in a survey by Blackbox on people’s response to the proposed amendments by the Constitutional Commission, showed that the amendments did not have popular support as what the PAP government would like to think. Is that why the government declined the offer to have a referendum on the matter? Because they know that they would lose the referendum?

Many have raised the question of how an elitist individual such as one would find in the upper echelon of Singapore’s society — one that has a huge income gap — may not be one that the community look up upon or able to understand the emotions of the general populace.

Some have also brought up the issue that such an appointment would, in fact, give rise to excuses to look at systematic racial discrimination of the minority race in society, workplace and other matters, by saying that since they have a person of their same race in the highest office in the country, why are they still complaining?