According to reports, the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) has apparently been told by the West Coast Town Council to take down about 50 of the party’s campaign posters in West Coast Group Representative Constituency (GRC) where the party is contesting.
In a Facebook post, the PSP has said that the town council order has left them puzzled because posters publicising the Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) have been seemingly “left untouched”.
Given that we are a week shy of the General Election, this removal order could be a serious blow to the PSP (at least where publicity is concerned). Unsurprisingly therefore, Secretary-General and candidate for West Coast GRC, Tan Cheng Bock, has said in an Instagram video that the party was “very upset and very sad” about the posters being taken down.
In gracious form however, Tan has said that “we (the PSP) are not going to blame anyone. Online friends please help us spread the word on social media.” Instead of focusing on blame shifting, Tan prefers to look for a solution.
Contrast this with the PAP who appear unable to let anything slide even as it appears to have every advantage available to it in the upcoming General Election. Look at how the PAP seem to be aggressively going after Chee Soon Juan from the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) over whether or not the PAP endorsed having 10 million people in Singapore. The PAP are so vehement in its distaste for Chee that it is even seemingly likening him to spousal abuse!
In the first place, Heng Swee Keat has long since been an active proponent for population growth. At a ministerial dialogue held in the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Heng had told the students that Singaporeans needed to be open to foreigners. He also indicated that he did not consider Singapore’s population density to be excessive and noted that other cities were even more crowded and dense. He then went on to cite former chief planner Liu Thai Ker, who said in 2014 that Singapore should plan for 10 million people for it to remain sustainable in the long term.
If you take this entire sequence in context, most reasonable people would come to the conclusion that Heng was in favour of the 10 million ballpark figure (give or take some) even if he did not explicitly say it. In view of this, is it really a falsehood for Chee to also come to that conclusion?
Yet, despite having seemingly unlimited resources, the PAP seem to be unable to let anything go.
Tan Cheng Bock on the other hand seems the perfect gentleman. Able to let things go so as to focus on the bigger issues – such as policy ones ahead of the General Election.
Do we want a party that seemingly veers on being a bully? Or do we want a principled party that can focus on the tasks at hand (such as making Singapore a better place)?