by Rudy Irawan Kadjairi
Fifty over years at the helm of power. No real challenges to that power. Ever. Or since.
The grip on that power had been absolute. Complete. Resounding. No question.
The power controlled everything. Including the fate of every men, women, and child. In all that time.
And today, after fifty six long years, we are down to looking at three Chinese men, themselves looking uninspired, less dignified than all of their predecessors before them, uncultured, strained, forced, awkward, pretentiously coy but probably privately ambitious enough, lacking in stature, unstatesmanlike, unrefined in their use of language and looking more like privileged characters than deserving ones, racing to the end of the line hoping for that ultimate prize of the title of Prime Minister of Singapore.
How, after all those fifty six years, we cannot even muster the collective wherewithal, the courage, the decency and dignity to consider anyone else from a different race, a different gender, a different background, should be a real hard question we all need to ask ourselves.
But we won’t.
For we are either comfortable with our being racist about this that we would make ridiculous excuses to justify it, or, we just don’t have enough balls between our legs nor the gumption in our stomachs to overcome the fear of speaking out against, and, ditch the very party that’s shoving this bullshit down our throats.
The amazing wonder perhaps then, should not be about why we are not considering others of varying backgrounds for Prime Minister. Indeed, what we should really be wondering about perhaps is why such a party which propagates discrimination still has unmitigated power in a country supposedly so proud of its “meritocracy”, “equality”, and “multi-racial” stand.
Or maybe we are just as fake as the propaganda we throw out into the public sphere.
How we deal with this choice for our next Prime Minister will say so very much about who we are collectively as a nation.
Just as much as when we allowed a chosen candidate from the party to gleefully accept the role of President presented to her on a golden platter.
Is it any wonder that this party has little to almost no respect for the people it is meant to serve?
