Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

I just read Ephraim Loy’s comment on the PAP becoming the “opposition” in the online space, i.e. the PAP is in the minority when it comes to political discussions online. And Ephraim worries for the PAP in terms of elections performance during the next GE.

In all honesty, I don’t think that the PAP really bothers about political discussions in cyberspace. The reason is simple. The vast majority of netizens engage in anonymous postings. It’s actually not all that hard to make a list of people who blog with their real identities. Anonymous chatter on cyberspace isn’t much of an immediate threat at all.

Ephraim points to the recent Malaysian general elections to make the case that the online political space should be taken seriously. Well, the online political space will be taken seriously by the PAP if a Singaporean blogger actually contests a seat in the coming general elections. Unless the political cyberspace proves capable of causing the loss of real political power symbolised by the losing of parliamentary seats, why would the PAP care?

That being said, are there bloggers who are willing to stand up and contest in a general election? I don’t see any, at least not now. I personally have no interest now, and it will probably remain so over the next 5-6 years because I want to finish grad school. Even after that, I am not too sure if I will still be blogging, much less contest an election.

However, the fears voiced by Ephraim isn’t invalid. It’s just that he’s worrying about it too early. I doubt the local political cyberspace will have much of an effect on the overall voter pattern in the next 1-2 GEs. After that, I think there’s a chance that the PAP might suffer what Barisan Nasional suffered this year because the numbers of the “Youtube/Facebook/Blogger” generation would be a substantial proportion of the electorate. The problem for the PAP, if any, is not a short term one but a long term one.

Of course, there will only be a problem if there are enough good alternatives to choose from. Some of the alternative candidates in the last GE were seriously lacking and I have sympathies for Yaw Shin Leong who got needlessly flamed for choosing the better candidate. For now, the gahmen can afford to ignore cyberspace. Whether that is a wise decision for Lee Hsien Loong’s successor is open debate.

If Mas Selamat has been following the news (assuming that he is still in Singapore), he must be laughing to death at the level of embarassment and troubles he has caused to the government. I think the problem with the escape of Mas Selamat, at least for now, is not so much of a possible terrorist attack but rather, how far up the hierarchy should blame go?

There are two parallel lines of argument. The first one, favoured by many netizens, is that heads of officials connected to the escape of Mas Selamat should roll, whether they are directly involved or otherwise. Even if you are high up in the hierachy and not directly involved, you still have to go because like it or not, the escape happened under your watch and you are ultimately responsible.

The second argument, favoured by the government, is that only the heads of those who are directly involved should roll. The logic here is that it is unfair to punish someone for something that is not within his or her direct control. DPM Wong did not have direct control over the Gurkha guards. If he did, then of course he has to go. But since he didn’t, we should be fair to him and not blame him at all.

Each argument fundamentally works on a different set of assumptions, so it is difficult to argue one in favour of another. However, as Gerald rightly pointed out, most of the work done by a minister are actually that of the civil servants under him. Favouring the second argument means that any Singaporean minister will have an iron rice bowl (make that a diamond rice bowl: it’s the hardest substance around and it’s damn expensive) because he/she will never be directly responsible for most of the things happening under his watch. As long as a minister does not succumb to corruption or engage in behaviour defined as unacceptable by society or the ruling political party, the job is basically secured for life.

Either way, we have a problem. It’s either we create a culture of aversion to mistakes or we create a modern day nobility. We have to choose between a rock and a hard place. And, the choice has been made for all of us.

I just read the online media release of a proposal by a group of 15 bloggers recommending sweeping changes to the way the Internet is regulated. The media release can be found on The Online Citizen.

I’m not part of the group (I am going to dub them G15 from now), although I was aware of the initiative. I commend the G15 for investing their personal time and effort into putting together the document. It looks like it’s going to be a great piece of work, although I don’t think that the recommendations will offer anything groundbreaking but rather, the recommendations are likely to sum up all the key thoughts and arguments in the Singaporean socio-political blogosphere on Internet regulation.

The next step is, of course, so what? Can we truly expect the government to implement most of the proposals? Wearing my pragmatic hat, I would imagine that the government will, at most, acknowledge the paper but say that it is too early to implement these proposals. Of course, this is a vast improvement compared to the past. If this initiative happened 30-40 years ago, the G15 would have to do prison break, Mas Selamat style.

While I don’t think there’s much chance of a major shift in policy as a result of the document, I do think that it would help bolster the G15′s case if the proposal is endorsed by as many netizens as possible. As it stands now, if I were the government, I would contend that the G15 is hardly representative of the online population and then proceed to ignore it. It would be much harder to question the legitimacy of the proposal if there were some 50,000 to 100,000 Singaporean netizens endorsing it.

Of course, it is going to be difficult to even get 1,000 netizens to endorse the proposal, let alone 100,000. I think that majority of the blogs in Singapore fall into the personal journaling category and these folks, having little opportunities to run afoul of any regulations, are unlikely to lend their support to the proposal. However, I think every single endorsement counts. I will read the full proposal when it is released and it is very likely that I will endorse that proposal.

The heartening thing about this proposal is that it is a genuine grassroots initiative and not the result of some committee mandated by the government. Of course, there are going to be some people who are sore at not being “invited” to give their opinions and they will claim that the G15 is an elitist group. In fact, reading the comments thread on the media release on The Online Citizen, it looks like these folks are going to start questioning the legitimacy of the proposal.

To these folks, please, get out of my elite uncaring face. Stop being so damn full of yourselves.