Another good article from The Satay
Club's Cheryl Chan
http://satayclub.net/2011/04/let-the-mudslinging-begin/
With the announcement of Parliament's dissolution having just
been made, the PAP's propaganda machine has gone into overdrive -
with almost clockwork precision and efficiency.
In line with the trend of elections past, the PAP leadership
relied on its tried-and-tested formula of firing personal
salvoes against
opposition candidates, this time training its guns on the Workers'
Party's Chen Show Mao.
In a letter to the Straits Times, Dr Ng Eng
Hen, who is the PAP's Organising Secretary as well as Minister for
Education, pointed out that Mr Chen has spent "40 of his last 50
years overseas" and has spent "his entire career working in the
United States and China". He further added that Singaporeans had a
right to know why Mr Chen was choosing to enter politics at this
time, and accused the WP of being less than forthright with the
answers.
Dr Ng also compared Mr Chen with the PAP's foreign-born
candidates, Janil Puthucheary and Foo Mee Har. He said that the
Malaysian-born duo had been in Singapore the past 10 years, and
that their spouses and children lived in Singapore - and that their
sons would serve National Service.
Voters have not received Dr
Puthucheary particularly well because he did not serve
NS, having only become a Singapore citizen two years ago at the age
of 33. When questioned about this, Dr Puthucheary said that he had
been "saving kids' lives for the past 10 years". In contrast, Mr
Chen served two and a half years of NS, earning himself an
officer's commission in the process. He did this even before he
became a Singapore citizen in 1986.
The PAP's proclivity towards making personal attacks on
opposition candidates is nothing new. The party has done this at
every general election in recent memory, selecting one or two
candidates - usually those who it sees as posing the biggest
threat - as a 'lightning rod' and proceeding to sling mud at
him in the run-up to Polling Day.
In 1988, the PAP targeted Francis Seow, a former
Solicitor-General of Singapore and President of the Law Society. Mr
Seow was 'exposed' as a serial womaniser and tax cheat, and was
also accused of being a 'foreign agent' who was out to destabilise
Singapore. Mr Seow's WP team in Eunos GRC won 49.1% of the votes
before he was hounded out of the country on trumped-up charges.
Read the rest of the article at
http://satayclub.net/2011/04/let-the-mudslinging-begin/
