I refer to article:
3 principles for change:
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_381309.html
And its follow-up:
'Hybrid system' for Parliament?
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_381547.html
Let me comment about the first one.
The 3 principles SM Goh Chok Tong made in his speech were:
First, they must be fair to all contesting political parties.
That means changes must not be biased in favour of one party or the
other.
Second, they must end up, after the election, with a strong,
effective Government. That means you do not want to have a system,
which ends up with a weak, hung Parliament, and then you have a
coalition Government. That is politically unstable for
Singapore.
And third, they must facilitate representation of diverse views
in Parliament, including views of opposition parties.
Point 1 states that changes must be fair to all political
parties. Doesn't this imply that the situation currently is not
fair to all political parties? Ok, so I'm inferring stuff
here.
Point 2 is essentially impossible to achieve, in light of the
first point. A coaltition government is one in which two or more
political parties cooperate in the government. Since SM Goh advises
against this, he is in effect saying only one party can rule at
a time, which would be somewhat unfair for the others. This
contradicts the first point.
As for Point 3, I disagree. In the Singapore Parliament, the PAP
outnumbers everyone else 82:12, which clearly does not allow
oppostion parties to have much say in the passing of bills.
Besides, the representation of opposition viewpoints do not matter
much if in the end, the PAP can still outvote the opposition even
after their views have been expressed.
Also, another issue I would like to bring up is the NMPs in
Parliament. The reason they were brought in was to allow common
citizens without political affiliation to express their views
without having to join a political party. The number of them
defeats the purpose of this scheme. How can 9 people ever
express the viewpoints of 4.8 million? Furthermore, these people do
not accurately reflect the feelings of the masses, as they are
mostly famous/rich people and thus cannot empathise with us, the
commoners. How often is it that someone who can accurately express
our feelings (e.g. taxi driver) is appointed to be an NMP?
Ok, enough about NMPs, on to Article 2 (which conveniently
mentions NMPs).
Article 2 is about an NMP proposing a hybrid system for
Parliament, in which 'a limited number of seats' could be
'allocated by way of proportional representation', while the
majority would still be filled the way they are now. (quoted from
the article)
For those who don't know what proportional representation is, it
is a democratic principle about matching the results of a vote to a
party's representation in government. (e.g. if Party A gets 35% of
the vote, it should get 35% of the seats in Parliament).
(Actually can't comment about this yet, except that this seems
very similar to our current system.)
(skip the bit about him praising the three principles)
Mr Siew also called for a reduction in the size of group
representation constituencies (GRCs) and an increase in the number
of single member constituencies. (Quoted from article)
Let me give you an example of how the GRC system is heavily
skewed to the PAP. Let's say the opposition party, in the next
election, wins 45% of the vote in a GRC. Does this mean the get 2
out of five or three out of six seats in the GRC? No. The GRC
system states that the winning party in a GRC gets all five or six
seats for itself. This contradicts the principle of "proportional
representation" explained earlier. An example of this can be seen
in the 2006 general election. The PAP won 66.6% of the vote, but
won 82 out of 84 seats in Parliament due to the GRC system.
'These moves, together with clear commitments to refrain from
the constant redrawing of electoral boundaries and to openly
publish the reasons and justifications for any such redrawing, will
go a long way towards restoring Singaporeans' respect for the
political process in Singapore,' he said. (quoted from
article again).
Talking about "redrawing electoral boundaries", I remember there
was an incident when the PAP dissolved a GRC, Eunos. The PAP
apparently did this because the Worker's Party was
starting to win more votes there. By dissolving the GRCs, they
created a "dilution" effect, making the oppostion voters be drowned
out by the others in the neighbouring GRCs.
For a fuller explanation of the redrawing of electoral
boundaries, or "gerrymandering", check this cool picture from
Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gerrymandering_36-28.png
(The end bit is about his feelings)
NOT THE END
Apparently the 2nd article says: Read the full report in
Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.
Also, check out this (somewhat cheem) article about our
political system in general.
http://aceproject.org/ace-en/topics/bd/bdy/bdy_sg