Breaking news: Electoral boundaries
redrawn
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Singapore Democrats
Is the PAP calling for snap elections soon? It sure seems that way.
The Elections Department has been a little more than active in the
past few months, first training civil servants as election
officials, then updating the register of voters and the latest
news:
announcing the redrawing of the constituencies today at 5
pm.
Of the three activities, the gazetting of the constituency
boundaries is the most significant. This is because the PAP has
the habit of announcing the new boundaries at the last minute - the
time span ranging anywhere from a couple of months to just the day
before it dissolves Parliament. This, of course, ensures that the
opposition has as little time as possible to work the
ground.
If the PAP does go for a super-duper early election, it will be
an indication that it is unsure of how to handle the country's
economic future and needs to quickly get the general elections out
of the way before things slump deeper.
With the
disastrous adventures of the GIC and Temasek that have blown a
gaping hole in our reserves and the ill-advised foray into the
murky world of tax secrecy jurisdictions where hundreds of billions
of dollars could be made -- and lost -- in a matter of months,
Singapore's future has never looked more
uncertain.
But calling for early elections would signal one thing that should
worry Singaporeans a lot. It shows a Government on an unsure
footing and needing to resort to opportunistic holding of elections
to continue its grip on power instead of one confidently going to
the people to ask for a genuine mandate to tackle the country's
problems head-on.
But, of course, the PAP has always been about power first and
everything else second.
http://www.yoursdp.org/index.php/news/singapore/