2 Terms for S'pore PM like Thailand and US good for S'pore?

last SG · 2007-08-25T16:41:42+00:00

Old man lee will not make it 2 terms, neither is he in for voting for PM. If our PM is an elected by the people, his beloved hopeless loong will not even hav...

blueheeler SG

In a democratic system, the majority in parliament can technically do whatever they want. But not quite, for argument's sake. In Germany, Merkel's party won the election outright, but because of the strong show of the other parties, she had to give some key ministerial posts to those party, to reflect the sizeable chunk of Germans who voted for the Opp.

You say that 'no need for debates', which is pessimistic indeed. If the opposition is strong enough to debate critically every bill that's introduced by the ruling party, the press would report such debates, and therefore the pros/cons of each bill will be known to the public, even if they are passed. Such debates will stokes the fires of public sentiment, thereby not allowing the ruling party to do as they wish (unless they insist on going against the prevailing public opinion with one unpopular Bill after another, then the ruling party will scuttle their next election).

But then again, vigorous debates in parliament is only as good as a free press which will report on them with equal vigor. Which leads me the the press in S'pore...

lotus999 SG

it’ll be good. not only that they should also follow the thai e.g. of allowing voting in uncontested constituencies.

maurizio13 SG

Merkel's CDU/CSU party did have a majority over the other parties, but was it an overwhelming majority.

Merkel's party secured 36.8% of seats, which means another 63.2% exist between the other parties. In such a situation, don't you think that she was forced into sharing ministerial post with other parties.

What's the point of debates when the odds are stacked 82:2? The opposition did debate the bills, but it was chastised and passed with overwhelming majority. You mean the P4P press reporting so as to make the P4P look bad?

I-like-flings(m) SG

it will never happened lah.. u think we got so many Lee to be PM meh? Laughing

walesa SG

With the greatest respect, how is that going to come about in a fascist dictatorship? Laughing CSJ isn't wrong in advocating an approach where one shouldn't play along the self-serving rules laid out by despots and history would validate his judgment.

For your proposal to materialise would be akin to seeing the Kims ousted from power by democratic means in North Korea.

walesa SG

Actually, the flaw of Singapore's model is that they haven't adopted the model in its entirety.

Look at the US or UK, public services that are privatised remain in the hands of private entities without any stakeholding and interference from their governments. It's pretty much pointless for their respective governments to possess a tangible stake in such firms anyway since governments come and go and, depending on the party in charge, different governments will adopt different stance towards tackling various aspects (broadly speaking, with few exceptions, a Liberal government certainly isn't going to advocate and advance the interests of welfare as much as a Conservative one).

In dictatorships, however, such status quos aren't maintained because the incumbents are so firmly entrenched in power that it's practically impossible for them to be ousted from power by any peaceful, democratic means. Hence, their interests in such firms could be unjustly leveraged for the benefit of their own - in essence, the model you see here isn't flawed because it's a "Western system implemented in an Asian context" (as the fascists would like to claim); it's flawed because it's designed to serve the very interests of the tyrants in the first place.

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