These elections show that the Singapore voter has become quite
sophisticated and basically clear thinking - having turned down the
goodies on offer, and at the same time soundly rejecting opposition
who have performed poorly in the past
Given Gomez's past demonstation of being paperwork-challenged, its
infeasible that most of us would give credence to what he might
have said had he accused the ELD.
BUT - the crux is, to most Singaporeans, he did not, and apologised
for making a mistake.
"considering that the ELD was sloppy in their management" - well
the ELD was NOT sloppy in their managemen and actually, this was
probably not mean to imply that. But see, sometimes the way we put
things across can be interpreted differently and out of
context.
He did not do this twice - the last time he was penalised by being
disqualified. This time, it looks as though there is an attempt to
penalise him under section 182. Which simply goes against the sense
of justice that most Singaporeans have.
The scenarios for administrative chaos and loss of confidence in
the civil service are a bit of overreaction, and really shows a
lack of trust in ourselves, to be discerning. Its a tired
paternalistic view which fails to recognise that the kids have
grown up.
You have to remember on nomination day in some countries (of course
not Singapore), quite a lot of plot and counterplot take place as
each party try to conceal where they will field their candidates
and the other party tries to find out in order to counter challenge
if necessary.
Party sympathisers may disguise themselves as passers-by to try and
discover where an opposing candidate is likely to want to stand.
All this is part of the fun and games and one can be sure that
there would be possible feints. Wayang, one might even call
it.
Lets for a moment imagine that things like these do happen, and
that there are all kinds of last minute plans that can be activated
at the last minute, it would be entirely possible for a chap who
has a track record of getting paperwork wrong to mess up again in
the stress.
