CSJ on character

As voters we need to keep getting better by becoming more discerning and wiser. Politicians must be seen as salespeople and so what they said must be filtered for that few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which must be matched with other pieces we have collected to form a picture; yet we may not have all the pieces necessary to form a picture. Besides a lot of us do not know or even willing to do the hard work of making sense of it all.

What is wrong with CSJ remarks as quoted in the ST (might have to another version from the horse's mouth later)

The character of an election candidate
is important and something
voters should be concerned with,
Singapore Democratic Party (SDP)
chief Chee Soon Juan said.
But voters can see this for themselves,
he added, saying: “Character
is what people see in you, not
what you tell people you have or
you don’t have.”
It also has to be demonstrated
and earned, not just talked about,
Dr Chee said yesterday, following a
weekendwhere the issue of character
has dominated exchanges
between the SDP and the People’s
Action Party (PAP). “If you want to
talk about character, then show
yourself to have character,” he said.
“Whenthere is character, you don’t
have to go and tell other people
‘that guy has poor character’. Ironically,
it reflects onthat person.”

It sounded like my earlier blog post on the subject of character but my context is different and to me that is the man speaking deviously. As a voter I had already judged that CSJ cannot be trusted. You make up your mind but you cannot be completely sure if you are right, just like buying a car or property it might turn out to be wrong purchase despite your best effort.

So I try to make the issue simple without losing its relevance. Our system can risk a CSJ in parliament. Come on, we have absorbed the greater risk of losing George Yeo in a GE. If enough voters side with CSJ, so be it. It would be a good learning experience for everyone but at Bukit Batok residents' expense.

The bigger picture. Voting PAP is buying Toyota which you can mostly count on. Going with an untested marque you are hoping for a positive surprise. No risk, no gain eh? Guess we can afford the risk and my hunch is letting CSJ into parliament would turn out to be a mistake but it is worth the price if it stops us from bringing in even more wolves in sheep clothing into parliament in the next GE. As always there are people who can only learn through a bad experience. If not now then when? Let him make his fox and wolf speeches in the august chamber; let the PAP learn how to return as good as they will be getting in rhetoric and repartee. This is immunization for certain greater dangers ahead. As is, a growing number of us are learning about politicking not at home but watching elections elsewhere which are not sufficiently relevant to our realities except to dread the day our politicians return to the low standards of the global mean.

Some day this will happen, always remember it is far harder to throw out a rouge PAP than barring the alternatives from getting in. What is the point of sending the opposition after the PAP unless it can make the PAP better and make it really hard to turn bad? Champion complainers, NGOs and social media for all their faults and special interests are doing a better job than the opposition.

I am not interested in SDP unworkable alternative policies. I notice they have no idea how to make the PAP work better and that for now is what matters. Perhaps show us how you can catch more David Ongs, Michael Palmers and worse still in hiding?

The PAP is no longer whiter than white and it is hopeless to look for that in CSJ and the SDP.