Leon Perera: Singapore must not allow only 1 dominant narrative, and marginalization of those with differing views should be prevented

SINGAPORE: Workers’ Party MP Leon Perera (Aljunied GRC) grew passionate in his speech in Parliament on Tuesday (Apr 18) as he defended the policies the WP has proposed as not merely “populist ideas” that cause trust in government to erode, as alleged by Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong the day before.

“We should not strive for a political landscape where the public innately trusts the government but innately distrusts the Opposition or vice versa… We should strive for a politically educated, engaged populace that accords trust based on facts and evidence from independent institutions that function as intended,” he said.

Mr Perera then proposed several ideas that could help strengthen people’s confidence that Singapore has an open society with citizens who care, listen, understand, and debate policies.

He asked how it would be possible to make people believe that a more level playing field for ideas exists instead of just one dominant narrative which should go unchallenged.

The Aljunied GRC MP went on to suggest the following ideas, which the WP has or will be putting forward:

1. Delink the People’s Association from the ruling political party. The current system creates a sense that state resources are invested in promoting the government’s thinking and the ruling party’s politicians, which unlevel the playing field for politics and ideas.

2. Create an Ombudsman with the investigative capacity to strengthen confidence that the state and ruling party are accountable and cannot simply shut down a grievance that may be politically costly or for other reasons. At the very least, a second unbiased opinion would be of value.

3. Thirdly, ensure that funding for civil society, the arts, and so on is handled by independent committees that are not linked to the government of the day.

4. Fourthly, since we do not have a Freedom of Information Act, we should publish every single public opinion poll and data collection effort conducted with state funds, redacted only for anything that has clear and strong commercial or national security sensitivities, for better-informed debate amongst political parties, civil society groups and citizens.

5. Fifth, allow Opposition MPs to engage school students in their MP capacity alongside ruling party MPs and Ministers, a subject I have raised in this House before. Exposing them only to PAP politicians and barring non-PAP ones in most student engagement contexts does not achieve this.  /TISG

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