Singapore — In an essay published on Sept 21 on medium.com, NUS Professor Ben Leong wrote that he had been “deeply troubled” by last week’s lengthy debate in Parliament, and therefore, despite his heavy workload, he decided to weigh in on the issues at hand.
Prof Leong likened the strategy he believes used by Progress Singapore Party’s Non-Constituency Member of Parliament Leong Mun Wai with that of former US President Donald Trump, in a section of his essay entitled “Our Very Own Trump is Finally Here.”
“My assessment is that while the PAP might have ‘won; the debate, they actually lost the war. The PSP did not go to Parliament to win the debate. PSP went in there to get martyred. Seems to be that the PSP is following the Trump/Brexit playbook and they are actually pulling it off. Read the damn comments online! :-(,” wrote Prof Leong.
During the debate, the PSP NCMP was subjected to relentless questioning by Law Minister K Shanmugam, which left Mr Leong flustered at times. Additionally, in a hot mic moment, he was described by a PAP minister as “illiterate,” which drew an apology from Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan the next day.
“I was not offended by Vivian Balakrishnan’s comment,” wrote Prof Leong. “Instead, I was rather amused and sympathetic. I might have asked myself the same question if I had to sit through a 10-hour circus.”
However, he points out that Mr Leong has gained considerable sympathy online, since some perceived that he was bullied in Parliament last week.
“Let me say this v bluntly: LMW doesn’t do his homework and cannot even talk properly. Do we need to have whole house full of PAP MPs to take turns to hammer him? Did people find it entertaining? I found it painful and cringeworthy….
In this instance, I believe that the PAP has very severely under-estimated its political opponents. It is surprising that I have to say this given the number of generals the PAP has in Parliament, but not every political opponent will look like Chiam See Tong, Low Thia Khiang or Pritam Singh. Mutations can happen. It has happened.”
However, Prof Leong does not disagree with the point PSP was making, even as he decried how this point was being made.
“I hate fake news and what upsets me about PSP is their insistence on pedaling fake news à la Trump,” he wrote, adding, “While there are provisions under CECA for the transfer for manpower, the numbers of Indian nationals under those provisions is only about 500 a year and effectively negligible. Let’s all acknowledge this and put a stop to further misinformation about CECA.
What the PSP has done in Parliament is to distract the PAP by having it spend 10 hours trying to prove PSP wrong on CECA. The coup de grâce was to exasperate Vivian until he made a Freudian slip, and then had to publicly apologize. Genius.”
Prof Leong also wrote that “What PAP should have done is to simply reiterate the facts but then acknowledge that we really have do have a problem…that there are some quarters in Singapore who feel that there are too many Indian nationals working in Singapore.”
At the end of his essay, Prof Leong, who underlined that the views expressed in the piece are his and not those of NUS, asked PSP to stop using the tactics it has thus far employed.
“I would like to make a personal appeal to the PSP to abandon this strategy. While winning is important in politics, it cannot be winning at all costs. PSP’s current trajectory will lead to significant polarization. We have seen from the examples of other countries that this cannot be good for Singapore.”
He also believes that there is no need for Parliamentary debates to be so acrimonious.
“Allow me to also remind the PAP that LKY is dead. J. B. Jeyaretnam is also dead. Why is there is a need for us to have such an adversarial Parliament? Why is there the need to have a whole house full of PAP MPs all take turns to run down this one lone Opposition NCMP? Where is the honour in that? Can we all work towards a more gracious Parliament where people compete to better articulate the concerns of the rakyat, so that people can feel heard?” /TISG
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