SINGAPORE: At the launch of a book titled ‘Non-Constituency Members of Parliament: What’s Next for the Scheme?’ on July 19, Paul Tambyah, the Chairman of the Singapore Democratic Party, talked about the impact of social media today, saying that their reach is greater than civil disobedience.
“Social media has changed the world entirely. You know people keep asking (SDP Secretary-General Chee Soon Juan) how come SDP doesn’t do civil disobedience anymore.
His answer is ‘We don’t need to because we put up a TikTok.”
A clip of Dr Tambyah saying this was shared on TikTok and later on Reddit.
@sgwhatsup Chee Soon Juan hasn’t engaged in civil disobedience for a while. This is Dr Paul Tambyah at book launch event for “Non-Constituency Members of Parliament: What’s Next for the Scheme?”
With videos on TikTok, the SDP chair added, the worst thing that can happen is that the party gets issued a POFMA (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation) correction order. He noted that with social media, the party has the ability “to reach out to far more people than if we were standing on Hong Lim Green or Raffles Place.”
Dr Tambyah said this in response to a question from former Zaobao journalist Ng Wai Mun, who had moderated the question and answer portion of the book launch.
He said that political parties in power all over the world “do what they can get away with” to remain in power. However, in the current social media environment, they can no longer get away with machinations that they had been able to carry out in the past.
In another part of the Q and A, he mentioned that at a recent SDP meeting, “someone pointed out that even the PAP thinks that SDP’s social media is pretty good.”
The SDP chair also talked about how the president-elect of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, reinvented himself as a “cuddly grandfather” due to social media, calling this a lesson from regional elections.
Over on Reddit, commenters tended to agree with Dr Tambyah.
“Times have changed. In some countries, people have taken to online activism and street protests dropped,” wrote one.
Another noted that Dr Chee seems to have mellowed due to his age and “the responsibility of his cafe employees’ livelihood on his shoulders.”
Instead of the strident tone he used to take in the past, he has become more measured and backs his claims with statistics, the commenter added.
‘Non-Constituency Members of Parliament: What’s Next for the Scheme?’ was written by Loke Hoe Yeong and former Workers’ Party NCMP Yee Jenn Jong.
Interestingly, a chapter of the book is titled ‘Views from the PAP: Is the scheme still relevant?’ and includes contributions from former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and former PAP MP Inderjit Singh. /TISG
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