Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #pofma
Most recents (3)
COMPLICITY AND WHITE-WASHING IN #SINGAPORE, A THREAD
1/ There are a number of PAP MPs who are very popular, and/or those who don't come from the more conventional PAP recruitment pools (civil service, military, legal fraternity) and seem more progressive than the rest.
1/ There are a number of PAP MPs who are very popular, and/or those who don't come from the more conventional PAP recruitment pools (civil service, military, legal fraternity) and seem more progressive than the rest.
2/ When it comes to popularity, the obvious example is Tharman Shanmugaratnam, the nation's favouritest PAP minister. There's also Louis Ng, who was known as a dedicated activist for animal rights and welfare even before he became a PAP member.
3/ To their credit, MPs like Tharman and Louis Ng work hard, and might have commendable records of raising important issues in Parliament, eg. access to affordable housing for single mothers. BUT... (you knew there was a "but")
This is incredibly patronising towards young Singaporeans. I’ve seen conversations on Twitter and IG, and some have reached out to me privately, that are far more engaged and thoughtful than many voters much older than them.
#GE2020 has affirmed the way I think about my role in civil society: I see my job as trying my best *at least* hold space for political discussion and engagement, so that younger SGeans and generations after can push further instead of having to claw back what was there before.
So I speak out against #POFMA, and I hold democracy classroom sessions to normalise political discussions, in the hopes that 10, 20 years down the line, newer generations of activists won't have to walk this same ground again, but can go farther.
Since polling hours for #GE2020 have been extended and we've got a longer night ahead of us, I'd like to share this essay that I wrote for @restofworld, about how online spaces give Singaporeans an opportunity to take action in ways we can't offline: restofworld.org/2020/how-singa…
I was really lucky with my entry point: 2010, when the PAP government was still talking about taking a "light touch" with regulating online spaces and discourse, before the Internet Brigade trolls, and that window when they talked about a "new normal" of being more open.
