Choo Zheng Xi / Editor-at-Large / New York
The Singapore we know will change.
This revelation wasn’t immediately apparent to me, reading reports of this Parliamentary session’s debate.
A continent away, the anger and helplessness I felt at our Finance Minister’s stonewalling over the Temasek debacle threatened to overwhelm me. I felt like I was punched in the gut when MM derided our “high-falutin” Pledge. I despaired at Ng Eng Hen’s colourless and pedantic rebuttal of Mr Viswa Sadasivan’s moving speech.
Surely Mr Ng must have felt some sense of irony in praising the PAP’s accountability, when just two days before his colleague had thrown a blanket over the eyes of Parliament?
One would rightly ask, for how long more are Singaporeans damned to suffer such arrogance and insensitivity?
It is precisely this visionless and petty bullying that has convinced me that soon Singaporeans will be able to take it no longer.
Even as I write, there is a new generation of Singaporeans who are willing to stand up and say: not one day more will we stand for this. These are Singaporeans who believe that the words of our Pledge are meant to be lived, not laughed at. Around me I see Singaporeans who give me hope that our country will change.
Singaporeans like Bernard Chen, a 24 year old polytechnic student and member of the Workers’ Party Youth Wing. Bernard gives his weekends to WP walkabouts, and is actively trying to get young people interested in the future of our country. He believes in a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”.
Singaporeans like Wee Yeong Wei, a 20 year old who has just finished his National Service, waiting to begin university, but already embarking on the second phase of his National Service: giving time and energy to help civil society group Maruah organize public forums to share the message of human rights with Singaporeans. He believes in a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”.
Singaporeans like my friend and colleague Andrew Loh, who devotes every single day to working full time on creating an open media culture and truly accountable and transparent government. He works with a team of Singaporeans who believe in a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”.
Singaporeans like those who serve Parliament and the People more faithfully than PAP MPs bound by the party whip: former NMP Siew Kum Hong and now Mr Viswa Sadasivan. Intelligent and successful professionals who do not need a Ministerial salary to fight for a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”.
Singaporeans like those in opposition, who have chosen to stake everything to face overwhelming odds because they believe that every Singaporean deserves to be heard. And every day, their numbers increase slowly but surely with new faces who believe in a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”.
As the ranks of patriotic Singaporeans who share these ideals swell, the fear will fade, as it is beginning to.
All that is missing now, readers, is you. Do you share that vision?
If you do, then I promise you, surely change will come. Change will come from those citizens of our country who put their hands to their chest and mean every word of our National Pledge, not from those who deride it as impractical aspiration.
Change will come despite those who deride the impracticality of a “democratic society, based on justice and equality”. The day has come, a line has been drawn in the sand, between those who believe in living Rajaratnam’s vision, and the men who see it as empty rhetoric.
And the day will come when those callow men who toe their party line realize that their hollow repetitions of the creed of an ailing patrician has to make way for a new Singapore: the Singapore of our National Pledge.
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- Tan Kin Lian leads investors in National Pledge
- “Pledge ourselves as one united people”
- National service, national responsibilities
- CPF: can’t withdraw more at 55 even with property pledge?
- Our Flag, Our Anthem, Our Pledge… Our Country.
LKY should change the flag. half singapore and half china and make it inot one flag
so LKY and china can prosper with FT and name the new poor singapore into rich CHINAPORE! and you singaporeans malay and indian and chinese who belong here can make your exit to malaysia and please surrender back your pink card to LKY so that he can give it to china nationalities and flood the new CHINAPORE
LKY should change the flag. half singapore and half china and make it inot one flag
so LKY and china can prosper with FT and name the new poor singapore into rich CHINAPORE! and you singaporeans malay and indian and chinese who belong here can make your exit to malaysia and please surrender back your pink card to LKY so that he can give it to china nationalities and flood the new CHINAPORE with them. thanks LKY thanks for the trust we singaporeans had on you.
In the furore around the speech, I think other good speeches have been forgotten. Sam Tan’s rebuttal of Viswa was very well crafted , NMP Audrey Tan’s speech on how the arts can be used to uphold the ideals of our pledge, NMP Calvin Cheng’s sppech on the definitions of democracy and equality. NMP Pauline Straughn’s speech has been posted on this wbsite on a separate article.
Hi Observer #103,
NMP Calvin Cheng’s speech on Nation-building tenets is Politics 101 – Equality of Outcome versus Equality of Opportunity. This is what that differentiates communism from socialism. No rebuttal of Viswa’s speech is good. Every PAP Parliamentarian is incapable of rebutting VIswa, including Lee Kuan Yew who responded by using politicking tactics to shift the attention away.
“His draft came to me; I trimmed out the unachievable, and the Pledge as it stands is his work after I’ve trimmed it. What is it? An ideology? No, it’s an aspiration. Will we achieve it? I do not know. We’ll have to keep on trying. Are we a nation? In transition.”
Did LKY himself make a feudian slips ?
Look at the above statement he make which is full of nonsense.
HOw can something be aspiration and not achievable especially after the old fart already “trimmed out the unachievable”, and even more so after more than 4 decades ?
It is not that it is unachievable but the old fart and his pappies are making it unachievable deliberately. How can the pledge be achievable if even the old fart and machinery even don’t believe it and work to achieve it ? If one don’t believe in something, obviously he won’t work for it, or am I not right ?
Old fart,
you can fool the people once, but you cannot fool the people twice. Should be known as Older Farter.
[#105]
Kudos to you, Daniel.
You have made an excellent observation.
Yup, there is no doubt, LKY spouted a lot of nonsense.
Hi 104, NMP Calvin Cheng is finished even before he started. Of coz after he started… he was finished even faster. LOL
Hi 104, NMP Calvin Cheng is finished even before he started. Of coz after he started… he was finished even faster. LOL
hi Daniel,
post #105
can the Advance Medical Directive (AMD) come into effect for someone’s brain that have all but rotten away?
mice is nice,
“can the Advance Medical Directive (AMD) come into effect for someone’s brain that have all but rotten away?”
Look at what the product of our money-focus biotech industry has done to the old fart ! It actually escalate the old fart’senility and nonsense capability !
hi Daniel,
must use metal detector on that roboLee… :P
what does the singapore pledge means to you?