Ian On The Red Dot

The government is slowing trying to move the chess pieces to ensure a flawless checkmate once we move into the next elections proper.

So, what are we the citizens who are concerned about the next elections and a fair playing field doing about it?

More specifically, what are we doing about it online?

We have SingaporeDaily.net that aggregates posts from blogs. We have blogs offering an alternative voice.

It doesn’t seem enough. It doesn’t seem like we are preparing enough.

What sort of preparations might be needed?

Sidetrack.

It seems to me that the pro-PAP/pro-government people who try to do things online are clueless at best and indifferent at worse. It is like they feel they have nothing to worry about the online space. Could it be that they think that they have the mainstream media all sewn up?

On the flip-side, the general Singaporean online is too lenient towards the alternative voices on the web. Being an alternative voice to the mainstream media does not mean being a constant dissenting voice against the government.

I feel that the online space, with regards to political matters, is moving towards the direction of just being solely dissenting.

Where are the non-partisans online?
Back to the question. What sort of preparations might be needed?

Above question isn’t rhetorical. Do any of you have any ideas what preparations might be needed? Preparations done in a non-partisan way.

How is that possible you ask?

One of my favorite television shows, and ironically enough a credible source of news, is Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show. One thing that amazes me is how quickly they can write jokes that parodies or satirizes the day’s event. More importantly, the thing that really impresses is how they are about to spot topics, events and issues that will really resonate with the audience.

I don’ think it is just a bunch of cool dudes and babes sitting around a table deciding what funny shit to say on television.

I actually think they have a dedicated team collecting data from the newspapers and television news shows. Some, probably obsessively compulsive, intern is scanning and taping. Cataloging. Note Taking.

I think we need that for Singapore.

We need a, cue the buzzword, crowd-source way of pulling in every single coverage of our MPs and potential candidates leading up to and during the next elections. Scans from the ST. Screenshots of the online papers. Scans from New Paper. Everything that is available. Recording of Channel News Asia. Recording of the evening news. In English and in Mandarin. And in Bahasa and in Tamil. With subs for the non-English recordings.

Why?

Not for us online folks to have more source material to rant or write funny posts.

For possibly something greater.

Any thoughts on how such a base of information that is cataloged properly (admittedly, properly is such a vague way of describing the organization of the information) can help?

Now, some people may read this post and think, IanTimothy doesn’t like the government, so he must obviously like the opposition.

To that I answer, why can’t I dislike both?

Here is the problem as I see it with the opposition,

The government is like the kid with rich parents who can afford to buy him a football. Since he is the only one with a ball, when he goes to the basketball court, which in Singapore is obviously meant to be for playing football, every kid wants to play with him. And if no kid wants to play his game, well, he can afford to pay them to play with him. The opposition is like the kid who occasionally gets bullied by the rich kid. The kid who instead of training up and learning how to fight properly so he can defend himself, runs to the parents and other kids to cry and complain. Life is so unfair this weak little kid likes to say.

The truth is, for the next elections, I’m really sitting on the fence. And it is really true what the wise Chinese man says,

He who sits on fence hurts his balls.

Back to something greater.

Intuitively, I have a feeling I know what the PAP candidates always talk about. But won’t it be better if we can have proof?

Something along the lines of, based on the information we have, PAP candidates spend 50% of their time telling us how screwed the opposition is and 70% of the time, the opposition whines about how PAP screws them.

And then, maybe we have something like, based on the information, we know that PAP Awesome Hand Picked Candidate Number 1 spends 10% of the time talking about Foreign Talent and 90% of the time talking about how PAP has helped the poor in Singapore (without actually talking about how they have helped). And Opposition Super Underdog Candidate 1 spends 90% of the time talking about how PAP doesn’t give him the right to freedom of speech and only 10% of the time addressing the impact in the reduction of Foreign Labour in Singapore.

Something like that.