Ian On The Red Dot

A reader left a comment (quoted below) after my last post about not canceling our National Day Parade. I disagree with the people who say that only authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states have parades like ours. His comment:

Just a bit of trivia. The only other countries that have “National Day Celebrations” like ours is North Korea and China.

No other democratic, first-world country does it.

xizor2000:
What is the point of a flypast and all that military display? Are we a communist nation like… North Korea?

Two links to help you realize that maybe we shouldn’t be so hung up on our Parade and use it as a marker of how undemocratic, not first-world our country is.

America’s National Independence Day Parade

France’s - Bastille Day Military parade

I have never actually seen any of those parades. What I know is from what I’ve read and the photos I’ve seen. To be honest, they don’t look much difference. There is parade and there is military display - two things that seem to be held against Singapore.

Of course we can always argue about how a certain political party seems to take center-stage and I think there might be fair criticisms against that. If you tell me the marker is that in each of these countries mentioned, the ruling party and leaders take center-stage in the National Day celebrations then I would be willing to concede that it could be a hallmark of authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states.

Yet, I wonder. I do not think it would be too presumptuous to say that the government, leaders and the monarchy of other countries, even the democratic ones, do get certain amount of spotlight during their respective nation’s National Day and its celebrations.

To a certain extent, it is really same difference.

I read this post by xizor2000 about canceling NDP and I cannot help but think it is way off the mark. We should not cancel nor ever considering canceling our National Day Parade.

In fact, I was saying, just do away with the NDP entirely. What is the point of a flypast and all that military display? Are we a communist nation like… North Korea?

Firstly, celebrating National Day with parades, even military ones are not unique to authoritarian or semi-authoritarian states.

I understand the grievances that xizor2000 posted on his blog. I share many of them. But canceling NDP will not make those problems go away.

Maybe it seems there is nothing to celebrate but I think that’s not true. Each year, there are many things about Singapore worth celebrating and we as a nation should celebrate.

I find it ironic that we accuse our leaders of just making decisions based solely on hard, cold, logical reasoning that are usually economically motivated and then one of the reasons we give for canceling the NDP is founded on economic considerations.

Of course, people asking for the NDP to be canceled might be pointing out the hypocrisy in wasting resources for a parade at a time when the government is asking us not to waste. I think if that is the intention, then there might be some merit.

However, do note consuming resources is different from wasting resources. NDP consumes resources but is it necessarily wasting resources? I believe that question is still open to debate and not an open-shut-chopped-stamped-signed-sealed-with-model-answer question.

Of course the cynic will always wonder what good a National Day Parade does. To be honest, I don’t think it does any lasting good for the rest of the year after the parade. Our hearts may be stirred by the proceedings of the day but once the we get back to the daily grind, a lot of the goodwill is lost as we fight for survival or the quest to make sure it is our foot stomping on another person’s face.

Yet without it, what it means is we don’t even have one day, one pivotal event on the calendar to stop and think what it means to be Singaporean and yes, feel Singaporean. We don’t even have that once chance to generate goodwill in some of us that hopefully last through the year.

I agree it is pretty pathetic to accord one day so much power to make things slightly better. And National Day shouldn’t be such a day. It should be part of many days. No. It should be the bookends to a year filled with many such days. A day when we celebrate the progress made in the past year, and look forward to greater heights as a society the next year. An Annual General Meeting for the citizens and Auditing of the nation’s conscience and consciousness.

The National Day Parade isn’t the complete solution as we try to make Singapore a better place and develop our identity as a nation. Yet, while it is not a sufficient condition, it is to me, a necessary one.

Note: If you have reached the end, you will probably come to a certain little thought - National Day and National Day Parade are two different things. We can cancel the National Day Parade and still keep our National Day - just find different ways to celebrate it. I agree. I think that is a viable direction we could, or possibly should, head towards. There might be more meaningful ways to celebrate our National Day.

When I wrote this post, I wrote it from the Singaporean view that in most of our consciousness, the National Day Parade has been indelibly linked with National Day. Canceling one seems like canceling the other.