I am a voter in Aljunied GRC and I will continue to vote WP. They are our real check against the PAP in the Parliament. Only they can voice the people’s unhappiness, unlike the PAP MPs who are nothing but paper tigers due to the party whip.
Thus far the big guns of WP have been steadily whacking the PAP and offering alternative solutions for the future of Singapore. But the same cannot be said of some of the newbies. I have been observing the speeches of WP non big guns and find that they are very good with asking rhetorical questions: do you this? Do you that? Do you think? The answer is of course no and this tactic seem to be a big crowd pleaser.
But sometimes it is over-used, like last night WP candidate Terence Tan asked these rhetorical questions for almost half of his speech. The problem with rhetorical questions is it sounds good but when they come to the substance of their speech, like the policies, it becomes very visibly bad. On Terence, I thot was very aggressive with how he ended his speech by telling votes “You BETTER vote for Li Lian …”; as WP now its ok, but it was like demanding voters like dat, and honestly not very good.
Some candidates really cannot speak. If I am a Fengshan voter, I will be seriously worried with Dennis Tan’s Chinese speech last night. To say it was bad is an understatement. Honestly, it was atrocious. All I got out of it was that he does a lot of walkabouts and will do a lot of walkabouts and meet many people in coffeeshops if he elected. It got slightly better with his English delivery but by then, the damage done.
It is important for WP to continue to have their big guns in every rally: LTK, Sylvia, CSM and Pritam. But they also need to tell their newbies to be more constructive and bring the fight to the PAP. If they don’t, they might fall to the same PAP GRC trap where less credible candidates get overlooked because they have heavyweights around.
In this case, if you look at it, if lee li lian or the Sengkang West guy or the Bernard Chen in Macpherson do not have the big guns speaking for them, honestly I really think their chances are much reduced. Strangely if PAP rallies were to have their big guns like PM or DPMs talking in every GRC rally, they will be attacked. Strange but true in Sg.
Mr Ng
A.S.S. Contributor
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