Mediacorp tonight was disgusting in its coverage of the Gomez incident.  First showing a PAP man asking for answers from James Gomez, answers to stupid questions like "Why did you need a lawyer to draft your apology statement?" (because if not, you'd sue him like you did all his colleagues, numbnuts), then the newscaster/commentator saying "But till now, there have been no answers...On the other hand, the PAP has been consistent since Day One with its message...With one opposition creating more questions than answers, and another with discord in its ranks..." Those were the snippets I could remember, because I didn't have my camera on hand to record everything with.  The bias in the news seems to be stepping up in the last few days leading up to Polling Day.  If you're wondering why, look at this:


Honestly, if one were to predict the outcomes of the 2006 General Elections from the amount of interest generated by election rallies, then the Workers' Party and the SDP will be sharing a landslide victory this year.  Unfortunately, one can't afford the luxury of such prediction.  One would have to consider two sorts of people -- the type who hang around opposition election rallies, laugh and clap and cheer, then go home and vote in the PAP, and the type who stay at home, relying on Mediacorp for all their information.  The couch potatoes are key to an approaching PAP victory.

Well, I had originally intended for this entry to be solely on the proceedings of the PAP Rally, but I was distracted by the news.  On the subject of the rally, which concluded my weekend round in which I visited one rally each by the SDP, the WP and the PAP, I must say the PAP one was the most uninspiring.  The crowd milled around, some chatting in low undertones to one another.  The most exciting thing I saw all night was this:


I asked the girls if I could take a picture of them and one of them promptly said 'no', while the other gestured me to somewhere I could take a picture from without being able to capture any identifying features.

It was also hilarious when I found myself and the rest of the crowd being introduced to Comrade Lim, Comrade Low and Comrade Shanmugaratnam during my visit.  What's with all this communist allusion? The Red Guards referred to each other as 'comrades'.  Let's also not forget Comrade Lenin, Comrade Stalin, and our dear friend Comrade Mao.  Does anyone remember Lee Hsien Loong saying he wants to let 'one hundred flowers bloom' in Singapore during his first-ever rally speech? That too was part of Mao's vision for communist China, in letting a 'a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend'.


I stayed to listen to Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Penny Low address the crowd.  Shanmugaratnam gave a predictable deluge of facts and statistics to illustrate how wonderful he's been at his job as Minister of Education, while Penny Low gave another barrage of examples which mostly had to do with widening roads and other upgrading projects with fancy acronyms.  One thing about Penny Low: she is one scary woman! She kept yelling at the crowd anti-SDA things, trying to rouse them up into some sort of fervour.  "SDA people in their trucks just go round and round and round! No direction! Round and round!"..."WHAT CAN THEY DO FOR YOU?!?", etc.  As far as I could see, only the core supporters near the stage would cheer here and there, while the rest seemed to stand silent and vaguely discomfited.  I'm very scared of her now :( I kept imagining her chasing after her kids with a rattan cane.

That's one part of a larger reason why I left early, during Low's speech.  The WP rally left me inspired, thoughtful, reflective, hopeful.  The PAP one left me afraid, uncomfortable, and out of place.  When the person I was with started to criticize Low, I couldn't help but look over my shoulder at the surrounding policemen in their neon green jackets, and wonder where the recording devices were.

Oh well.  Tomorrow I return to school, and I shan't be able to attend any more rallies for the rest of the week.  I'm grateful in many ways for this weekend and the chances it gave me to both celebrate the presence of democracy, in the wide open fields, and lament the absence of it in the four walls of my living room.