SDP -- The Way to Do It

I am Xeno Boy. I am the Political Savant. This is Singapore's First Political Blog.

In my last entry, I mentioned that SDP was facing a renewal crisis. I take that back. My Swedish classmate who is a true blue Liberal, forwarded me the following URL : http://www.s-studenter.se/index.php?page=3&ar_id=569

Yes it is in Swedish. But what it tells us is that the SDP and the Swedish Social Democrats recently had a democracy course in Singapore. The Swedish representatives, according to my classmate, are all dynamic young activists. This is the way to go if we wish to topple the PAP. We need to obtain fresh ideas and new perspectives to challenge the Hegemony.

My classmate has obliged my request to translate the article. I did not find this mentioned in any Singapore media or the SDP website. That is the point of my previous entry to the Opposition. Use technology. The translation goes like this. I do not take responsibility for any errors :

The course targetted the leadership of the Singaporean opposition SDP party. The speakers were young Swedish politicians from the Social Democrats, the liberal Folkpartiet and the Moderates. Representing the Swedish Social Democrats was Torbjörn Hållö, chairman of the GSHF (Gothenburg’s Social Democratic University Association).

Included in the course were training sessions in rhetoric, electoral strategy, media training and campaign methodology. In total some 20 participants from the SDP took part. Singapore is a democracy with impediments. The opposition is marginalised and the ruling PAP party redesigns the constituencies before each election in order to keep the number of opposition politicians in parliament down. In the last elections in 2001 the opposition only received 2 out of 89 seats.

It was an exciting weekend with many interesting discussions. That young Swedish politicians can contribute to supporting the Singaporeans in their efforts toward a more pluralistic and open society felt very meaningful.

Lee Hsien Loong assumed the Prime Ministership in Singapore just recently. Prime Minister Lee has promised a more open political climate. That sounds promising and I hope he keeps his word. Singapore is an economically highly developed country. Now it’s about time that those who rule Singapore start to affirm democracy and openness.

Currently Singapore has the dubious pleasure of executing the most people per capita in the whole world. So it was very inspiring that several of the opposition politicians who participated in the course also proved to be very active in the fight against capital punishment.

The democracy course is part of a larger project called the Sweden-Singapore Initiative for Democracy (SSID). The project includes several seminars in Singapore on human rights.

Torbjörn Hållö can be contacted at 070-4902531
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The SDP has taken a bold step forward. It has shown a willingness to learn. The infusion of such ideas will benefit the party in the long run. My point is simple: learn from them and than Adapt the ideas into our Singapore demographics and our Singapore context. Learn from them and than translate into action. Well done SDP!

The time is nigh for real change in Singapore. The population is changing. The awakened is gaining in numbers. Opposition hear me and hear me well. This is the way to go.

I am Xeno Boy. I am the Political Savant.

Political Strategies of Gen X for Singapore

I am Xeno Boy, I am the Political Savant. Hearken me.

In Singapore, there is a political divide. The older generations have been over-tranquilized by the economic doling of the ruling regime. Muscles which have not been used for long, will atrophy. The political will and muscles of the 35 plus generation in Singapore has been whittled into dead cells. There is little hope in that age-group except throw up some little sparks like the young guns of WP, Steve Chia of NSP. The SDP faces a renewal crisis, there is no young gun there now.

The next storm of Singaporeans have yet to be fully tranquilized by the PAP. We thank technology and we thank the globalisation which the new technologies bring into our lives. The click of the mouse, the sending of an SMS. These acts traverse and overcome the boundaries of political awareness instilled by the PAP. Any hope for a political renaissance in Singapore lies in this Gen X. For they see and they will know more than their fathers and challenge the news feeds of the state's ideological apparatuses.

The Opposition. Listem to me well. There are new political strategies and new collusions which are made for the 21st century. the new politics rely on the notion of Network Politics which is horizontal rather than hierarchical-based. The technologies of mass communication creates this flattening effect on politics. Yes, you as the consumnate politician still has to make your rounds whenever you can to toucg base with the 35 plus voters. But with the Gen X which will become the majority into the future, 3G, Instant Messaging, Real Player, ICQ is your apps for political manipulation. The PAP wired Singapore up. Make use of the wires.

Tap foreign expertise on mobilising the political masses using the technologies of today. Learn how to be suave, how to be political. Each app, each software, each gadget is political neutral. Politicise them. Touch the Gen X. We will see the effects into the future of Singapore.

I am Xeno Boy. I speak politics as I feel it. as I see it. I am awake. Are you?

Quote of the Day, Michel Foucault,

Is it surprising that the cellular prison, with its regular chronologies, forced labour, its authorities of surveillance and registration, its experts in normality, who continue and multiply the functions of the judge, should have become the modern instrument of penality? Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? -- Panopticism, The Birth of the Prison

Freedom In Singapore

I am Xeno Boy, I am the Political Savant, the owner of this Blog. I intend to pay with my blood and my brains back to the PAP what they have taken from me.

Today, I publish my first thesis on Freedom in Singapore.

In one of his seminal essays, Immanuel Kant states that there is a kind of freedom where even when you are chained and shackled in the dungeons of Hell, you remain free. Freedom because you refuse the shackling of your brain by your captors. The fact that you are imprisoned means that you are Free.

Converse to the freedom mentioned is the imprisonment when you are free to do what you want. The people are "free" to do whatever they want, they have a false sense of liberation because the system has already conditioned the inputs from which you decode the notion of freedom. Are you Free?

Zoom back to Singapore. You are free to do alot of things. You are given money, rental Government apartments, aptly termed as FLATS, but the people are Free only within the zones of freedom as programmed and coded by the PAP. This is a freedom which is the most dangerous because, this freedom shackles and chains the inner spirit. It kills the Spirit of the Full Man. You are Free but you are shackled and doomed.

Move to the Opposition. The "politicians" in this category, Mr Low, Mr Chiam and Dr Chee. You are born and bred within the PAP system. They have allowed you your little fiefdoms only because the PAP creates these buffers of false freedom to ensure that the overall chimera of democracy in Singapore remains Intact. By playing with this notion of Freedom, you perpetuate the illusion. Play politics beccause politics and politics alone can break the illusion. Politics is Illusion in excellence. Only Politics can break the political illusion of freedom created by the PAP.

The first notion of Politics is to mobilise. To first mobilise, you have to gain expertise. To gain expertise, you seek "experts". In today's world, there is this technology known as the Internet. You are global in cyberspace.

Politicians of Singapore Listen and Listen Well!! Use technology to tread where the heroes before you have Fallen (JBJ, Francis Seow, Tang my bows) Learn the first notion of Politics. Mobilise. Learn how to mobilise. Use Technology.

The spark of the circuit board can spark the numbed political self of Singaporeans.

I am Xeno Boy. I am the Political Savant.

Quote of the Day -- Nietzsche

"There is a degree of insomnia, of rumination, of the historical sense, through which living comes to harm and finally is destroyed, whether it is a person or a people or a culture." -- The Use and Abuse of History

The Birth of Sg's First Political Blog

I Xeno Boy will go where no one has ever gone before. I hereby announce the birth of Singapore's first Political Blog. I will give my awesome rants on Singapore politics. I will give the truth as I see it. Before I begin, I am studying political science, of course, in the UK. Yes, I have fucking spoken at Hyde Park before ... For all the political watchers in Singapore lemme state my basic assumptions in all posts :

First Rule : The PAP SUCKS

Second Rule : The Opposition needs to FUCKING ARISE

Whaddya think of my awesome rants?

To begin proper, Singapore is a Corporation or what is better known as Singapore Inc, a term coined by a co-opted Singapore political scientist, Chan Heng Chee. She had brains but she became sucked into the PAP system and is now a technocrat like all others. Nullified.

The problem with Singapore politics is epitomised by the definitional conundrum of the very word democracy itself. By all accounts, the lee-thal PAP has conducted social engineering par excellence in creating a system of government that is by all accounts a "functional" democracy. On paper, it makes the grade for a democracy. BUT the word democracy has its problems of definition, Singapore through the PAP has latched onto a problematic definition of democracy and stuck to it conveniently. It does not help that the dumb Yankees themselves have no notion of democracy but yet trumpet it like a coherent ideology to enlighten the fucking world.

But in Singapore there is no democracy. Why? Because there is no people in it. People in the sense of political people. A polity. There are economic people and people tied up with Government Housing Loans in Singapore. The people are tranquilized against thought and action from a political viewpoint. In the word democracy, "demo(s)" = people is a fundamental tenet of the concept. This is lost in Singapore. The recovery must begin with this. To recover the "people", recover their political selves, recover themselves as a full people and not just economic people. The demos must awaken so that it can control the "cracy". The "cracy" is over-represented in Singapore. The PAP is "cracy" only and power cracy to boot.

As the first step, "Demos" must be recovered so that the full sense of "democracy" can gain its signification. Because Demos comes before cracy. People first. We can than rein in the government. How to do this? This will be my next post.

All politicians in Singapore, come and listen to Xeno Boy. For I come as Political Savant. Suggest and comment, but I will fuck you back. I am Xeno Boy. I bring to birth Singapore's First Political Blog.

Xeno Boy

Quote of the Day from Walter Benjamin

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.

--Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History, IX"
http://www.tasc.ac.uk/depart/media/staff/ls/WBenjamin/Angelus.html