Ask most Singaporeans if they have had the chance to vote and you'll likely get a no. We've been somewhat numbed into the PAP election banter of 'thanks for the walkovers and we'll now deal with the small noisy eddies of faux contest'. Lulled into apathy more like it, perhaps.
As spans of 5 years went by, the Internet came along and blossomed. Nay, it burst into our lives as we welcomed broadband with open arms and mouseclicks. With the Internet came information and lots of it. Mostly entertainment and some facts. So people could read listen and learn at almost whim and fancy. The Internet also brought rapid one-to-many connectivity. One can today send a tweet or Facebook posting to oh so many people at once, a means of proliferation previously impossible or at least not available to the common man, perhaps only to the rich through TV. Login, post and you're done but more significantly thoughts have been seeded in others. The advent of smaller, more advanced mobile devices also added to this convenience. Info on-the-go, info in and info out, everyone in touch.
This is how the Internet is going to determine how the Singapore election will play out with a generation who has not known conventional politics or even dared form an opinion about the gahmen. Their source of information is quite simply going to be the Internet. We're practically the most wired country on Earth and there's more mobile phone per capita here than anywhere else. All this connectivity already changing the way we find and get information, sometimes whether we like it or not. I can't help it if my Facebook friend goes profane on a post, I see it too. On-the-fly alerts to our mobile devices let us know which friend has checked in where - information we perhaps didn't even need to know but we accept and raise an eyebrow at anyway. So everyone's going to learn and hear about SG politics and all that goes on in the same way, from our beloved instantaneous sources.
Admittedly, most of the news out there is anti-PAP. The links I click on and retweet mostly lead to information on how the PAP has screwed various aspects of Singaporeans' lives. I can't recall a pro-PAP tweet. By nature, we are drawn to bad news, that of scandal, impropriety and wrongdoings - the same way we are drawn to gossip and melodrama. So with bad news about the PAP gushing from the Internet, we are inescapably drawn into the whirlpool of anti-gahmen sentiment as slurp up the videos, posts, articles, tweets, bleats and images.
I suppose the PAP has it's own self to blame. With the policy of unequal political representation which spurred the general apathy, we didn't care and remained clueless because we didn't need to know who was in charge just as long life went on status quo. Now that the bull's been released from the stifling pen, hordes of first time, tech-savvy voters will inevitably turn to instant media to learn about their options just as they do with everything else, and get sucked into the Internet-based anti-gahmen sensationalism, truthful or otherwise.
The bubble's burst, finally, with little hope of reining in the flow. How wonderful.
#sgelections
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