Friday, April 22, 2011
What are we exactly electing?
Readers of my blog (I would presume you are my real-life friends) would know the restrictions I face in publishing stuff on the GE.
However, in remaining totally neutral (which I believe I am quite close to it), I shall continue to do a more factual, objective and less comment-laden post to continue on sharing with people what this GE entails.
The title of this post: What are we exactly electing?
Parliamentary Democracy System(Disclaimer: I am only going through this very briefly; I only know this through my PS1101E and PS2249 knowledge + lots of reading since GE2006)
Singapore inherited this system of governance from our former colonial masters, the British. In a parliamentary democracy, the country is divided into many areas with boundaries, which we call constituencies. In each constituency, voters vote for the person (often under the banner of a party) to represent them in Parliament.
And what exactly is the Parliament? In this British system, 2 functions.
a) The party (or coaliation of parties) which can secure at least 50% of the seats forms the government (also know as the executive), who is in charge of running the governing of the country. The party will appoint the Prime Minister, who is the overall in charge, and also the ministers who will be in charge of the individual ministries (as explained in my previous post) and public agenices under them. This core group will set the direction of the country by enacting policies.
b) And this government (executive) is supposedly answerable to the whole Parliament, which consists of the individual elected Members of Parliament (MPs), whom each and every one sits in the House by mandate of their individual constituents.
The MPs have the following powers:
(i) Propose bills (basically a law proposal) to become laws of the country
(ii) Propose modifications to bills
(iii) Vote on bills proposed by other MPs so to decide whether they become law
Before any bill (including the yearly National Budget) can be passed to become in-effect laws, at least 50% of the MPs must vote for it. For every bill, depending on Parliamentary procedures, MPs will propose and debate over the merits and demerits of them, suggest modifications, then finally try to convince their fellow MPs to vote for / against the bill. At the end of the debate, for every bill, every MP will make his/her judgement call, and vote on whether the bill should be passed.
Some parties practise the Party Whip, i.e. every member has to vote according to how their leaders vote, while for some parties, each vote is determined by the Member's own judgement call, and the votes are recorded so that in the future, the public can see for themselves who voted for / against on each bill.
As such, as you can see, the Parliament is actually a very serious place where each MP vote on behalf of his/her constituents, to create laws that will govern the country. And these laws have very serious and profound impacts on your life, e.g. what kind of economy and jobs you will have, what taxes you pay, what subsidies you get, what kind of society you will live in, how much you pay for your house, what kind of public goods you can enjoy, what kind of protection will you get, the amount of freedom you have to do things, what is legal and illegal, how severely the illegal activities be enforced and punished, and many other things.
So what exactly are we electing?This is actually a very cheem question. Knowing how the mechanics of Parliament work, you would note that:
1) You're voting for the person who will represent you to vote for bills to become laws.
The person must be able propose bills which favour you, or when other MPs propose bills, to speak up for you, present your concerns to other MPs to convince them to vote in your favour.
As the person is voting for laws that will really impact your life, you must really trust the person to have a good judgement call when it's time to vote in Parliament for or against bills.
Do note that some parties do practise the Party Whip, so effectively this 'decision-making' role has been kind of taken away and given to the party leaders. So, these people effectively become concern-raisers rather than decision-makers. (yes, the party you are thinking about does practise the Party Whip)
2) Your're voting for the people who will form the next government
In this Parliamentary system, a party (or coaliation of parties) must secure at least 50% of the seats to form the 'government'. The leader of this party will be the Prime Minister, then appoint which MP to be his/her ministers.
Also, in this system, a person must first be voted in as a MP before he can be selected by the leader of the ruling party to become a minister who will head a ministry and public agencies under it.
This core group of ministers, called the Cabinet, will be largely responsible for leading the Public Service to steer the country in their own visions and policy directions.
3) You're voting for the people to manage your town council.
In Singapore, the elected MP(s) will be the one(s) managing the individual town councils. The town council's duties include and are not limited to: managing the maintenance and cleanliness of the common areas (including the execution of upgrading programmes)
So there you are, the mix of reasons for you to decide who to vote for. Of course in the Singapore context, the dilemma gets even tougher with the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system, where you have to vote in a group of people rather than 1 person.
How do you decide? Again it's complicated. It could be based on:
1) The person's background (family, academic, career, political track record etc)
2) The person's party
3) The person's party's positions on the many various issues (you need to spend a little time to understand them, or at least pick 1 issue you are interested in)
4) The person's personal attributes, usually transmitted through interviews and social media, on what are the areas him/her wants to improve on, his/her convictions and motivations etc
5) Your wish for the optimal Parliamentary outcome based on what you guess others will do
6) Your views on upgrading in your estate (I wouldn't elaborate on that)
7) Subjectively, your personal liking towards that person / party
For most lazy /apathetic voters, they would most probably pick based on 1, 2 and 7, as these criteria require the least effort.
Practically, one person's vote does not really influence the outcome of any election. However on a more personal and emotional level, casting the vote is a citizen right and something to be treasured and not taken for granted. These rights are fought for through many wars in history in many countries, including our own. Even in modern times, there are people in many countries still with no right to choose their governments, such as North Korea , Libya and China. So please, treasure that piece of ballot paper in your hands.
With rights come responsibilities, so it's your responsibility as a citizen to equip yourself with sufficient information before you cast your vote.
For me personally, I would pick the person whom I trust, with very good empathy and intellect to make good judgement calls, to vote in Parliament on the different policies ON MY BEHALF.
Different people vote for different reasons. But let's not be lazy, do at least something to inform ourselves, and make a carefully thought-out and informed choice when we cast that sacred vote.
That, in my opinion, is what an ideal democracy should be about.
lowtide blogged @
2:53 pm
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Government: A more complicated concept than you think
One very sad situation in Singapore is that despite all of us having suffrage (the right to vote), not everyone is very clear on what exactly are they voting for. And one important concept of democracy is that it is believed that collectively as a country, people would be able to vote for the people or party which best represents their interests, hence giving them the vote of confidence to 'represent them'.
Representation comes in 2 ways: The party (or coalition of parties) which secures a majority (more than 50%) of seats forms the government, and the rest forms the opposition. In Parliament seatings, both the ruling party (or parties) and the opposition have the right to air their views, after which the governing party will take in all views, then decide what is the best course to go after that debate.
That is, of course, the very basic of what a Parliamentry government is about. However, in our lives, 'government' comes in many layers. Just ask yourself. In the Singapore context, what does the word 'government' mean to you? Does it remind you of the ministers? Does it remind you of the members of Parliment (MPs)? Does it remind you of the PAP? Does it remind you of the courts? Does it remind you of the police, army etc? Does it remind you of the ministries? Does it remind you of HDB, NEA, PUB, LTA etc? Does it remind you of the Town Council your house is under?
If your answer is 'yes' to all the questions, yes, the answer is so complicated. 'Government' in Singapore is so multi-layered, and does not mean and stop at a simple person/group of people such as 'the ministers', 'the MPs' or the PAP. This is simple demonstration of how ‘government’ is organised in Singapore.(picture done by me)
At the very top of governing the country is the Prime Minister (PM). Under the PM, there will be ministers in charge of the individual ministries, such as the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Finance, etc. The PM together with the ministers form the ‘Cabinet’, the highest decision-making group in government. In the Singapore context, the ‘Cabinet’ also includes non-ministry ministers such as the Minister Mentor, Senior Ministers and Minister without Portfolio.
In any organisation, there are always the ‘thinkers’ and the ‘do-ers’. In the national context, the ‘Cabinet’ can be said to the thinkers, i.e. they set over-arching, long term and general directions for the country, in areas such as economic structure, tax policy, manpower, healthcare, defence and education etc. The Cabinet is a subset of the elected Parliament, i.e. every Cabinet member has to first become an elected MP before he can be appointed by the Prime Minister to become a Cabinet Minister. Like any other MP, the Cabinet members are due for elections at least once every 5 years.
Downwards, it will be the non-political, unelected aspects of government. Under each minister is a ministry, staffed by politically-neutral civil servants, who specialise in their areas of work by profession. The highest civil servant in the ministry is called the Permanent Secretary. Under the leadership of the Permanent Secretary, the civil servants work out and execute the nitty-gritty of policy direction set by the Cabinet.
For example, the Cabinet can set a direction of ‘we want to develop green technologies in Singapore’, and the civil service will iron out details such as ‘how to develop it – government agencies do or private sector do?’, ‘how much to subsidise companies in research of green technologies?’, ‘which talent to bring in?’ etc etc.
Further down the stream, it will be the statutory boards / public agencies under the Ministries, each specialising in a very specific area. For example, under the Ministry of Health, you will have the Health Promotion Board to promote healthy living, SingHealth to govern the public hospitals and clinics, and Health Sciences Authority to research / approve health consumables in Singapore etc.
Unlike the Cabinet members and other MPs who need to go for re-election at least once every 5 years, staff in the ministries (civil servants), public agencies and stat boards (public officers) need not. They are government officers by profession, so they will take orders from the elected Cabinet (sometimes also known as the ruling party).
So what exactly is government? Government can be seen as multi-fold. In setting the general directions for the country, enacting laws, controlling the national budget etc, the PM and his Cabinet have the power, and would be ultimately responsible.
However, that’s not where the only power lies. Inside the civil service and public agencies, there lies power to enact by-laws, or regulations as we know it. For example, the NEA has the power to decide what to do to people for littering; HDB decides which estates to go through upgrading first; EDB decides which companies to attract to Singapore to create jobs, Spring Singapore decides which companies to help develop through subsidies and knowledge transfer, WDA decides what kind of workers to subsidise for training and by how much; CPF Board decides on how your CPF can be used and what are the minimum sums needed; SCDF decides on fire safety regulations, the police decides which areas of the law to enfore more actively etc. Of course, depending on the internal protocols, regulations of different severity will be approved by different authorities: some within the stat board / agency, some to the ministry, some to the minister, some to the Cabinet (like allowing Casinos).
So from here, I guess you can see that 'government' in the Singapore context is multi-fold, and it consists of both elected (the Cabinet) and non-elected (civil servants and public officers) people. These people, each in their own areas and layers, have varying amounts of power to create and enforce laws and regulations in the country. As such, while ultimate power lies at the top of the pyramid (the elected Cabinet), within the structure there exists people with discretionary powers to make Singapore for better or for worse, by enacting small or big regulations on controls, taxes, subsidies etc.
How does this link to the GE then? Watch out for my next post. Elections: What are we exactly electing?
lowtide blogged @
4:20 pm
Have always wanted to continue writing here, but somehow I'm just too tired to do so. As mentioned, weekdays after work (+ after work activities) I'm always zonked out, so no energy to write anything here, and weekends it's for going out or for rest. As mentioned, there is nothing much exciting about life these days.
The 5 day work, 2 day rest thingy is just continuing, and I'm as lost in life as I was 9 months ago. Things to celebrate include: finally debt free, so I can slowly build up more finances; my back is way better than before; i'm in the last few months before I get a transfer (+ increment). But before all these, I have to do and finish some tough and outstanding work - really need to chiong.
One thing that got me exciting is of course the coming GE. I always wonder if most of my friends do care about it at all, such is the political climate here. I get some excitement reading news, views, policy debates online everyday, but I guess I'm still in the minority amongst my friends (really very, very sad). Our people are usually quiet and bochup about what goes on in our country, and only every 5 years, there's a chance for us to wake up from our slumber and start thinking a bit about our country's future.
Of course, for young people, most of the focus is on Tin Pei Ling and her suitability as a candiate - while I think this issue has diverted us from the really main issues in this GE, it offers a kickstart of people getting interested - what better way than to bitch? Young Singaporeans' favourite past time.
That said, I would like to offer some views with regards to this GE, but of course I'm not sure if anyone will care to read. As mentioned on the previous post, I would like to start with the title: Government: A more complicated concept than you think
lowtide blogged @
2:45 pm
