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
