Obama for Singapore?
If the media is to be believed, Barack Obama is the most exciting person in American politics right now. Actually, that is an understatement. Barack Obama is probably the most exciting person in politics worldwide right now.
Most politicians will be happy to have delivered one speech that gets people talking about the eloquence of the delivery for days. Obama has made it a weekly habit of his. “We are the change we seek,” thundered Obama at one of his campaign speeches, mixing alliteration with his favourite pronoun.
His political star is burning so bright a student in our country, halfway around the world, threw up this question a at recent political forum – will we ever see our very own Obama?
Well, our very own Obama will have to come from a political party and it certainly will not be the PAP. It has long been the ruling party’s style to groom its future leaders through a methodical fashion. For the PAP, it is not about change we can believe in, but about a track record that we can trust. We are more likely to see a Hillary Clinton who expounds on her ability to be a leader from day one in the PAP. There does not seem to be any room for the meteoric rise in profile that Obama, a relatively inexperienced senator, is enjoying in the US.
And the younger members of the PAP are hardly able to reach out to younger voters the way Obama has appealed to college students in the US. The post-65 MPs have simply been hard-selling themselves too much. The cringe-worthy dance routine they tried to pass off as hip-hop was panned by many and the MPs spent much time defending their dance effort on their blog.
Obama inspires viral videos from everyday people and celebrities alike. Netizens blog about his speeches on the presidential campaign. The Post-65 MPs have to blog about their own speeches in Parliament on their own blog.
So we turn to opposition parties for our Obama, but they are unlikely to produce one either. Much has been said about Obama’s grassroots support and his ability to raise massive amounts of money from internet donors alone.
But we forget that he had a swooning media circus that catapulted him into the minds of the public when he was just a green senator from Illinois state. The extensive coverage of Obama in the news, which actually started way before his decision to run for president, gave people awareness of the books that he wrote, the speeches he made, and his appearances in the US Senate.
Now that he is running for president, cameras are ever-ready to televise every single motivating word he utters. The media has made him visible to the average American who is supporting Obama right now. The media has created Obama.
In Singapore, the opposition hardly makes the news. Whether it is because they are not worth covering or because the media is unwilling to give them coverage, we will never know. But the fact remains that the opposition is hardly in the public’s eye.
The only time the opposition appears regularly in the news is during the short period of general elections every five to six years. And though the opposition parties are able to come up with fresh faces from time to time, they lack the ability to stay in politics for long.
The Workers’ Party captured the imagination of voters when they fielded young candidates in the prime minister’s ward. But these Kamikaze Six, as the prime minister called them, disappeared from view as the ballot boxes were put away. Disagreement within the ranks later led two other members to quit the party.
Another opposition member, Steve Chia, made such a big impact in the 2001 elections that Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong praised his credibility. But he shot himself in the foot when a scandal involving compromising photographs of his maid emerged.
These are just about the only reports we see in the media about the opposition parties. The news-making juggernaut that is the government simply sucks up all the coverage in the media.
So can Singapore have an Obama? To borrow a line from Obama himself: yes, we can. We might even already have one in our midst. But without the media telling us so, we will never know.
Most politicians will be happy to have delivered one speech that gets people talking about the eloquence of the delivery for days. Obama has made it a weekly habit of his. “We are the change we seek,” thundered Obama at one of his campaign speeches, mixing alliteration with his favourite pronoun.
His political star is burning so bright a student in our country, halfway around the world, threw up this question a at recent political forum – will we ever see our very own Obama?
Well, our very own Obama will have to come from a political party and it certainly will not be the PAP. It has long been the ruling party’s style to groom its future leaders through a methodical fashion. For the PAP, it is not about change we can believe in, but about a track record that we can trust. We are more likely to see a Hillary Clinton who expounds on her ability to be a leader from day one in the PAP. There does not seem to be any room for the meteoric rise in profile that Obama, a relatively inexperienced senator, is enjoying in the US.
And the younger members of the PAP are hardly able to reach out to younger voters the way Obama has appealed to college students in the US. The post-65 MPs have simply been hard-selling themselves too much. The cringe-worthy dance routine they tried to pass off as hip-hop was panned by many and the MPs spent much time defending their dance effort on their blog.
Obama inspires viral videos from everyday people and celebrities alike. Netizens blog about his speeches on the presidential campaign. The Post-65 MPs have to blog about their own speeches in Parliament on their own blog.
So we turn to opposition parties for our Obama, but they are unlikely to produce one either. Much has been said about Obama’s grassroots support and his ability to raise massive amounts of money from internet donors alone.
But we forget that he had a swooning media circus that catapulted him into the minds of the public when he was just a green senator from Illinois state. The extensive coverage of Obama in the news, which actually started way before his decision to run for president, gave people awareness of the books that he wrote, the speeches he made, and his appearances in the US Senate.
Now that he is running for president, cameras are ever-ready to televise every single motivating word he utters. The media has made him visible to the average American who is supporting Obama right now. The media has created Obama.
In Singapore, the opposition hardly makes the news. Whether it is because they are not worth covering or because the media is unwilling to give them coverage, we will never know. But the fact remains that the opposition is hardly in the public’s eye.
The only time the opposition appears regularly in the news is during the short period of general elections every five to six years. And though the opposition parties are able to come up with fresh faces from time to time, they lack the ability to stay in politics for long.
The Workers’ Party captured the imagination of voters when they fielded young candidates in the prime minister’s ward. But these Kamikaze Six, as the prime minister called them, disappeared from view as the ballot boxes were put away. Disagreement within the ranks later led two other members to quit the party.
Another opposition member, Steve Chia, made such a big impact in the 2001 elections that Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong praised his credibility. But he shot himself in the foot when a scandal involving compromising photographs of his maid emerged.
These are just about the only reports we see in the media about the opposition parties. The news-making juggernaut that is the government simply sucks up all the coverage in the media.
So can Singapore have an Obama? To borrow a line from Obama himself: yes, we can. We might even already have one in our midst. But without the media telling us so, we will never know.
posted by Eagle Eye at 12:20 PM
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