Friday, March 08, 2013

A different President

Ivan Yeow asked:
I was following the presidential elections in Melbourne while studying and rooting firmly for my Ex-MP Dr Tan Cheng Bock. And I was sorely disappointed when he lost by a few thousand votes. Would love to know your stand on the following questions

1. What are your feelings on losing your deposit for the presidential elections?
2. How would the elections been different if you and MR Tan "check-and-balances" Jee Say did not participate and split the "opposition" vote?
3. Would it be very different today if we had a different president?

REPLY

1. I was disappointed on the night of the results, but I forget about it the following day. The loss of the deposit is a small matter for me. The disappointment was greater.

2. If I did not participate in the Presidential Election, it was most likely that Tan Cheng Bock would be disqualified for the same reason that Andrew Kwan was disqualified in the previous election. See my blog post http://tankinlian.blogspot.sg/2012/12/splitting-of-votes.html

3. If we have a different President today (instead of Dr. Tony Tan), there will be a small difference, but it will be insignificant. When Ong Teng Cheong was President, he had strong differences of views with the Government, but could not make them known to the public until his last few days in office. I don't think that TCB could make a difference, but this is just my personal opinion.

I now wish to add a few words that were not said before. Shortly after I collected the nomination form, I approached TCB for a discussion about collaboration in the event that only either or both of us were approved. His reply was "wait for the Election Committee to decide first".

In the following weeks, I received vicious and malicious attacks in the social media and they were traced to supporters of TCB. I protested about this attacks to TCB's campaign manager, whom I know personally, but he denied the allegation. After that, I gave up all thoughts of collaboration.

For supporters of TCB who were disappointed that he lost for a few thousand votes, the outcome would have been very much different ,,,,,, if some of their supporters had not played "dirty politics".

1 comment:

yujuan said...

Why dun people let go and move on.
No use harping what'd happened in the past as far as Elections are concerned.

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