Saturday, August 29, 2015

My top wish for General Election 2015



What is my top wish for the outcome of the general election that will be held on Sep 11, 2015?

Active Parliament

I wish to see an active Parliament. I wish to see people elected into Parliament who can play an active role in

1) Discussing the issues facing the people.
2) Discussing the policies proposed by the government to address these issues
3) Pass laws that will provide the legal force to address these issues.

This requires members who are able to spend full time in this job.

We should not elect part-time MP who are busy in the private sector jobs, such as doctors, lawyers or corporate managers. If they are elected, they should be willing to give up their current jobs to spend full time as a MP.

Perhaps, as a compromise, they can part a part time job that do not occupy more than 50% of their time.

Diverse Parties

It is preferable, but not essential, for Parliament to comprise of members from diverse parties. The most important goal is to elect people who can spend at least half of their time, but preferably all of their time, in their work as MP.

Group Representative Constituency (GRC)

This structure is very bad. It is the source of many of the problems that we face today - the disconnect and the loss of trust between the government leaders and the people. We should remove this structure at any early time in the future.

Government Ministers

 We need to address the issue of getting suitably people to be government ministers. Our current approach is flawed in at least two ways:

1)  To get the "suitable" people to become ministers, the ruling party has to provide a safe way to enter parliament through the GRC.

2)  We still face the risk of losing the "suitable" people in the general election.

We have all along followed the UK system of appointing ministers from the elected members of Parliament. We should, however, recognize that our Parliament has only 89 members, compared to a total of 1,400 members in the UK Parliament, comprising of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The UK has a larger pool of people to select their ministers.

We have to change our constitution or practice to follow the practice in the United States. The President can recommend people from outside of Parliament to be ministers, but the appointment has to be approved by their Congress. In our case, the appointment can be approved by our Parliament.

How to vote

I recommend my fellow citizens to vote for someone who is willing to serve as a full time MP. It does not matter whether they person wear white, blue, red, yellow or any other color. Cast your vote wisely.



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