It's a long one this weekend because there's a lot of say about some of the big things that captured attention this past week. I've tried to provide more subheadings so you can skim and skip to the bits you're more interested in, if that's helps!
As the GE draws closer I'll be thinking a little more about how WTC can best contribute to public discourse and conversation, and I'll also be preparing myself to write more special issues than usual. If you'd like to support my work, please consider leaving a tip or getting a subscription! 🙏
(1a)
Singapore’s been hit by an earthquake and it’s called the Electoral Boundaries Review Committee. The EBRC released its report on Tuesday and there have been a lot of changes. There are five new GRCs and six new SMCs, while other constituencies have been carved up, reconstituted or wiped off the map completely. Not for the first time, geographical magic has been performed, creating constituencies that have very little relation to the way Singaporeans think about our districts and neighbourhoods and how we move through this city. For example, what on Sang Nila Utama’s lion-y earth is Marine Parade-Braddell Heights GRC:
And why is Singapore Polytechnic in Dover now in Tanjong Pagar GRC?
The reason for these extensive changes, the EBRC says, is because there have been population shifts and new housing developments. Boundaries have had to be amended to take into account the fact that some constituencies have grown faster than others, and some of these adjustments also affected adjacent electoral divisions. This is admittedly more explanation than we got from the last EBRC report in 2020 and the one in 2015—possibly because the changes were so big this time they had to say something—but it's still prompted lots of questions, eye rolls and talk of gerrymandering. Just take a look at the reactions on CNA’s Telegram channel:
(1b)
Members of the PAP have come out to defend the changes but no one else is happy. Boundary changes are nightmare scenarios for opposition politicians, because years of work and effort can go up in smoke. For example, Dr Chee Soon Juan, who won 45.2% of the votes in Bukit Batok SMC in the 2020 general election, has had the rug pulled from under his feet because Bukit Batok SMC has now been absorbed into Jurong GRC.
As Donald Low observes in his Facebook post:
With the extensive changes to the old West Coast, East Coast, and Marine Parade GRCs (the three GRCs that were the most hotly contested in the last GE after the two won by WP), the number of GRCs where the Opposition are competitive has gone from three to maybe one (East Coast), if at all.
Some of the parties have started to chope constituencies, but I'm not putting a huge amount of stock into that until Nomination Day because things can always change before the forms are submitted (and accepted). Still, it looks like we're going to get more multi-cornered fights this general election and, like Terry Xu at The Online Citizen, I don't think this is a bad thing.
(1c)
Every time electoral boundaries are released ahead of the election, I think of this old article I wrote for TOC almost a decade ago:
han.kirstenly
There used to be more recognition—from Lee Kuan Yew, no less—of the importance of transparency and consultation before electoral boundaries are changed or set. What we have as citizens these days is as good as boundary gacha: there's no telling what the EBRC is going to spit out after its deliberations, and there are no exchanges. We just have to wait for the next boundary review to once again see what we get.
This is really unfair to opposition parties who are already resource-strapped and constantly forced to be on the back foot, but it's disorientating and destabilising for citizens too. When the boundaries shift under our feet and some of us find ourselves being moved from one constituency to another despite living in the space place, it's a constant reminder of how little agency and control we have over the spaces in which we live, how at the mercy of the authorities we are.
A meme for the road
(2a)
Two activists went to see K Shanmugam at his Meet-the-People Session about POFMA, the interaction went south (shouting and middle fingers were involved at one point) and he’s pissed as hell. He’s released video footage on his Facebook page, and the mainstream media and the PAP’s party organ Petir have followed suit, falsely portraying it as a Monday of Palestine Solidarity action. (While the two activists are members of Monday of Palestine Solidarity, they'd gone to see Shanmugam in their personal capacity to talk about POFMA.)
Lots of people, including opposition politicians and people who have been active in civil society spaces, have rushed to condemn the activists. Apart from the troll-y comments about how these activists should be arrested, detained without trial or even hanged, there's been a lot of talk about “strategy”, “decorum”, “doing things properly” and “the right way”.
Shanmugam's narrative, posted first, is dominating the conversation at the moment. The activists, two sisters, released their response and their side of the story last night. I recommend reading it in full. It's a long one, though, so I've also included excerpts that you can toggle to read.
Excerpts from the sisters' response
First off, we would like to clarify that we went to Minister Shanmugam’s MPS to share our concerns about how POFMA is being used. We made that clear to every single volunteer that screened us (five of them) and we also made it clear that while we would like to see Shanmugam, we were okay with waiting until all the other residents had been seen first. We understood that we were not residents of his constituency, and were okay to wait. We said this to the volunteers. If this was not relayed to Shanmugam, then this is an internal communications issue. When he left the MPS for his gathering, we were disappointed, but we still followed up with two of the volunteers, and we left our email addresses and phone number so that they could reach out to us and we could set an appointment. We even asked if that would be better instead of trying to engage him at MPS.
Secondly, we would like to address the blatant filming and intimidation we faced upon Shanmugam's return. We had already proceeded to leave the venue but when he made his way back, we decided we might as well see if he would meet us. He went around to greet every resident first and ensure they were seen before meeting us, which is good. He had security personnel and volunteers following him around, but they stayed at a respectful distance from the other residents. Then came our turn, and the situation escalated the moment we said we were there to speak about POFMA. The conversation went fine at first, but then we noticed he was pitching his voice down and standing really close. That's when we realised he had a mic on his shirt. When we looked around, his security staff and volunteers had completely encircled us and quite a few of them were filming. We knew they were not residents who had come to see him because they were wearing the PAP lanyard. At this point, we were shocked and unsettled. We came in good faith, and we were perfectly polite, so why were we treated differently from other citizens, as if we were a threat? Anyone would have felt disturbed to be surrounded and filmed by multiple people, but we felt especially vulnerable as women. Why did they crowd around us like that? And what would they do with this video? And as seen with the articles about us and the misrepresentation, what we feared had come to pass. We asked them to stop recording, because we had honestly not come to "start a fight" or "disrupt", but to appeal to him to lighten the prosecution of ordinary citizens with POFMA. We did not set out to antagonise him. But when we requested his people to stop filming us, he came to their defense. He said they were "entitled to record because this is a public space". We were shocked. On one hand, he checked to make sure we were not doing any audio/video recording, but yet his people could film us and create a hostile environment for us?
We felt humiliated, vulnerable and outraged that despite making clear that we did not want to be filmed, and requesting multiple times for his team to stop intimidating us in this way, our wishes were outright denied. Please understand that we were scared, being surrounded like this. So in that moment, as a form of resistance, and to make our unhappiness with the filming felt, we reacted to the cameras that were in our face. We even made heart shapes with our fingers, but of course, everyone is fixating on the middle finger.
[...]
...we would like to invite Shanmugam to release the full, unedited videos and audio recordings of us. We truly have a clear conscience. This was not an easy thing to bring up to one of the most powerful Ministers in Singapore, someone trained in the law, and someone with a LOT more political and socioeconomic power than us. Even though we haven’t been subject to POFMA orders ourselves, we were concerned over the many online posts about how POFMA was being used and wanted to discuss that, because these laws affect all of us who live in Singapore.
That Shanmugam decided to bring up Palestine was yet another confusing aspect for us. He claimed that we were part of a group disrupting MPS sessions, shouting at various MPS sessions and that we took MPs' words out of context. We want to make as clear as possible that we were not at Shanmugam’s MPS on behalf of any group, or to discuss Palestine. We went to see him in our own personal capacity. We wore PRESS t-shirts with the names of brave journalists because POFMA is about freedom of speech. We tried to explain repeatedly that we did not come as part of Monday of Palestine Solidarity, but he insisted that we did. Yes, we are also members of Mondays for Palestine Solidarity. As part of that group, we went to see Sun Xueling last year, as she is our MP, and we have accompanied residents in other constituencies who went to see their MPs (in both PAP and non-PAP constituencies) about Palestine as well, though we did not go in with them and participate in the conversation with the MP, since we are not residents of those constituencies. Everyone is invited to check out the instagram posts on Mondays for Palestine Solidarity and come to your own conclusions about whether we caused commotions at those MPS sessions.
But that is a separate matter altogether. If Shanmugam and other MPs want to accuse Mondays for Palestine Solidarity of rowdiness, in the interest of transparency, we would also like to see proof of such rowdiness. Especially if there are residents who were personally affected by our presence at these MPS sessions, we urge them to come forward with accounts of their MPS being disrupted by Monday of Palestine Solidarity.
I’m going to be very frank, so it’s clear where I’m coming from: as someone who’s experienced being singled out by Shanmugam/the PAP and all the harassment, trolling, concern trolling and lectures on how to do activism that followed, this episode is bringing up a lot of feelings and responses in my mind and body that I didn’t enjoy dealing with the first time ‘round and am even less glad to see resurface. I’m also not going to pretend that I didn’t find it cathartic to see Shanmugam get yelled at; personally, I think it does a very powerful man like him some good to be reminded (rudely or otherwise) now and then that not everyone is terrified or in awe of him. And I’ve written before about power and civility and the concept of “radical rudeness”, so I’ll just share the link here again to save repeating myself:
Kirsten Han
I’m not interested right now in passing judgment or getting into debates and arguments about activist strategy and persuasion. Instead I’d like to make these points and pose these questions for our collective reflection:
(2b)
If citizens who want to directly engage parliamentarians and ministers on national issues like oppressive legislation aren't supposed to go to the MPS, then where should they go? In his post, Shanmugam said that an MPS isn’t a “protest venue”.
Firstly, protests are context-dependent; any space can become a protest venue, that’s how protests work. But even if we set that aside, my question would be: Where are the spaces for protest and expression in Singapore?
Hong Lim Park, where everyone is shunted off to for the authorities and the mainstream media to engage or ignore at their leisure? Where can citizens go if we want to bring issues directly before elected representatives and government ministers and demand a response rather than some boilerplate acknowledgement?
In recent months citizens have been investigated by the police for collectively delivering letters to the Ministry of Home Affairs, participating in vigils to grieve the execution of death row prisoners, flying kites in acknowledgement of Palestinian lives lost and arranging shoes in a memorial for students killed in Gaza. There are big, horrible things happening both locally and around the world—things that trigger big, emotional responses—and no space or opportunity in Singapore to express these feelings and hold the feet of those in power to the fire as we’re entitled to do as citizens.
With a lack of opportunities (that aren’t curated/moderated/handled on the terms of the powerful), is it really surprising that people will show up at the MPS to try to get some face-time with elected officials? Is it really surprising that—in a context where they already feel like they’ve been suppressed, harassed, intimidated, dismissed, talked over or lectured at—people lose their temper?
(2c)
What is the MPS for? We’re used to the idea that they’re for constituents with various bread-and-butter troubles—HDB applications, traffic fines, ICA appeals, requests for financial aid—to see their MP and plead for support or help with this or that thing with this or that state agency. But why do people have to appeal to or petition their elected parliamentarian to do things like that for them? What does it say about our system that this sort of MP involvement is required, rather than making it easier for people to deal with the relevant agencies themselves?
One other question related to how we think about what the MPS is for is: What is the role of an MP? It’s not just about town council or municipal matters. MPs are also legislators, representing citizens interests in the House and voting on laws. Wanting to engage with an MP or government minister on matters like POFMA, foreign policy and freedom of expression is just as legitimate as wanting to talk to them about parking tickets or HDB loan appeals. Actually, it's even more legitimate, because they've been elected to be parliamentarians, not summon aunties.
(2d)
What are the real issues at play here? What’s the most egregious, most urgent thing that needs our attention?
Shanmugam is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, ministers in Singapore. Laws that he introduced—such as POFMA, which is one of the issues the activists brought up that night—have restricted citizens’ fundamental right to freedom of expression and perpetuated the culture of fear and anxiety in which we all live. Laws and policies that he continues to champion, like the use of the death penalty, have resulted in people taken to the gallows and killed. Are we really acting as if the most shocking, pearl-clutching thing is that a couple of citizens lost their cool and were rude to his face?
If your response is, “It’s their behaviour that’s hurt the cause and distracted people from these important issues!” then I’d like to gently remind all of us that, even if Shanmugam sets the narrative, we’re not obliged to follow. He wants us to pile on so-called disruptors instead of talking about POFMA and civil liberties and the death penalty. We don’t have to do what he wants, so what do we want to focus on? Let's do that instead.
(3)
I guess this is the sort of advocacy the PAP wants us to stick to. Speaking to the media ahead of International Women's Day, Sim Ann, chair of the PAP Women's Wing, characterised "textbook feminism" as adversarial and divisive and expressed preference for the "quiet advocacy" approach. Things continued to go downhill from there: in singing the praises of Singapore's policies and how they've benefitted women, Sim cited the ability of women to go outside without chaperones and how Singaporean women can learn to run their own households at a young age because couples are able to apply for HDB flats. 🙄🙄🙄
In response, Corinna Lim of AWARE points out how Sim's comments reinforce "outdated gender norms" and objects to her framing of feminism:
We are also troubled by her description of feminism as divisive and adversarial. Why is feminism – an idea rooted in equality – seen as divisive? Feminism does not seek to advance women at the expense of men. It calls for fairness, shared responsibilities, and equal opportunities for all genders. If we are advocating for equality, why is that seen as contentious?
It's not at all surprising, but worrying nonetheless, how the PAP sees anything that isn't change on their own terms as divisive or disruptive or destructive. It's never good for society or politics when those in power become so fundamentally allergic to challenge and contestation.
And yes, Sim Ann, we should be waking up every day and thinking about what we can do to dismantle the patriarchy. For goodness sake.
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