It is political, like it or not, continued
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 at 6:56PM Workers' Party chief Low Thia Kiang has responded to Steve Tan's letter accusing him of politicising the Mother Tongue weighting issue. I had previously called Tan naive about the politics, and I'm glad Low's response is also a small lesson in politics for those who think the opposition shouldn't criticise the PAP government when the need arises.
If my intention was to politicise the issue for profit as alleged by Mr Tan, I would have acted earlier instead of waiting till the Prime Minister had clarified the matter.
However, it is inevitable that if the issue is not resolved satisfactorily, I will have to escalate it to a political level, as I am not convinced of the need and justification for lowering the MTL weighting at the Primary School Leaving Examination.
Hence, I make no apology for cornering the Government and scoring political points, if the Government itself allows this to happen.
It is wise for the Government to deny the Workers' Party and myself the chance to score political points with good policies beneficial to the people, and to be sensitive to the ground to resolve issues before they are escalated into political issues.
My thoughts remain the same: that it is naive to think this is not a political issue. I'm not sure what some of my fellow Singaporeans mean when they say "don't politicise an issue"; if that is defined as "get out of the government's way while they formulate policy", then we might as well give up the right to vote, and officially change our system to a monarchy.
Low is merely doing his job as an opposition MP, and doing it well. If he, as an elected representative, can't get a satisfactory answer from the government, then what hope do we have of understanding the foundations of national policy that affects us and our future generations? We should grow up and understand the politics instead of being so complicit in the PAP's efforts to lead us by the nose.
Reader Comments (1)
sometimes it makes me wonder how "real" are these people writing to the press and defending the PAP to such an extent...