26 August 2008

The first fruits of civil disobedience

The newly relaxed rules on podcasting, vodcasting, political films and demonstrations at Hong Lim Park are not a gift from the government, but a victory won through civil disobedience. Full essay.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's see how many bloggers will give credits due to the Chees for their acts of civil disobedience now that they probably will stop throwing stones at them.

yuen said...

the civil disobedience advocates need to show consistency: if the concessions are meaningless (as SDP says loudly and others imply), then the effort to produce the concession is also not very meaningful; if one takes pride in the effort, then one has to give some ackowledgement to the significance of the result

I myself prefer to focus on the benefit to the government: PAP will have money to organize bigger and fancier demonstrations and make more polished podcasts, in addition to having something to tell in IBA and reporters

Anonymous said...

It is akin to a tea party held by the Internal Security Dept to entrap all dissidents in one place. So where are the vantage points from which ISD can film the demos?

Would be interesting to see China-born Spore PRs protesting on issues at the park since they are passionate about staging protests & demos back in their own homeland. I bet the Spore govt would be thinking long & hard if they notice them protesting too much on how many more PRs can they accept from China without causing too much disturbance if it happens.

Anonymous said...

I don't think having more money equates to more polished podcasts. Remember the MDA rap video? *shudder* Or the recent 'made in Japan' National Day video?

Anonymous said...

fascinating insight. Now we know who the heroes of Singapore really are.

Anonymous said...

Dear Mr Au

With opposition as impatient and lacking in finesse as Chua, I fear there is no hope for change.

NoName

yuen said...

>I don't think having more money equates to more polished podcasts.

"more polished" "bigger and fancier" are not the same as "more effective" or "more artistic"; the videos you mentioned were "polished" all right

we can expect that when the next election comes around, many pro PAP podcasts will be put up; however, if they all give the same message, then it gets boring; a lot of inventive thinking will be needed

>impatient and lacking in finesse as Chua

you can hardly blame him for feeling aggrieved; obviously, someone with inside information could have advised those arrested "why dont you wait for the policy to be changed; then you can demonstrate legally in Hong Lim" but no one did

Anonymous said...

"Topics cannot touch on issues like race and religion. Content that promotes violence or are lewd in nature will also not be allowed"

The PAP govt still treats Singapore citizens and PRs like babies who cannot discern for themselves what is sensible and what is non-sense.

Obviously the recent moves are really to repair the badly wounded PAP image on the international arena. Especially after the court boo-boo by non-other than LKY about IBA letter!

On the home front, they are not delivering (which is their usual claim to glory) and instead disregarding the raising hardship for its residents. The affective divide is certainly growing.

Anonymous said...

Some said that it's tokenism but who cares? Just go for it if you want to, provided your employer is understanding enough, that you have decent financial status to pull through if you get fired and have the support of at least some friends and acquaintances you can rely on.

Though, I wonder about this:
How do the current internet "regulations" impact discussions or footage of events that have taken place in Hong Lim Park? You can't expect discussion of any sort, without relaxing the regulations and guidelines and without being more open about them. At the same time, the appropriate groups might look really foolish if they tried to crack down on such coverage on the net and be lambasted by angry netizens.