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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
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- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
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2008
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6 comments:
Thanks for the mention!
This article has more significantly pointed out the impact of GRCs on the electoral/political landscape; I especially liked the including of more data points and the representation of the data by blocks rather than a generic symmetrical bell shape curve it might not have converged to.
surely the high deposit is an even greater factor of "disfranchising"? by deterring small parties and individuals from standing and increasing the chance of walkovers, thus preventing voting from taking place altogether
again, I dont see PAP wanting to change this; I still think the idea of a proportionally elected senate at least ensures that even electorates with lower house walkovers would still hold a vote for the senate, hence allowing the citizens a feeling of being involved, and it is one PAP might be willing to accept for its other benefits (higher chance of a clean sweep in the lower house, sending retired ministers to the senate, even have the senate elect the president, avoiding the current situation of a 3 men committee in effect deciding who will be president)
The PAP would not want to change the GRC concept because it is the single most important factor working to their advantage in the past elections. They know this very well.
Given that loosing a GRC means losing a few seats together, the outcome of this happening is quite remote, given the limited choice of candidates available to the opposition camp. The PAP know about this too, so why change the system if it can still deliver.
I don't know if we need these statistics to know what we all already know. It is obvious that the party in power/government would naturally change things to its advantage. That's politics. While they may make the barrier of change higher, it is at the end, not impossible to change. Looking at Umno 30%quota to challenge leadership is one barrier example. If the leadership continues to deteriorate, no amount of barrier can stop the change.
Therefore, at the end of the day, it comes down to:
1) is the government doing a good job.
2) if not, is it doing poorly enough for someone to throw themselves forward to bring about change
3) Generally speaking, rising discontent is normally correlated to high poltical activism. So...don't worry.
And when the incompetence is obvious, no amount of media propaganda can cover them up (Re: Transport and Home ministryon recent months). We are an educated population capable of discernment, thanks to our Goverment. :)
Thanks, YB! I always thought of the GRCs as, but don't know the numbers to support the thought. Your article explained the numbers very well.
Now there are only 9 SMC, I wonder how many will be left in the next GE.GRC members increased from 3 to 6, and next may be 9, so pap will forever rule singapore.
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