TODAY: Buzz remains for hustings

“Remem­ber! Prison got no broadband!”

Politi­cians have stopped blog­ging but neti­zens con­tinue to give their takes on next month’s elec­tions

SO IT seems you can blog about pol­i­tics dur­ing the elec­tion period except when your web­site has “per­sis­tently polit­i­cal views”.

But Work­ers’ Party mem­ber Goh Meng Seng is tak­ing no chances as he stopped blog­ging after his entry on April 19. His blog, Sin­ga­pore Alter­na­tives, “is about the polit­i­cal strug­gle” he is “engag­ing in”.

Read more at TODAY­on­line: [pdf][text]

Pod­cast: the mrbrown show 26 Apr 2006: the per­sis­tently non-political pod­cast no. 2 (MP3, File­size: 1.4mb, Time: 00:02:44)

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Tech­no­rati Tags: elec­tions, sin­ga­pore, TODAY

In his last entry, Mr Goh wel­comed the announce­ment of polling day, say­ing “the time has come for bat­tle!”, but he is dis­sat­is­fied with the author­i­ties regard­ing the reg­u­la­tion of blogs dur­ing elec­tion period.

The Media Devel­op­ment Authority’s announce­ment — that blog­gers would be allowed to com­ment on pol­i­tics so long as they did not pro­mote any polit­i­cal ideas or sup­port any polit­i­cal party — seemed to rile Mr Goh most.

“That really bugs me!” he exclaimed. “How could one make any sen­si­ble com­ments on pol­i­tics with­out hav­ing an idea? Are we sup­posed to make com­ments with­out any ideas behind them?”

Fur­ther­more, he said, a per­son tak­ing a polit­i­cal stand has a set of ideals. “Thus, when he makes any com­ments in the polit­i­cal arena, of course he will be “propa­gad­ing” [sic] what he truly believes in! If he is not “con­sis­tent” in pro­mot­ing his views, then what type of blog­gers are you talk­ing about?”

The type, per­haps, Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor (and vet­eran jour­nal­ist) Cher­ian George (singaporemedia.blogspot.com) describes as hav­ing been “stereo­typed as mere enter­tain­ment” by a Gov­ern­ment that has “engaged in rhetor­i­cal cam­paign against alter­na­tive media, in an attempt to dele­git­imise the form in the eyes of the major­ity of Sin­ga­pore­ans who may not be tech­no­log­i­cally lit­er­ate enough to know better”.

Mr George con­tin­ues, “The let­ter of the law pro­vides an excep­tion to license news providers (news­pa­pers and broad­cast­ers), includ­ing their web­sites”. In other words, these can carry pod­casts, stream­ing video or “edi­to­ri­als telling Sin­ga­pore­ans how to vote”. But inde­pen­dent web­sites are not exempt from Inter­net elec­tion­eer­ing laws, “even if their con­tent is identical”.

So, what’s been going on in the polit­i­cal cor­ner of the blog­sphere? Well, the Sin­ga­pore People’s Party’s web­site (www.spp.org.sg) was last updated on April 18 and the National Sol­i­dar­ity Party’s (www.nsp.sg) on April 16. While the Work­ers’ Party web­site is up to date, the last entry on its blog (wpsgnews.blogspot.com) is dated March 31. (And the Sin­ga­pore Demo­c­ra­tic Party’s web­site? Gee, what’s the URL? I can’t seem to remem­ber, and I can’t find a 10-foot pole.)

And what about pri­vate indi­vid­u­als? Blog­ger “Gold­farp” (goldfarp.livejournal.com) wrote about his indif­fer­ence to the announce­ment of Polling Day.

“I can pen an entire essay about pol­i­tics in Sin­ga­pore, but I won’t. This coun­try isn’t worth my time,” he said, before rail­ing at detrac­tors of Sin­ga­pore Demo­c­ra­tic Party (SDP) mem­ber Chee Soon Juan, whom he likens to a cer­tain reli­gious fig­ure whom “we turn away, throw stones, hurl insults and point at laughing”.

Self-described “com­mu­ni­ca­tions prac­ti­tioner” Chin Wei Chong , 27, (weichongz.blogspot.com) wrote about how he bought a copy of the SDP’s pub­li­ca­tion The New Demo­c­rat “out of curios­ity” and as he walked away, “felt pity for him (Dr Chee)”.

On the other hand, blog­ger “Fish Yang” (fishyang.blogspot.com) responded to the news of Dr Chee’s legal predica­ment by observ­ing that “politi­cians are sim­ply child­ish”. She offered some advice for the belea­guered politician:

“Despite being sued already, he still con­tin­ued to sell and this is a very child­ish behav­iour. Want to write at least write the truth, cor­rect??? like “Mr Lee is old and not hand­some. he has many wrin­kles on his face”, thats the truth wad. Thats why I am not get­ting sued for that sen­tence. Grow up lah. Stu­pid guy. Sorry ar. Mr Lee, ok you very hand­some okay. Sorry sorry sorry.”

Mr Miyagi aka Ben­jamin Lee has been regal­ing read­ers at miyagi.sg for over two years, and doesn’t mind hav­ing his blog labelled as pure enter­tain­ment.