SDP 3rd Rally Yesterday - an assessment

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

On Chee's speech:

I thought it was one of his better speeches. There were a lot of questions and issues that PAP needs to address and answer not just to voters of Bukit Batok but to all Singaporeans . Here are the points that I thought made up his speech

- his stopped talking about his character, his job and his income source which always been contentious. Its also the area that PAP prefers to take him on. Though at the end of the speech he indulged in some wishy washing moral high ground rhetoric which was not necessary.
- he also stopped talking about promising and delivery things and making changes which he and SDP could never do due the lack of resources and the limited remit of an elected opposition MP. This is something that SDP previously did aggressive at the 2 rallies.
- he raised genuine burning issues especially sensitive and important ones - CPF, lack of transparency form the 2 sovereign funds, cost of housing as part of the CPF issue, our savings and inability to handle a major medical crisis

The only issue I had in terms of tactics was that it was better to leave the voters sufficiently riled up and concerned with the burning issues rather than end it with the moral high ground rhetoric which is always abstract. Voters must feel that they have been shortchanged by this Government who will never address the real issues.

The Good Speaker:

Damanhuri Abas, Jaclyn Go and Paul Thambyah did well. Damahuri probably is the most politically astute within the SDP team and he also reads the ground well. He also knew how to deliver the points. Jaclyn changed tact from the previous speech and covered good points. She must have listened to people who knew what to deliver as the change was significant. Paul Thambyah did a good job in correcting the character issue and did finally confirm that character was important and landed the whole issue of character and conduct well. His parable was spot on. Interesting end of speech on Indians/minority in politics and on Murali.

The not so good speakers:

Sadasivam did well in the previous 2 rallies but seemed to have run out of ideas and content. He began to indulge in self-importance reminiscent of Indian opposition candidates of the past. He seemed to think that being a PAP Member was important. His story about writing to Old man and CC to Tan Cheng Bock was really pour and frankly laughable. He also dropped a clanger. He challenged Murali to ask in Parliament the pay of Ministers. Both the Ministers grade and salary range have been released the public before. Clearly speeches are not vetted or whoever vetted it has no clue.

John Tan:

Firstly his fake ang mo accent got worse in this rally. And he could not pronounce "but Batok" in local terms whether English, Singlish, Mandarin, Malay etc. He kept saying "Bukit Beartok" like some new Ang Mo arrival. Comical and unnecessary. The grammar, tenses etc were also bad. He certainly gave psychology profession a bad name by these and compounding it by repeating that he was a psychologist. Not to mention the reputation of Murdoch University. He also has no sense of politics. His speech was more on social justice and his examples were also poor. He actually stated that academically inclined good students would become "teacher's pet" under the education system leaving the less academically inclined aside. It best that he be given backroom responsibilities and not put in front of the mike.


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