Thursday, April 27, 2006

What's the hurry?

I happened to work from home today, and as I was about to get ready to leave my flat for lunch, there was a knock on the door. I opened the door and a helper from PAP handed me a copy of the PAP Manifesto. She also told me that a candidate from PAP, Dr Lam Pin Min, would be coming around shortly do his house visit.

I have been waiting for someone to visit us at our home since the recent wave of local politics leading up to the General Elections, and was glad that finally someone turned up.

A few minutes later, Dr Lam appeared with two helpers. Good first impression, as he took a casual walk from my neighbour's door to mine, with the all-white uniform helping in the overall clean image. I extended my hand and we shook hands. He introduced himself as a candidate for our constituency, and asked me to vote for him.

I have been preparing a few concerns and issues (about 5) for candidates should I meet them, and I see that this is a good time to voice out the issues. I asked him if I could bring up a few issues. He said yes, and I proceeded with my first comment, planing to start with local issues around the estate, before moving on to large issues later.

He listen to me as I took less than a minute to describe my first issue - the problem with the fire alarm in the LRT Depot across the road going off in the middle of the night for no good reason. A helper with him took notes while I attempted to go on with my second issue.

However, seeing that I was about to start talking about another issue, Dr Lam suddenly seems to be in very much of a hurry. He told me that the helper will take down my contacts and the rest of my concerns before scurrying off. Of course, before going off, he repeated "vote for me, ok?"

I was left with bringing up one more local issue (I suddenly could not remember the other two), and the one national-level concern about Peak Oil. The helper did not know what Peak Oil is, as I expected, because I was expecting to direct the question to the candidate. The only thing the helper could do was to tell me that Dr Lam would coming again in the near futre.

That left a bad after-taste for me. The conventional wisdom, and what has always been on the lips of candiates are setences similar to: "we would like to hear from the residents and feel the pulse of the ground". However, in reality the feeling I get is that he is trying to show his face to as many people as possible, and issue/concerns can come later.

Granted that this is the elections period, and the objective is to garner as many votes as possible, but surely spending a slightly longer time with a resident with issues/concerns and most importantly, willing to share these issues/concerns, should not be too much to ask of a candidate.

So what's the hurry after all??

P.S. I read in the Straits Times Forum a few days ago about "Grassroot supporters led minister away from resident who had much to complain about" (Straits Times Forum, April 22, 2006) [archive link], and I think I could be one of the 'victims' of such modus operandi.

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