Thursday 27 August 2015

Low Thia Khiang: We need 20 seats to be effective

Mr Low Thia Khiang said that for a balanced parliament, there needs to be at least 20 seats to the opposition. 



Why 20? Is it a magical number plucked from the air? 

Mr Low, of course, is looking at balance in terms of numbers and physical presence in parliament. 

In a debate, if there are two teams of 4 speakers each, we can say that the two teams are perfectly balanced as far as the number of their members is concerned. But if one team exhibits superior arguments, breadth and depth of reasoning while the other merely scratches the surface with superficial generalizations, then it is obvious that the two teams are not balanced despite having 4 speakers each. 

So it is with parliament. It is not the number of opposition members you have in parliament. It is the quality of their members and not the quantity. 

Mr Low also said that 20 seats are needed in order for the opposition to have enough resources to scrutinize government policies more effectively. 
 
Let's not be fooled by this argument. 

Mr Low doesn't need 20 MPs in parliament to scrutinize government policies. He just need human resources and the human resources don't need to be MPs in parliament. They just need to be humans who know how to read and how to do research. 

You can be the only opposition MP in parliament but if you have enough human resources, they can assist you in doing all the research that you need to help you scrutinize government policies. 

It's time to expose Mr Low's fallacious reasoning and remove the wool from people's eyes. Today there are 7 WP MPs and 2 NCMPs in Parliament. That's 9 of them altogether, just one less than half of 20 and they can't even scrutinize one policy. 

Workers' Party is bankrupt of ideas. To conceal their inability to offer any alternatives or scrutinize any policy, they tell you they are too few in numbers to do that. You need to vote more of them in before they can start to do anything.

"Too few in number" is also an excuse not to work and serve Singaporeans. If you buy their argument you will effectively be paying them each $15k a month to sit in parliament and do nothing. 

Vote wisely. Don't vote for the Wrong Party.

Vote PAP.

No comments:

Post a Comment