Powered by Blogger.

GE: S'pore's main political parties

 Five of Singapore's main political parties have taken part in a pre-election television forum, organised by Channel NewsAsia, in the run up to the General Election due by February 2012.

The hour long programme, in English, which will be broadcast unedited, is entitled "A political forum on Singapore's future".

It brought together representatives from the People's Action Party, the Singapore People's Party, the Workers' Party, the Singapore Democratic Alliance and the Singapore Democratic Party.

The programme participants were Finance Minister and PAP Treasurer, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and MP for Bishan-Toa Payoh Josephine Teo.

The Singapore People's Party was represented by its Second Vice-Chairperson, Lina Chiam. The Workers' Party sent Gerald Giam, an Assistant webmaster and an executive council member.

The Singapore Democratic Alliance had Mohd Nazem Suki, who is the Assistant Secretary-General of the SDA and also PKMS Secretary-General. While the Singapore Democratic Party was represented by its Assistant Treasurer, Dr Vincent Wijeysingha.

It is the first such programme to be recorded since 1988 and Mr Tharman said that it was a good opportunity for people to get to know the different parties.

He said: "I think one good thing about it was that there is a deep concern about wanting to have a sense of fairness in our society. Everyone shares that. That's foremost on our minds in the PAP. And I think the electorate will be able to judge on whether we're delivering.

"[The forum] went very well. It's a good idea to have this exchange well before the elections so that people get to know what the different parties represent and whether they've got real policies or rhetoric."

The programme adopted a structured format with allotted times for representatives to present their party's position and perspectives. Opposition members were given half the air time during the structured segments, and the ruling PAP given the other half of the time.

There were also discussion segments, where participants freely argued and articulated their views to give voters an insight into their thinking. 

18:19 | |

This entry was posted on 18:19 You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Blogger Tips and TricksLatest Tips And TricksBlogger Tricks
1 Share/Bookmark

Labels

Blogger Tips and TricksLatest Tips And TricksBlogger Tricks