East Coast GRC Rally - PAP and WP (Part 1)

On 30th April, Saturday, the GE rallies for East Coast GRC were held at Bedok Stadium. What other better ways to immerse yourself but to go down to the scene of it all and listen to what the parties have to say. I got to admit that it was pretty hard to find friends who are interested about the GE to join me to check out the rallies. Worker's Party Rally was held first on Saturday and I went alone.

As blogger refuses to upload my 30MB video, I have no choice but to use pictures to let you see what I saw and felt and heard on that day.

This was what I saw as I entered the middle entrance of Bedok Stadium. You'll wonder if this was a New Year's Eve Countdown Party in May...

I looked around me and all I saw was 人山人海 (a sea of people) covering the entire stadium and no way have you ever seen a neighbourhood stadium like Bedok being so packed like tuna or sardines. No epic S League match (SAF vs Tamp) nor events (YOG, etc) has filled the stadium beyond sitting capacity.

If you notice, you can even notice people standing outside their houses along the corridor to see how the Opposition's rally is going and what they have to say.

The arrival of "Thor's (a.k.a. Low's) Hammer" making its way through the crowd and you can hear the people clap clap and "rah rah" over it. Got to say that it is quite an innovative mascot and pretty easy to recognise.

Moving on, the message which WP was touching on (from the time I was there at about 830pm) was mainly about the key issues we all know and hold close to heart. Influx of foreigners, jobs, cost of living, ministerial pay, co-driver analogy, how come WP do not have outreach programmes, etc. There were no concrete plans about how they will develop our neighbourhood nor national policies to improve our lives but just promises to improve on the whole.

However, being able to talk about and grind on topics that you and I feel closely to, they should definitely be able to connect to the average crowd like us as it will seem like WP knows our everyday troubles/worries. At the same time, they also had the opportunity to clear up about how they were unable to do their outreach during the 5-year hiatus after every election. They say that whenever they propose, it gets rejected so now you are likely to think twice that when PAP uses this point to say the Opposition are not there for the people. Wouldn't know if it is true but it does make you think whether Singapore Politics is a fair game or not.

They used an analogy, (as accurate as I can) "it is like a soccer game where PAP's goal post is smaller than the ball."

WP also talked about voting secrecy, one of the fear mongering rumours that talks about our votes are being tracked and watched and should we vote wrongly, we will suffer based on what we voted. This was what they said (as accurate as I can and not word for word) "Being there for a few elections, we know the voting process. Votes are kept confidential. Until the last voter casts his/her vote, the box is sealed in front of all the involved parties then brought to another place to be counted in front of them. When it is done, the votes are all put together back into the box, sealed infront of all the involved parties and brought to be incinerated together with all your other rubbish." I do not know how true is that but at least we now know how out votes are processed and what happens to them.

Basically, this was a summary of what I have seen, heard and felt. Just my couple of cents worth and hope you had a good read. The WP rally had a pretty good rally atmosphere and I have to say if crowd numbers were an indicator for votes, WP stands a pretty good chance this 7th May.


Next, will be my experience at PAP's rally. Coming soon later today.