Netizens get active in their blogs about the election – and even upload rally clips
THE Labour Day break made for good (blog) reading, what with the election rallies out in full swing, taking advantage of the long weekend just before Saturday’s polling.
But I qualify “good” reading here with blogs. You have to sift out the information you want from blog posts that swing from one topic to another.
Blogger “esotism’s” entry about the elections has a typically off-topic paragraph. “I can’t believe that Fiona Xie (who lip-synched her way through a Vivian Hsu cover with three other MediaCorp lip-synchers) made it the front page of the papers for the Labour Day concert, instead of Stephanie Sun, who was easily the best performer of the evening,” he griped.
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Podcast: the mrbrown show 2 May 2006: the persistently non-political podcast no. 7 (MP3, Filesize: 3.2mb, Time: 00:06:02)
Technorati Tags: elections, podcast, podcasting, prisongotnobroadband, singapore, singaporeelections, TODAY
Not so off-topic was activist Alex Au, “yawningbread“, who attended a Workers’ Party rally. While he avoided talking about the speeches by the political candidates, he wrote about the crowd and described his encounter with one audience member — “a gaunt old man with sunken eyes, a grey crewcut and white stubble. He had his gnarled hand up against the corner of his eyes, smoothening out the tears.”
Au — who took photos comparing the audiences at two different rallies held at Hougang field — was of the view that crowd turnouts were not necessarily indicative of the level of support for the party in question.
“To begin with, most people have a very clear idea what the PAP stands for; they really don’t need to attend a rally to find out. In addition, the PAP has the resources to get their message out in other ways … ” he explained.
More on the interest in rallies, one blog saw an increase in contributions from the public — with over 30 new video clips uploaded in the past week alone. This is despite the fact that — as I’ve mentioned before — the blog may be in contravention of the Parliamentary Elections Act.
Interestingly, these were video clips of Opposition rallies.
As I received no response when I tried to contact the site’s author, I couldn’t investigate if this was because no one contributed videos and photographs of PAP rallies.
Meanwhile, New Jersey based blogger Jason Leow wrote of his disappointment with Workers’ Party candidate James Gomez’s run-in with the Elections Department.
“Trust in a candidate, any candidate, is underpinned always by integrity. Gomez failed on that criterion and by doing that also tainted the Opposition slate. Hopeful Singaporeans feel robbed of the change in the air,” he wrote.
On the flip side, blogger “Pretty Place” complained that “The PAP keeps creating a din over the Gomez mishap (forgetfulness) … after an apology”.
Of course, there were bloggers erring on the side of caution — mistakenly thinking that they cannot blog about the elections — like student “boring engineer” who informed readers that “Singaporeans are not allowed to talk about the upcoming e*ections on blogs/podcasts … Hence don’t expect me to say anything here.”
Blogger “Ephraim Loy” — working with the PAP team at Hougang and currently donning his “white on white ensemble” — has been absent from blogging since April 22. But in his last entry, he reminded readers where his immediate future lay.
“Whether on not I will be busy depends on how the Hougang residents vote. You determine if I slog it out for the next year or just slack for one whole year — all in the hands of the residents,” he said.
Several blogs have been set up just to cover the elections. SG Elections 06 has a comprehensive timetable of political rallies for those who want to know where and when their favourite candidates are showing up.
Leaving you in no doubt as to its contents is a blog titled Diary of a Sembawang GRC voter where the author “The Swing Vote” tells of his plans to attend a Singapore Democratic Party rally and to buy that party’s publication, The New Democrat.
He remarked: “Maybe 20 years from now, I’ll auction it off as some historic treasure on eBay. Good idea right?”
Mr Miyagi has been regaling readers at miyagi.sg for over two years, and is very disappointed he doesn’t have the opportunity to vote this year.
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