Fighting, by Urging Others to Fight Back....

Bryan Ti

Rather chivalrously, SDP states that it will fight for the Bt Panjang residents.

It then reminds us that the residents have some form of economic power that they must exercise to fight back.

Besides all the talk and sending out letters, one wonders whether SDP's way of fighting for the residents is simply to urge them to fight back (while it sniggers from the side-lines).

Otherwise, SDP could also be planning to carry out yet another round of petition signing, which incidentally got nowhere the last time round. Of course, I am sure it will also NOT fail to seize the opportunity to sell more of its newsletters as a form of side-income.

Incidentally, perhaps this fight it now threatens (and is hopefully legal) will also be considered part of the series of activities to joyfully celebrate its 30th Anniversary. This is in addition to the gala dinner and coming public forum it is organising.

(By the way, I am also wonder whether the letter sent to Mr Teo Ho Pin really had a photo of a rather jovial looking John Tan on it. If so, I am sure Mr Teo would be fuming at the deliberate snigger on John's face that he seems rather adept at making.)

SDP claims it provides balanced, moderate, mature arguments

Upon reading the letter from SDP Assistant Secretary-General to the Editor of Chinese newspaper Lianhe ZaoBao, I couldn't control myself but to laugh out loudly. In the letter, SDP claims that it provides "balanced, moderate, mature arguments".

NOT MY SDP shall now debunk all the untruths enclosed in the letter.

"There is certainly an effort to try to paint the Singapore Democrats as extremists. The SDP makes no apology for challenging the present political system and, more importantly, working to reform it.

Our objective is to ensure that the PAP Government respects democratic principles as enshrined in our Constitution. These principles include the freedoms of speech, association and assembly."

Liberal Democracy includes the notion of the Rule of Law, the principle that no one is above the law. SDP seems to appreciate Democracy at face value by going against the law of Singapore. One good example will be the protest conducted outside Parliament House.

"The actions of the SDP and other pro-democracy activists, which included the use of civil disobedience, have led to the opening up of Speakers' Corner for demonstrations, albeit in a very limited way. The Government has, belatedly, acknowledged the necessity of protests."

How could SDP be said to provide mature argument when SDP assumes that the liberalisation of the Speakers' Corner was due to the people who used civil disobedience? It puts SDP to shame for claiming credit for every forms of liberalisation of the politics in the country.

Another assumption was made that the "Government acknowledged the necessity of protests". Mature?

"On the point about the SDP website losing readers, we'll let the statistics speak for themselves:

... We don't think these figures point to the SDP 'rapidly losing its readers,' do you?

If anything, they support the view that "most web users will still want to hear balanced, moderate, mature arguments." And that's what the SDP intends to continue doing on our website."

First of all, the statistics provided show only one face of the truth. According to Alexa, only 45.6% of the visitors to the SDP website are Singaporeans, with 41.8% from China. PAP, on the other hand, has 77% of its visitors who are Singaporeans.

The underlying assumption, or the path that SDP wants to mislead us into, is that the greater the number of readers of a website, the better is the quality of that website. Anyone who has Internet access would know this is not true! Pornographic sites are equally populated with readers, for instance.

The heavy traffic to the SDP site is predominantly due to the sensationalised reporting of issues.

Since SDP is telling us Internet Statistics...

• Among PAP, WP, SPP, NSP and SDP, SDP is the only website that lacks a Singapore domain. Instead of a ".org.sg", SDP has a ".org". Even before yoursdp.org is bought as a domain by SDP, the original singaporedemocrat.org also lacks a Singapore domain. ".org.sg" domain "is for organisations which are either registered or are about to be registered with the Registry of Societies (ROS) including other miscellaneous organisation."^ What does this tell of the SDP?
  
  
• Since SDP wants to base their statistics from Alexa, we'll do the same. According to Alexa, only 45.6% of the visitors to the SDP website (yoursdp.org) are Singaporeans, with 41.8% from China. Another SDP domain "singaporedemocrat.org" is even worse, with only 33.7% Singaporean readers. PAP, on the other hand, has 77% of its visitors who are Singaporeans.
  
  Verify it yourself! View the Alexa ranking for SDP website at http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/yoursdp.org
  
  OR
  
  Go to www.alexa.com, enter "yoursdp.org" into the search field and select Site Ranking. Then click on Go. At the search results page, scroll to the bottom of the page to find out the truth.

P.S. Alexa data provided is dated on 25 September 2008.

Source:
http://yoursdp.org/news/singapore/1138-this-website-losing-readers-look-again
^ SGNIC - http://www.sgnic.sg/sub_about/sg_domains.html

Law Faculty Made Good Decision in rejecting SDP visit

SDP wrote a letter to Law Faculty requesting for permission to visit the school and distribute flyers. However, the Law Faculty rejected its request. So, SDP wrote a letter to the Law Faculty. The segments of the letters would be in quote below, as we discuss about this issue.

"I am sure you are able to appreciate the fact that we are not a company or group promoting a product or service for private gain."

It's rightful that a school shouldn't just allow a group to come in to the campus to freely promote books and shirts (like below) together with "democracy" ideals. Only charitable organisations should be given free booths to promote their causes.

"I (Dr Chee) would like to ask if you had consulted the Law Faculty students before you turned down our request to distribute flyers to them. Did the students have a say in your decision?"

If every decision needs to be consulted with the students, maybe the school management would be out of work and students would be conducting referendums everyday. Then... how could we be rank top in the World.

"I ask this because when we were at the campus, students took and read our flyers with great interest. It seems that they want to know more but are prevented from doing so by the university's administration."

I'm sure if a friendly flyer distributor gives out flyers promoting products with Promotional discounts, all the students would take it and read it "with great interest".

"Since our request has been turned down, we would like to make an alternative proposal, that is, to come down to campus and conduct talks and seminars with your students."

Why is it that after the Hong Lim Park is more liberalised, SDP is not utilising it. Anyway, the talks should serve academic purpose. And I thought such talks are usually invited by the schools and not the other way round?

Should SDP publish ALL letters openly? Doing so without permission is a rude behaviour. Is this a message telling us that SDP does not respect privacy?

Image Source:
http://yoursdp.org/index.php/news/singapore/827-tbt-campaign-continues-to-grow-police-step-in-