Politicians need to be careful of traps in Forums

Recently, some of Workers' Party Singapore (WPS) members' netiquette got into the limelight. This quickly puts into question whether it is suitable for politicians to be forumers and the absence of safeguards in forums.

Forums (or the Net at wide) allow anonymous characters to post messages. Any Netizen may also post messages on the account of other people, hidden behind anonymity. Hence, any chap can proclaim himself to be a politician and post nasty remarks, leaving a bad impression, if not name, of the real politican.

Forums are useful channels by which politicans can relate to his supporters or channels for them to spread their ideology and garner more support. Opposition politicians can even debate against policies drafted out by the ruling party in the government with netizens. The debates in the forums make the argument clearer and more people will be able to understand the whole picture.

However, in a forum, every individual member is equal in the sense that each can post, view, vote, argue and debate on every topic like any other members. Hence, members can ardently argue against a politician outright and question him. An experienced politician may be able to bring across his point effectively, while a less experienced politician may not. By giving answers and suggestions that contradict one's ideology, one will quickly be vulnerable to more attacks and in the end, lose support among other forum members.

I believe that only experienced politician or politicians that are political savvy and have deep sense of their own ideology should attempt to participate in forums, and will benefit from their exposure. However, every word and every response is crucial to the politician's overall image. Self-constraint must be observed.

The Liberisation of Postal Services in Singapore

Singapore Post has a heritage dating back to 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore. It is more than a brand as it is the one and only postage service provider in Singapore for all these years. However, come next year, Singapore Post will no longer hold on to this luxurious monopoly.

Even though SingPost has profitted much from its monopoly, it has not yet achieved high standards globally. With the liberisation of postal services in Singapore, it will inevitably face tough competitors such as SwissPost which ranks top five globally.

A great advantage that SingPost has is that it already has a large infrastructure ready and a system that is working in Singapore. Other competitors would have to start from scratch, thus giving SingPost a time advantage to strategise. As a national brand, it commands a high level of trust and reliability among fellow citizens.

Global competitors have logistical and financial support from their global companies. They can afford to sustain some losses intially, if there are any, and then compete with the dominant service provider to climb up the top spot. They have also the manpower, people with experience, knowledge and skills. Nationalism in Singapore is not that deep enough to resist foreign penetration of postal services.

Will a competition in postal service lead to an eventual loss for all parties and bring it back into a state of monopoly, as for the case of MediaCorp and SPH? Will we lose a national heritage? Liberisation of postal service will eventually bring benefits to the people in terms of competitive pricing and quality of service, if SingPost fails. As far as I am concerned, retaining a national heritage is paramount to all other concerns.

Purpose

Blogs are so multi-purposeful. I find them a product of innovation.

I intend to use this blog as a means of publishing my political ideas and thoughts from time to time, on various issues. Through this blog, I hope to gain more from self-reflection of my articles and hone my political thinking.

Enjoy and Argue.