It takes a night to make it dawn.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

why pap why 10:33 AM

After the elections, I was kinda bothered that a certain white party was still ruling my area.

But I had no major complaints about how things have turned out around here and in fact, I love staying here.

And besides the fact that I have NEVER ever met my MP since moving here in 1998 (true, I am not at home most of the time, but hey, most people aren't either right?) and that the closest I ever got to meeting her was having some lousy adv hanging on my door saying I missed my MP on her visit (which I think is bullsh*t cause I was at home the whole time and therefore, the adv wasn't even hunged by her), I don't really have anything against her per se.

I guess I belong to the lucky group of people that can pretty much get by without the help of an MP (I paused for a long moment there trying to think of something I needed my MP for and couldn't really think of any). Sure, she is my "voice in parliament" but how can someone be my voice if she never even met me before. *shrugs*

Anyhows, I saw alot of her adv and flyers portraying the work she has done in this area, the usual visiting old people, implementing volunteer programmes etc but hey, I for one know how far smoking can take a person. Even the smallest of achievement with the right words and pictures can look pretty impressive.

And I read a FB post sometime back (and can't find it now) which was questioning why we equate an MP who visits old people and implements volunteer programmes as a good MP? Cause besides the fact that all these seems like "nice things" to do and usually normal citizens do it in their free time as actual volunteer work, MPs are in fact doing it as part of their job. Sure, it is probably not cast in stone as something they HAVE to do, but serving the people is most likely somewhere in their job scope and it pretty much encompasses such activities.

So I realised I was feeling pretty ok about my MP cause she was doing her job. -.- How low a benchmark is that?

And then I saw this article.

Apparently, my MP was complaining:
"I started my MPS on May 9, two days after being elected as MP. Had a big crowd. Hardly any rest. No big media publicity. An opposition party starting their MPS just yesterday. If that had happened in a PAP branch, imagine the flak...But I am not complaining. We serve quietly and hope residents will judge us by our actions, and not just our words."

Ironic isn't it. Firstly, if she is really so keen on serving quietly, why is complaining on a social media? And this just reflects the mentality of the person who is representing my voice - immature and petty. Is the media supposed to cover EVERY single MPS in Spore?

Then I guess someone called her "irksome" (refer to above article) and she whined again about how she was just making a point about working quietly. Her tone obviously conveyed her displeasure and as a politician, I believe no matter the shit that gets thrown at you (even in social media, since she willing joined), you should still be politically correct. Behaving otherwise just reflects poorly on yourself.

Then an affliated FB account quoted her on her wall:
"We serve quietly and hope residents will judge us by our actions, and not just our words."

WHOA. Sound so damn impressive right? Quoted right out of context to make her sound all sagely and wise.

And speaking of quoting out of context, another boo boo by our men(and women) in white.

This MP claimed his (IMHO, retarded) comment about ministers' pay was quoted out of context.

"If the annual salary of the Minister of Information, Communication and Arts is only $500,000, it may pose some problems when he discuss policies with media CEOs who earn millions of dollars because they need not listen to the minister’s ideas and proposals, hence a reasonable payout will help to maintain abit of dignity."

He wrote a long reply about how this was quoted of out context by saying just that. No evidence of how it was out of context and not even a link to the actual context.

Then someone replied with the actual article . Even though my chinese CMI, I still managed to understand the article and no matter how hard I tried, I don't see any other context. The article is in chinese but I don't see any problem with the translation. I can't be half assed bothered to read to the second page, but unlike the above quotation from my MP which is definitely out the context, this one is quoted in its entirety. The entire quotation is a paragraph, not any shorter nor longer.

I seriously wish my MPs would stop using social media and embarass themselves. It's really painful to watch.