SDP Bukit Batok SMC By-Election 2016 - Response to PM Lee's criticisms of SDP

Описание: On nomination day, DPM Tharman met me and we both agreed that we would keep the campaign clean and fair, and focus on issues. That is the way the SDP will keep running the campaign for the coming week. We believe that you can criticise what a person says or what a person does but do not attack the person. We believe that it is fair to ask what happened to the plans that Mr David Ong promised (the hawker centres that were supposed to be coming up). But it is not right to question his character. Similarly, it is ok to criticise Dr Chee for asking PM Goh about Singapore's promise to President Suharto 15 years ago but attacking his character is uncalled for.

A person is not defined by his or her actions or words. In my own field, a person is not defined by their disease. For example, you are not a diabetic or a dengue patient - you are a husband, a father, a wife, a son, a mother, a daughter who happens to have diabetes or dengue. Both Mr Murali and Dr Chee are someone's son, someone's husband, someone's father. We need to debate the issues, not engage in character assassination.

The SDP put up our policy proposals for public debate many years ago beginning with the healthcare policy in 2012 and including our town council policy. We would like them to be debated fully.

To be fair to the Prime Minister, perhaps he may have been misled by the (Lianhe) Wan Bao (联合晚报) which have admitted to us that they made a mistake in their transcription and in the headline that they put up. They have since apologised to us. They have amended the online version of the article and they have promised us that they would do something to correct the error.

To re-state our point - we feel that you can criticise the speech, you can criticise the action, you can criticise the policy but not the man. To give you another example, in this past year at the Institute for Policy Studies (Forum), I pointed out that I disagreed with our Prime Minister when he said that Singaporeans were not as smart as Israelis. I said that Singaporeans were smarter than Israelis – at least we know how to live in peace with our neighbours. But neither me nor anyone from the SDP would use the same kind of language to criticise the Prime Minister like the (former) director of the National Neuroscience Institute. We do not believe again in character assassination or in attacking the character of the individual. We want this to be a debate about the issues, issues that matter to the residents of Bukit Batok.

Let's have a clean and fair election about things that really matter and let's make Bukit Batok the best town in the whole of Singapore. Thank you.

Dr Paul Tambyah, SDP CEC Member