"Are Singaporean youths politically apathetic?" by Liew Wei Qi
I feel that youths in Singapore are not politically apathetic. In the General Elections this year, there are many youths discussing the topic on who they will vote for if they were given the chance to vote. The GE 2011 is very significant to me as this was the first time that a General Election interests me. During the days before the GE started, I will always go to Yahoo! News to read about it. There are many interesting topics like Singapore’s youngest PAP candidate, Ms Tin Pei Ling, and whether the Worker’s Party will win in terms of the number of votes for Aljunied GRC.
The GE will definitely affect those that are under the voting age. This is because whatever decisions made by the government like increasing housing prices and construction of new MRT lines will be experienced by youths in future.
I don’t think the voting age should be lowered. Although youths now have interest and opinions in the GE, youths are easily manipulated and this can cause the GE to be monopolized. Imagine if a gang of youths influenced their friends to vote for a specific party, peer pressure will cause them to vote for a party they do not want. Hence the votes for the GE will be inaccurate, affecting Singapore in the future.
The GE has an impact on me. Through the news I had read during the GE 2011, I realized that there are many political concerns that I never thought of before. Example, why there is high housing prices in Singapore and the consequences if the housing prices is lowered. Previously, I will just put the blame on the government for high housing prices. Now, I will think about the issue in the government’ s point of view.
The GE had raised a lot of political awareness in youths. I believe it is mainly due to the Internet, news on TV, radio, and even newspapers. More political awareness could be raised if schools can hold a forum to allow students to share their honest comments on the GE to other school mates. A political awareness campaign could be held to encourage Singaporean youths to know more about the GE.
Post a Comment