Spectacles In Parliament, Quantity Over Quality, Form Over Substance – Darren Mak
Speaker of the Parliament of Singapore Tan Chuan Jin
Outrageous. The World Economic Forum is suggesting that the age of consent should be lowered to 13 years or less. What kind of world leaders’ forum is this, and what kind of moral decay is the West trying to push on the rest of the world?
What kind of people would even suggest such a thing? Source: thejournal.ie
If you felt outrage and anger at the above, you are not alone. But you would also have been misled – the tweet is a fake, having been debunked more than once to actually be fabricated as ‘fake parody tweets’. The World Economic Forum never posted such a thing. You may even have seen this screenshot before, but be unaware of the fact-checking efforts that followed it. But such is the nature of the internet now, with tools that allow you to generate genuine looking tweets. Fact-checking resources are available as well, but they lack the virality that the initial posts gain. Sometimes, the thing need not even be an outright fake – missing contexts can also mislead.
Outrage is a powerful force in today’s world. Outrage garners traction, it begs for virality, but it also tugs on emotional strings, overriding common sense. Singapore has had its own share of outrageous posts or news that turn out to be fake, but as with the rest of the world, the clarifications are slower and never get the same reach. What this means is that public sentiment can be manipulated by spectacles, and Speaker of the Parliament Tan Chuan Jin talked about it with us and his concerns over some people’s preoccupation with form over substance.
Source: Mothership
At the end of the day, Parliament is where debates take place with the potential to directly alter laws and policies on a national level. Naturally, it means that matters of importance are highlighted and discussed. But some do not only look at the matters raised, they also look at how they are raised, arguing that the Singapore Parliament is boring or lacks real democracy as speeches are written and exchanges prepared. Setting aside the idea of MPs not substantiating their speeches being a marker of real democracy, it means that some expect spectacles from Parliament. It does make for entertaining watching, especially where scenes from other countries’ Parliaments can be highly charged and filled with viralable bits.
Top to Bottom: Italy, India, Taiwan, Uganda. Btw, that’s pig guts in Taiwan’s picture. Source: Daily Mail, Oneindia, The Guardian, Reuters
Singapore does not really have such scenes in Parliament, but do Parliaments need such situations to be effective? Spectacles and theatrics are only one measure some use to judge Singapore’s Parliament as sub-par – Mr. Tan shared that some also go by the number of questions raised by MPs. But such a measure overlooks the quality aspect of discussions, as MPs sometimes make suggestions that end up becoming memes across the internet, as MP Ang Wei Neng learnt for his ‘time-stamped university degrees’ idea back in March, when he raised the idea to put across the importance of upskilling and continuing education.
While it is at times funny to think about the meme-able moments from Parliament, it raises a more important point about policy-making and communicating in today’s world. Media literacy is not only for the consumers of media, but also for those who would feature on it – while many mocked the suggestion for the time-stamped university degree, the issue it was raised under, upskilling and staying relevant in a highly disruptive economy, is an important topic, even if not as sexy for the online audience. Think about all the taxi drivers who have had their industry entirely disrupted by the introduction of concepts like Grab, or the workers who will be replaced by machine learning. Had Mr. Ang made a less ludicrous suggestion than the one he did, would people have taken the topic more seriously?
Outrage. Source: SG Talk
That was a rhetorical question. The fact is that upskilling has been identified as an important part of keeping Singapore’s economy relevant since at least 2015, when then Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam announced the SkillsFuture scheme. More recently, LinkedIn also published a list of top companies to work for, the assessment for which included the availability of opportunities to grow your skills. The real question is, if not for the gaffe of a suggestion turning the discussion into a spectacle, would people have even bothered about the topic when it was raised in Parliament in Mar 2022? And does this mean that MPs and policy makers need to upskill themselves in the ways of the influencer – Malaysia’s Syed Saddiq on TikTok comes to mind – or pay influencers to influence for them? Does form matter over substance?
How do we get both?
Click on the links below to listen to the 2-part podcast on Plan B on Spotify.
Part 1: Speaking With The Speaker
Part 2: Speaking With The Speaker
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