Categories
Singapore

GE2020 Election Results

As expected by anyone and everyone, the PAP returned to power by winning a majority for the 14th straight general elections. Not just a majority, but a supermajority, where they control two thirds of the MP seats, and can unilaterally change the constitution. What would be unheard of in a liberal democracy is just par for the course here.

What was surprising for this election was the loss of another GRC to the WP, as well as a big swing in the votes that went for the opposition parties. 61.2% of all votes went to the PAP, which was a big fall from the 69.9% vote share in GE2015. The gamble of having an election during a pandemic – and the belief that voters would run back to the safety of the PAP – backfired on the PAP. This ended up being the 2nd worst elections results for the PAP in history.

Via mothership.sg

Instead, we saw that younger demographic of voters in Sengkang GRC opt for a slate of first time MPs, while kicking out 3 PAP ministers. This was one of 3 hotly contested GRCs, along with East Coast and West Coast GRCs being contested by WP and PSP respectively. All eyes were on the results of these constituencies, as the opposition slate included the likes of former PAP MP Tan Cheng Bock and Nicole Seah.

Alas, only Sengkang fell into opposition hands, while PSP lost West Coast by the slimmest of margins (48.31%) and WP missed out on East Coast with 46.59% of the votes. WP ended up with 2 GRCs and 1 SMC, for a total of 10 MPs elected into parliament. Overall, PAP will form the next government with 83 of the 93 seats taken by their members.

So why did Sengkang decide to opt for the untried, untested team from WP? These are a few reasons I can think of:

  • The Jamus Lim effect, where his phenomenal performance at the televised debate endeared him to the public
  • The profile of the WP candidates, who were all parents of young children, and who were themselves a mirror for the predominant age group in Sengkang (25 – 45)
  • The Raeesha Khan kerfuffle – where voters were galvanized by the gutter politics employed by the PAP, and decided to teach them a lesson
  • The WP candidates understanding the local needs i.e. lack of childcare facilities and good quality eateries
Sengkang GRC MPs

As a voter in Sengkang, I’m over the moon that the MPs who will be representing me in parliament also share my belief in fairness and equality. I look forward to seeing how they perform over the next 5 years, and doing my part to help them make this corner of Singapore my little slice of paradise. Majulah Singapura!

Categories
Singapore

The 2020 Singapore General Election

Reform Party's Kenneth Jeyaretnam

Two days till the nation goes to the polls, dear reader. And just the third time in my lifetime that I will get to choose members of parliament to represent me and my interests. Of course, this being Singapore, these things take on a Uniquely Singapore flavour, one that doesn’t always leave the nicest taste in your mouth. Let me explain.

Singapore has what you might call a giant elephant in the proverbial room – the People’s Action Party (PAP). The PAP has been in power since we gained our independence in 1965, and they have designed and implemented a system where the deck is always stacked in their favour. The media is subservient to the whims and fancy of the ruling elite, the judiciary is used as a tool to harass and bankrupt opposition politicians, and the electoral boundaries have been gerrymandered to the nth degree.

With such a stacked deck, you would think that nobody in their right mind would dare to stand up and contest in the elections. But since 2011, we have been fortunate that some brave souls have struck up the courage to do so. To them, I will be eternally grateful for sticking to and fighting for their beliefs. The likes of the Workers Party (WP), the National Solidarity Party (NSP), the Progress Singapore Party (PSP), the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), and the Singapore Democratic Alliance (SDA) have some of the truest patriots Singapore has ever had.

In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, the PAP government thinks its a good idea to call for snap elections. Parliament was dissolved on 23 June, nominations were made on 30 June, and the actual voting will happen on 10 July. Basically, the entire process takes just 3 weeks! My question is whether it is even wise to have an election at this time, as the government had until the end of next year to conduct it. Are they putting peoples lives at risk?

Anyway, the decision has been made, and its now time for us to make a choice. I’m in the camp of people who think its good to have opposition voices in parliament to provide different views. The PAP has such a hegemony on Singapore that they tend to only draw from the supposed “elite”. We are supremely fortunate that the slate of candidates from the opposition parties appear to be as good, if not better, that what the PAP are putting forward. The likes of Jamus Lim, Raeesha Khan, Nicole Seah, He Ting Ru, Chee Soon Juan, Dr Paul Thambya, and Michelle Lee Juen all deserve our vote, and I hope that they will achieve success this Friday.

For me personally, I will be voting for the Workers Party because their proposed policies resonate with me. The following are the key ones that I’ve picked out from their manifesto:

  • Strengthen social safety nets for retrenched workers
  • Reduce form class sizes in schools to 20-25 students
  • Introduce Special Dividend from GIC investments for CPF members
  • Introduce a national minimum wage
  • Introduce Redundancy insurance
  • Legislate against discrimination for gender, race and age
  • No to a GST hike
  • Do more to mitigate climate change

AS you can see, these are common-sense policies that will benefit every Singaporean, and I can whole-heartedly get behind any party that proposes thus. I hope my fellow Singaporeans do as well. At the end of the day though, in the words of a wise man:

The man the legend, Kenneth Jayaratnam of the Reform Party

Categories
Technology

Gadget Review: Asus RT-AX56U Router

Last month, my AC87U started acting up. It was randomly disconnecting from my wireless clients, and was often failing to handover the connections to the AC5300U. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring a portion of my infrastructure up to Wifi 6 standards.

A little bit of a background – the 87u sits near the entrance of the house, and is mainly to service the living-room, balcony and kitchen. Due to the presence of 2 large aluminum backed mirrors, I had to place the 5300u in the study room, so that it could service the 4 bedrooms.

Since the 87u was no longer fit for purpose. I was on the lookout for a new router that could integrate with my existing hardware. I had heard about the Asus AIMesh functionality, but the reviews had been poor for the first couple of iterations. But the latest reviews were starting to sound good, so I knew this was an option.

I also researched other standalone mesh systems, but the price to feature ratio did not make sense for me. I didn’t want to be paying $400 for a device that had better Wifi 6 speed, but then loses out on the configurability (?!) that I can get from the Asus WRT software and especially from the Merlin firmware. Long time readers (all 2 of you) would know I love this firmware because of the OpenVPN integration and the general performance boost.

So a quick search online and I found that Asus had more than a few options:

Source: https://www.asus.com/sg/Networking/Wireless-Routers-Products/

The Asus RT-AX56U caught my eye for a couple of reasons:

  • Cheapest of the lot
  • AI Mesh compatible
  • Merlin firmware compatible
  • Dual band (Since this would be placed near the entrance of the house to serve only a few clients, it didn’t need to have mind-numbingly high throughput)
  • A quad-core broadcom 1.5Ghz CPU with 512MB of RAM (double the 87u)

A quick trip to the hardware shop, and here it:

A fresh Asus RT-AX56U

Out went the 87u and in its place went the 56u. The usual process through the Asus connection wizard and I was up and running. Of course, I had to import all the settings from the 87u, but that didn’t take me more than 30 minutes. I used my only Wifi 6 device (Samsung Galaxy S10) to connect to the router, and lo-and-behold, would you look at that Network Speed!

1.1 Gbps wireless connection speed – welcome to the future!

I’m obviously happy with that connection from 2 meters away, but what I was really keen to test out was the mesh network handover. Using the S10 I walked step-by-step towards my bedroom. As expected, the hand-off occured the moment I passed the 2 aforementioned mirrors. (Sidenote: The 5300u backhaul is connected using an ethernet cable for maximum stability. ) That is exactly how I wanted the router to perform, and I am happy that that’s what it does out-of-the box.

One caveat about Asus routers – they tend to run hot. After an hour, my 56u was hovering in the 70 C range. I put a USB fan under it, and the temperature went down to 50 C.

Router in DB Box with a USB fan for cooling

In summary, if you are looking for a cheap Wifi 6 router that can serve as an AI Mesh node, look no further than the Asus RT-AX56U. It is priced in the S$159 – S$199 range, and it’s good value for a simple but capable router. I’m happy with my purchase, but there’s that little voice that tells me I should have bought the RT-AX58U for the triple band connection. Let’s see how long we can ignore the upgrade bug!