Earlier this week, folks chortled at the news of a panel that’s currently being set up just to certify the ethnicity of presidential hopefuls. Basically, a group of people are being appointed for the sole purpose of deciding if a candidate belongs to one particular race or not.
As you can imagine, this could cause a wee bit of clamour in a society that prides itself with racial harmony (although extremely not colour-blind). Who are these people to decide which distinct category to pigeonhole one’s ethnicity? The spectrum of race doesn’t shine in black and white — especially in a historically interracial country like Singapore.
Now that Singaporeans will be left with no choice but to vote for a Malay candidate in the next presidential election (good intentions, questionable execution), the element of race is placed right in the forefront of local politics. The list of people that fit the requirement to run is very short, as pointed out by The Middle Ground — only five people of Malay descent are eligible, with many placing their bets on Speaker of Parliament Halimah Yacob to be the next president.
Even so, things just might get complicated. On Facebook, Lisa Li shines a light on the dark path that Singapore may be treading on.
Ravi Philemon — editor of sociopolitical site The Independent Singapore — believes that race remains a big factor in our politics, no matter how hard we attempt to move past it.
