Long before the SMRT strike, I started noticing Singapore-based PRC citizens on Sina Weibo commenting and mocking our political scene as moving increasingly towards populism (民粹主义), especially when the government introduced measures that they believed harmed their ability to exploit Singapore's liberal immigration policies.
Now that all the major opposition parties have stated their positions on the strike, we can see that the PRC immigrants and migrant workers have correctly read our political situation and that the strike instigators have managed to manipulate Singaporean public opinion to side with them to a large extent.
The fact that the WP, NSP and SDP leaderships have all failed to distinguish between the need to uphold the rule of law and the perceived unequal treatment of the PRC drivers but have conflated the two to undermine regard for our laws shows this trend towards greater populism.
Can we trust any of the major political parties to support unpopular policies if they prove necessary, especially in the next decade of disturbances and crisis?
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