Voting age
On and off some people will bring up the issue of voting age - why not lower it to 18, they say. And their favourite reason is that because 18 is the age for NS call-up. If these youngsters are deemed mature or responsible enough to defend the Country, they should be allowed to vote.
Why should the voting age be linked to the call-up age? I feel that they would be more mature after NS, not when they start.
I believe 18 was chosen for NS mainly because of convenience. It is possible to lower the NS age to 16 or even 15. At that age the youths can also be trained to defend the Country. Suppose we had chosen 16 as the call-up age, are we going to suggest lowering the voting age to 16?
Or if we raise the NS age to 20, are we going to suggest the voting age be 20?
I think if we don’t have very good reasons, let's stick to 21.
Walkover
Some people think that if there is no opposition contesting in a constituency, the residents there should be allowed to vote to show whether they support the ruling party.
This is a waste of resources and the result doesn’t reflect the true view of the people.
The oppositions have enough members but they do not want to contest because they know they could not win.
Putting aside the anti-PAP and pro-PAP voters, the majority will vote for the better candidates in an election. If there are only PAP candidates, some of this majority will vote against the PAP as they might feel this is a way to pressurize the Government into putting off unpopular policies like raising fees.
And I believe many will not go to vote as they think it is meaningless.
