No to a Chinese President for Singapore

(The following is a comment in response to my chinese friend, Mark, in a previous post.  It has been elaborated upon below.)
Hey Mark,

I think i ought to make a correction to my earlier statement - about the president just being a figurehead.  Well, it seems from what i've been reading on some SG blogs - I told you earlier that they were informative didn't i;) - that they have already ceased to be figureheads.  The fact that they can debate issues that are quite controversial shows that the presidency, from hereon, or at least for now, is going to be pretty empowered.  Even if they aren't able to make much changes, the fact that they can debate as they do at least indicates that they can potentially be at loggerheads with the government, and, most importantly, influence public opinion.  So that's a good thing, democratically speaking.


However, on the racial front, the fact that the presidency is finally being accorded some power, and the fact that all four candidates are chinese, is simply going to reinforce the notion that if anything significant is going to be done, it is going to be by the chinese as opposed to a ‘prata man’ (as is termed the outgoing Indian president, Nathan, by some ‘netizens’ whom are simultaneously not censured by others for terming him as such). 

the fact that all four candidates are chinese, is simply going to reinforce the notion that if anything significant is going to be done, it is going to be by the chinese as opposed to a ‘prata man’ The same thing happened with the premiership.  Since singapore's first PM was chinese, and then the 2nd, and third - the son of the first - they managed to bring about enough racial polarisation and self-absorption amongst the state-defined, supported, and promoted 'majority' via a host of racist policies.  For Lee Hsien Loong to state that singapore is not ready for a non-chinese PM he effectively reinforced the ‘notion’ mentioned above.

The government didn't racialise politics.  They racialised singapore.  Divisively.  And people got used to it.  Thereafter, they could racialise politics with impunity as the people themselves would say either 'we majority what!', or 'the chinese are majority', to justify that racist status quo.  Hence, hardly anything is said about there being no non-Chinese in the presidential election race (pun intended). With the absence of true egalitarian multiculturalism in singapore, a Chinese president is just that.  A Chinese president.  If multiculturalism was true, then the president becomes a Singaporean president.

Hence, after these grossly racist policies and statements by a government controlled by chinese racial supremacists (not all chinese are fascists btw), to have no other race represented in the presidential elections, to not have a Malay president after an Indian, is simply going to further reinforce the racial self-absorption in singapore, and as well prepare the people to become even more averse to the idea of a non-Chinese president, or a non-Chinese holding any truly significant position in government.

So no.  No to a Chinese President for Singapore.  It is not the chinese I have a problem with, but an act that is only going to reinforce the already rampant racial self-absorption amongst quite a few of ‘the majority’.  If multiculturalism was truly respected in singapore, i’ll have no problem with Chinese presidents, even if they are elected presidents most of the time.  But till then,

No.  No to a Chinese President for Singapore.  As that does nothing but further make ‘singapore’ synonymous with ‘Chinese’, and ‘Singapore’, ‘Chingapore’ - or more accurately, Qin-gapore.(as a legacy of the definition of China and Chinese from the Qin dynasty, 221 b.c. onward, as opposed to the more perspectivally democratic Chou period before that.)


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