Bernard,

Thanks for the mention on this post. There is no need to apologise; Ned is only a small piece in the entire puzzle that is the sociopolitical blogosphere :P

Nice one BL and Kevin! This vid-blogging does open doors and give ideas...

It is an honor to serve the silent heroes of our interesting nation :P

Hi Bernard,

A pretty good piece of work..:)

Please do not apologise for not mentioning theonlinecitizen. The mention here on SA is good enough. We appreciate it.

Here's looking forward to more from you guys..:)

Regards,
Andrew
theonlinecitizen

Interesting article. However I was wondering about your definition of "non-partisan" socio-political bloggers?

Where would blogs run by political party members (albeit not officially as party-run websites) fall, under this classification?

Hey BL,

Two points I want to raise. The first one echoes Jason, kinda. What is the significance of being 'non-partisan'? What exactly does it mean? Is it possible to be non-partisan when we do socio-political blogging? Doesn't non-partisan-ship mean self-censorship?

The second is 'rational and civil discourse'. How do we define this? Can a discussion be rugged, robust, boisterous and rhetorical (think JBJ vs. LKY in the parliament of the good ol' days) and still be considered rational and civil? Can we hurl rhetorical taunts, witty sarcasms and still be considered as engaging in rational and civil discourse? Doesn't being rational and civil in our discourse mean mimicking the dreary technocrat-speak of our dear leaders?

I know these are the two cornerstones of SG Angle. I guess I sometimes (or is it more often than not) secretly (whoops), in my more existential moods, wonder and chip at them.

Hi Jason - tricky but useful question on what is (not) non-partisan.

We guys at TVD understand non-partisan narrowly as nobody gets a free pass and everybody is fair game regardless of the party they belong to. So with that in mind, dansong, I don't think non-partisan is synonymous with self-censorship all the time.

Hi Dansong - "civil and rational discourse", we would like to think that as long as the arguments do not bring in "expletives" or questions of parentage or wishing death and misfortune on the person, the person's family and the person's pet hamster, it falls within civil and rational discourse. Questioning the person's intelligence is tough though - it can go either way.

TVD, hahaha, it is damn hard not to tell someone to go *** his pet hamster though. But seriously, nicely put, I go with your definitions, they leave a lot more room for robust debates and will include the majority S'pore blogsites. I am just wary of definitions that are too narrow or too 'legalistic', making the cornerstones the dreaded OB boundary markers. I can live with such cornerstones the way you carve them.

tvd,dansong

I will say that I understand "civil and rational" discourse be more focused on the content rather than the individual per se. The motive of the parties exchange words and thoughts should be directed at the content rather than the individual.

It is a fact that different individuals have very different style, but to me, attacking someone personally regardless of the content discussed will not count as "civil and rational" discourse. It is something like hate the sin but not the sinner attitude, but this is not a perfect analogy.

Jason, Ringisei, TVD, Sze Meng and Dansong:

Thank you for the comments and questions.

Let me try to answer your question to the best I can. First of all, I don't think that I have a clear cut definition of what a "non-partisan" blog is. I believe that many out there will share this view. That being said, I can present my own perspective what I see a "non-partisan" blog should look like.

Here is a smell test for me to decide whether a blogger or a group of bloggers are partisan or not.

1. By Association: This is a criteria I do consider. For example, some bloggers (for e.g., our foreign minister, George Yeo or opposition members such as Perry Tong) have stated their association in the public and are upfront about the association. So, I consider them partisan.

That brings in a dilemma that I have for sometime. Someone will ask, "What about the case of the Online Citizen where Andrew, the founder is a Worker Party member?" I will be upfront by saying when it is initially started, I am skeptical and I see it as a partisan blog. Of course, it is my own opinion, and some people will think that Andrew's association with a political party should be an issue given that he has claimed that the site is non-partisan. At the moment, I don't see it as a partisan blog because other than Andrew, there are two other editors and also a list of writers who I know to be non-partisan, for e.g. Gerald Giam, Leong Sze Hian. I do disagree with some of their arguments about CPF or healthcare, but I don't see their articles are written in a partisan manner. In some sense, I have made my own judgment based on the collective rather than looking at Andrew alone and I can be wrong about it (Should TOC starts moving in a partisan manner). Hence I made the mention. That leads to the second criteria of my smell test:

2. By Content: How about the style of writing and the content? This is even more difficult to determine. It is really dependent on how you judge an issue. A lot of people thinks that my colleague Kway Teow Man is a pro-establishment "lackey" because of the way he defends the system. There are also times where he also point out the problems with the system, for example, his disappointment on the ministerial salaries. I have read Xenoboy and Yawning Bread, and in my own view, I don't see that they are partisan in nature.

Most blogs tend to write in an issue-based manner. For example, I can be against the ministerial salary hike but I support the pro-business policies of the ruling party. Hence, it is not so straightforward to make that distinction using content.

In the real world, there is a distinction between bias and non-partisan. In the strictest sense, a person is non-partisan if he does not belong to any political party or a card-carrying member of a particular political party. There are two cases which I think that all of you may have (or should think about). A blogger is partisan but not biased. Similarly a biased blogger can be non-partisan.

I will be happy to take this discussion further.

Phew, now that the existential crisis is over, let's get back to the question of non-partisanship. I guess this is the limitation that we have to work with in this current political atmosphere, but really, like KTM has said in my youth activism post comments, the atmosphere is more imagined than real -- once in a while a tight slap to show who's boss, but that's that -- well, at least in the recent years. So I look forward to the day when we do not have to say in one unabated breath that we are 'non-partisan bloggers engaging in civil and rational discourse', because it shouldn't matter when we back our POVs with substance, whether 'rational' in the spock sense or 'searing' in the xenoboy sense or in any other human and sane way that is still alien to us. Maybe we keep the civil to avert existential crises.

Dansong,

We can only work with what we have at times with the kind of climate. My theory is that most discussions about the social and political climate in Singapore are really issue-based. Ultimately, I am not so concerned about the partisan or non-partisan nature of a blog. I am more concerned about the freedom of speech and the responsibility for that freedom of speech.

I do look forward to the day where people can discuss issues without the need to declare whether they are not "card carrying members" of a political party. The fact that we need to do, tells us that the maturity of our society is pretty far away from where we hope to be.

BL,

I do look forward to the day where people can discuss issues without the need to declare whether they are not "card carrying members" of a political party. The fact that we need to do, tells us that the maturity of our society is pretty far away from where we hope to be.

Well said. Maybe here lies the answer to the question of whether Singapore is ready for the Invincible Precious Sword of Democracy, or maybe not. :-P

Hah, now that this thread has been revived, of sorts, yawn, I realized that BL and KTM have agreed on something which I disagree with:

BL:I do look forward to the day where people can discuss issues without the need to declare whether they are not "card carrying members" of a political party. The fact that we need to do, tells us that the maturity of our society is pretty far away from where we hope to be.

and KTM: Maybe here lies the answer to the question of whether Singapore is ready for the Invincible Precious Sword of Democracy, or maybe not.

I think our society has matured, but the political development has been lagging because the PAP governments have not been willing to invest in this development, thinking that it will be detrimental to their political hold on power (and fallaciously, therefore, for Singapore society as a whole). In part, the conflation of party, government, state and society is the problem here. But my point is that there is NO evidence that our society is not ready or mature for democracy. There hasn't been any explicit experimentation. My argument is to start investing in democracy if we want to see returns in the longer than short-run.

And this is to KTM's point, democracy is not a panacea, should not be, as I have argued in our debate on this matter in my post on youth activism. Justice is the invincible precious sword, to be balanced by the scale. In line with what I said above about evidence and experimentation, democracy is more like a crucible in its double meaning of both a heat-resistant laboratory cup to hold molten metals and a severe moral ordeal that would test one's character. We don't wait for metals to melt by themselves or for one's character to be completely ready for an ordeal. The crucible is part of the process of 'maturing'.