Charisma COVID

And we have witnessed another watershed moment for Singapore.

I think the younger voters have made ourselves heard. We have effectively told our ruling party that we are not our parents and grandparents. A manifesto carved out of fear — even against this pandemic backdrop — does not work for this generation.

The results have challenged the presumption that a ruling party will have a higher propensity of emerging victorious from elections held in trying times. I, for one, assumed this presumption. And I am pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong (I mean, well, they are still victorious, just less victorious).

I think this GE has thrown light on what we desire (for our generation, desire appears to be a stronger motivation than fear): a sense of belonging. I observed that from what I coined the “Charisma COVID”, served on petri dishes of black mirrors.

Let me explain.

“Charisma COVID” — most evidently of Jamus origin — is enhanced and amplified via TVs, computers, tablets, phones and more (black mirrors). It’s rather infectious. Who doesn’t want to belong to this good-looking, smart, humble, and eloquent persona? You’ll naturally gravitate towards pressing that “follow” button — a Pavlovian response that we’re so predisposed to on Instagram, Tik Tok, and what-nots.

This transient world also doesn’t care so much about what you’ve done and not done in the past 5 years; it cares a lot about what you’ve done and not done in the past 9 days.

That, as opposed to us being politically woke, could have been the impetus to this watershed moment.

This GE is like a 9-day flash sale too, with quite a few package deals of highly coveted items being assembled with less desirable peripherals. You don’t necessarily want the peripherals, and yet you know you can’t get rid of them if you want that highly coveted item. So it’s either an “add-all-to-cart” and “check out while stock lasts” case, or a “deal expired” situation when you’ve to bear the consequences of losing the highly coveted item.

All in all, I hope that our ruling party realises that while the hardware may have remained unchanged, the OS has been updated — and will continue to be updated. A failure to reconcile with this could lead to an eventual Nokia demise in the political sphere.

#makeyourvotecount #ge2020