The lightning conductors strategy?

Election Quotable:

"It's party time." -- Singapore Democratic Alliance secretary-general Desmond Lim, alluding to the announcement yesterday that Parliament has been dissolved, the Writ of Election has been issued, and that Nomination Day and Polling Day are on April 27 and May 7 respectively.

For today's posting, I want to continue to look at the use of election metaphors, and at an intriguing comment by the PAP leader helming Aljunied GRC.

PM Lee kicks this post off with his statement, "All the parties have been preparing for these elections [Note: incorrect: I am sure he means "this election"] for some time. I believe the time is now ripe for me to ask voters for a fresh mandate to take Singapore forward for the next five years."

He is conjoining the concept of "time" with the idea of "ripeness". The idea of fruits ripe for the picking, as in yesterday's posting, comes to mind. Too early, and the fruit is not yet sweet; too late, and it rots, is wasted. Of course, there are fruits like the durian, where timing IS everything. It must drop on its own, signalling it has ripened.

I am also led to the Biblical concept of the conditional aspect of time as "an appointed  time for everything". There is a lovely folk song that captures this theme:

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/byrds/turn+turn+turn_20026419.html

Meanwhile, DPM Teo Chee Hean conjures up the "delivery" (fast food? or Fedex/DHL?) image. He said: "The PAP has shown that it can deliver... Question is, can the other guy deliver?"

I think both sides should be inspired by this, in their election ads, to come up with creative storylines. We have all seen on TV that ad in which this guy, trapped somewhere, sends his faithful dog out to deliver an SOS message but the pooch is sidetracked when it sees a fellow canine of the opposite sex. The ad then zeroes in on this delivery firm that delivers that package (of goodies? of promised changes?) on time, unerringly, etc.

Election ads should not be dull, without being facetious of course.

Returning to the idea of the "ground" (and soil, by extension), Ms Sylvia Lim of the WP, responding to jibes from the PAP, gave a list of reasons why WP candidate Chen Show Mao -- who has lived in Singapore for 10 of his 50 years -- is "very much rooted" here. But I doubt if both sides will want to play up this emotional hot potato too much, as it can backfire if questioning over sincerity and commitment is carried too far in the heat of the hustings.

New PAP candidate and ex-general Chan Chun Sing uses the "ground" metaphor simply: "We will continue to walk the ground and serve the residents..." As for the Singapore People's Party's Mr Sin Kek Tong, who will be contesting his sixth election, this time in the Hong Kah North single seat ward, he says he is confident of a win over the PAP's Dr Amy Khor because "the ground has been encouraging".

So, when you "walk the ground", it's the more literal meaning? But when "the ground has been encouraging", it's a metaphor that means the voters?

My last point is something intriguing that foreign minister George Yeo, helming the PAP team in Aljunied GRC, said. Recall that, in 2006, Aljunied was a cliff-hanger for both the PAP and the WP's team led by Ms Lim.

Mr Yeo is now happy to see nearly all GRCs being contested this time (save the three PAP strongholds, it would appear), which he says defuses the pressure on his team. He adds: "If there are many lightning conductors, then we are less likely to be struck too hard."

The PAP's party symbol has, of course, a prominent red lightning bolt. A clever pun by Mr Yeo, I must say.

More cogently, did the opposition in fact play into the PAP's hands by contesting all the 12 single seat wards and nearly all the 15 GRCs? It has been argued that in 2006, apart from other factors, Aljunied was closely fought because it was just one of the few GRCs contested, and the one with the best chance of an opposition GRC win.

But this time, will voters turn the so-called "by-election strategy" on its head and now say to themselves, "Wah, so many seats contested by so many parties, ah. Since there is now a choice all over the place, let the other wards do the job of voting in the opposition, lor." NIMBY, so to speak.

Or call it the PAP's "lightning conductors strategy"? A marketing coup even?

After all, in her commentary on Monday, ST's political editor Chua Lee Hoong noted that supermarkets found that their revenue from jam sales actually increased when customers had a few more brands to choose from but their revenue declined when there were too many brands.

This may well be a ground-breaking election, in more ways than one.