The election department recently published a letter on Straits Times in response to a forum letter by one Sean Lim Wei Xin titled "Inappropriate to use children to promote political parties". The letter talks about the Singapore Democratic Party's video who used a young child to promote their party. Sean thinks that the girl does not have the maturity to understand partisan party politics and questioned if the Election Department have any guidelines regarding the use of minors in political advertising.
The letter the election department wrote that there is a Parliamentary Elections Act that prohibits primary and secondary school students from taking part in election activities from the Nomination day to the polling day. They also agreed with Sean saying that "political parties should refrain from inappropriate use of young children who will not fully understand what they may be promoting or subjecting themselves to."
However, prominent blogger Andrew Loh noticed something was amiss. In his Facebook post, he brings up a photo from the General Elections 2015. PAP's Sembawang GRC team on the way to a press conference during the election period. Children can be seen lined up with flags to greet them. He also wrote that the Election Department didn't say anything about it then.
It seems like our country has two different set of rules doesn't it? One set for those who support the ruling party and another set for those who disagree with them. The children seen in the photo shared by Andrew Loh seems to be younger than primary school kids. Perhaps they meant that the prohibited ages are just between primary school students and secondary school students. Which also doesn't sound right as they are way younger and they probably "will not fully understand what they may be promoting or subjecting themselves to."
These twistings of rules and regulations are all too confusing for us to keep up. Best to just diam diam and follow. If not later you all kena sue like Terry Xu.
