Mr Tan Kin Lian and his bid for political office.

I am pleased to have discovered (I had intended to ask him on ToC) that Mr. Tan had a small (I assume?) group of volunteers working to help him manage his bid - first, I assume, on his attempt to gather 100,000 signatures and second, on an actual platform for either contesting the Elected Presidency or as an MP.

Here's the link to his volunteer blog (as part of their effort to publicize this):



So, please do visit the site (read my comments - I'm not encouraging you to go to his site and blindly sign up, I'm encouraging people to find out more about him and engage him).

A few personal comments:

1) What has impressed me about Mr. Tan is his willingness to engage with people, even with people he does not agree with. So, feel free to study his statements and leave comments for him and his volunteers.

2) I've signed the petition. I had initially indicated that he ought to go for the Elected Presidency, but I've thought further about it and realized that the office is really a basket-case. Even if Mr. Tan succeeded in overcoming the number of ridiculous barriers set up to even qualify for running for the office (International readers would be aghast at this!), he would be effectively handicapped if he were successfully elected (Mr. Ong Teng Cheong, the first elected President, was a former ruling party stalwart and even he was shut out when he tried to do his job as President.

Now I think he is better off forming an independent team of MP candidates to contest a GRC.

3) Decide for yourself if he is worth supporting. I am encouraging him to run because he is a breath of fresh air in Singapore politics. Someone who is willing to listen, willing to talk (rather than talk-down) to people, willing to be civil (rather than defensive) about disagreements and shows an active empathy with people in trouble (rather than stay silent and praying the problem "goes away").