The Victory of Old guard of Aware

In the extraordinary general meeting held by Aware, or Association of Women for Action & Research in May 2, the old guard won back the leadership. That was after a no-confidence vote against the new guard, which took over the power in the annual general meeting held in March 28. The vote turned out more than 1400 against the new guard with merely 700 for it. The famous lawyer advised the new guard to step down, citing precedence. After a 45-minute discussion, the president stated that they would step down graciously. During the past five weeks the new guard criticized that the old guard promoted lesbianism and homosexuality whilst the old guard contend that they aimed at ensuring all people of the equal right and the new guard lacked of tolerance.

For my concern, the victory of the old guard eliminated the potential threat to bring about social tension, division and unrest. People are different from each other and all the citizens ought to tolerate others to an appropriate extent. As Deputy Prime Minister said, if you push some people ahead too much, there will be a pushback from them. As you know, the new guard is strongly against homosexuality. How could you expect that it is tolerant towards gays? Gays under the discrimination will definitely try to voice their idea and even demonstrate, which will threaten the stability of society. As I know, there was a gay demonstration on a large scale in Singapore in 2007. During the economic downturn, any harm to the stability of society will push downwards the already-weak economy. In addition, all the core committee members are Chinese and Christian, which is lacking in diversity. The involution of the religion may probably transform the secular organization into a pulpit. Religions have already their own ways to advocate their beliefs. If they take force in secular transaction, they may be so powerful that others, especially the opponents, might be deprived of the right to speak out their opinion. Consequently Singapore can hardly remain a secular and tolerant state if religions take too much power in society.

Ultimately I am delighted with the victory of old guard and wish award a brighter futher.