Since the watershed elections from the recent General Elections(GE), there has been a huge movement within the government go acquire more feedbacks towards their ministry. This is especially obvious within National Development and Education.

Ministers have personally gotten down to using their facebook pages and all to collect feedbacks. And also making a point to reply to as much of them as possible. On first sight, this seems to be a great trend, however, I find this trend to be slightly unsettling, and will elaborate more in this post.

First, let us go back to before the recent GE. Feedback channels involved having REACH, Straits Times Forums and through Meet-the-People Sessions within the constituencies. Granted, there was not much work put into collecting information from alternative media, though some would argue that that would be within the scope of REACH. However, was the lack of feedback infrastructure that was the problem? I highly reject the notion. I believe that the problem was not with the lack of feedback infrastructure, it was the lack of feedback itself.

Before the recent GE, and the many problems that plagued the country in the past term of government, the people of the country not interested in providing feedback to the government. Reasons range from apathy, laziness, fear, and some believing that it was the government's job to look for problems, not them. It was a time where people simply lived their own lives and let the country do the rest. So long as life was good, there was no reason to speak up.

Then we came to a point in time where life was no longer good. The world economy crumbled, prices started shooting up, floods, expensive housing. The existence of problems have brought about what seems like a political awakening of the people within the country. The general discontent with the ruling party soon became a trend. It was now 'cool' to be anti-PAP, no longer shall we be bounded by the chains of fear that the PAP has put on us! Only then did more people started to speak out, and now we arrive in an interesting situation before us.

Today, after an apology by the Prime Minister and an admission of a need to change by the former Foreign Minister, the PAP has obviously taken the stance that they are admitting to their mistakes, and would like to work with the people and make right what was wrong with the system. Sure, that is a nice political move to make in the short term, especially after a watershed elections, and the opposition would not argue with it as well. They would simply claim credit for bringing the change, and the PAP would also gain votes for their humility.

In tandem with the stance taken, the government would definitely now work towards the gathering of feedback from the people, with the motivation of listening more. This gives the illusion of power to the disgruntled voters, which would please them. For now.

Now, fast forward to the future, just a while from now. We have allowed for many feedbacks and suggestions from the people, but while there are some gems within them that could be potentially implemented into a policy. Most of these information would be utterly useless, brought about by the idealistic portrayal of the world. Soon, we will end up with a problem, where the popular solution is not a right one. The Singapore government has prided itself on picking the best solution to problems, not the popular ones. But upon this situation, where they have pledged to listen to the people seriously, people will be even more disgruntled when they reject the popular vote, and we have an even more serious problem in our hands.

My point is, the government has to make it exceptionally clear that in the end, they are still going to be making what that is best for the country, and not simply following the choruses of the people. The popular, will not, and should not ever be the main consideration, or we will fall into the trap of democracy; the way that the government has worked in the UK and US has been far from satisfactory.

We are out to make lives better for the collective. Not just part of it, even if you're the majority.