Casting their votes

SINGAPOREANS WENT TO the polls last Friday for their general election and the result came as no surprise with the ruling party winning another landslide victory.
Over in the Toa Payoh area, voting of another kind was also taking place. Part of the ongoing Singapore International Festival of Arts (Sifa), Drama Box’s “It Won’t Be Too Long: The Lesson” invited its audience to cast their ballots as to which site should be cleared to make way for a new MRT station.
A rectangular stage was set up in the colourful tent known as Goli – The Moving Theatre erected in front of Toa Payoh Public Library for 14 “residents” – in fact audience members who signed up to participate in the performance.
Other viewers, who were also entitled to cast their votes, sat around them in chairs and on benches.
Drama Box artistic director Kok Heng Leun and his team of facilitators Jalyn Han, Li Xie and Jean Ng moved around the space with microphones and gave us the seven choices proposed for clearance: a marsh, a halfway house, a columbarium, a hospice, a cinema, a block of rental apartments and a wet market. Additional information on all of these could also be read around the tent.
The result from the first round of votes by the residents gave the cinema the highest number of ballots although this was far from a majority nor a landslide. The three panellists, experts in different fields, then voiced their opinions. The cinema, one explained, was almost a century old and, with its unique programming, attracted foreign workers whose contribution formed a major part of the rapid development of the city-state.
Later the public was invited to share their thoughts and then asked the opposing question – which site they would like to keep. More open floor discussions and shows of hands followed and after about 20 minutes of debate exclusively among the residents, a consensus was reached – the columbarium was to be evicted
Every member of the public followed up by filling in the ballot papers distributed at the entrance to the Goli, and after counting all the votes, the result remained the same.
The facilitators noted that this result, which was reached on Saturday, the last day of “The Lesson”, differed from the three previous three days. Here, in discussions held in English and Mandarin, there was either a deadlock between the residents or a difference between the choices made by the residents and the public, and so a “related authority” was required to resolve the dilemma at a later date.
Drama Box’s “It Won’t Be Too Long: The Lesson” was a prime example of how theatre makers set up a situation based on careful research and then put it in front of the public to discuss, all the while masterfully controlling the timing and direction to ensure a certain outcome is reached.
 “The Lesson” also questioned how we, citizens of a democratic country, exercised our democratic right and cast our votes – whether we voted for our benefit, the ideology we believe in or, in the case like this which didn’t directly concern us, in accordance with the residents’ who have more at stake.
After the performance, Kok asked me whether this would be possible in Thailand. I replied that I was extremely impressed by how Singaporeans appeared very politically expressive in public, while Thais would prefer to express themselves through the social media. In addition, many of us voted for certain individuals, not ideology.
My colleague, award-winning theatre director Bhanbhassa Dhubthien, added that Thais might show more emotion than reason in their debates and we might even question the situation from the start – why we needed an MRT station in the first place.
Kok, smiling, noted that it’s also a problem for Singaporeans who tended to use their heads more than their hearts.
It’s intriguing how Singaporean and Thai versions of democracy differ so radically from each other.
The writer’s trip was supported by SIFA. He wishes to thank Tay Tong and Eileen Chua for all assistance.
 A FEW
MORE DAYS
- The Singapore International Festival of the Arts runs until Saturday.
- The schedule includes the highly anticipated work by festival director Ong Keng Sen “The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers” at National Museum of Singapore.
- Drama Box will continue its questioning of space and public policy in “The Cemetery” on Saturday and Sunday at 5.30am at Bukit Brown Cemetery and at 8pm at SOTA Studio Theatre.
- For more details, visit www.SIFA.sg.