“TIMELY REMINDER”
Referencing Coordinating Minister for National Security and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam’s ministerial statement on race and religion in parliament on Oct 14, Mr Murali said the statement was a “timely reminder” to all politicians of their “sacrosanct responsibility” to renounce identity politics and to safeguard Singapore’s racial and religious harmony created over generations.
Mr Shanmugam had urged opposition parties to “immediately, clearly” reject foreign interference and identity politics.
“Not everyone agrees,” said Mr Murali, noting Dr Chee’s claims in his video. “This disregards and distorts our history.”
Mr Murali touched on the PAP government’s policies, which recognise the existence of different races in Singapore, and “safeguard their equality by calibrating and accounting for the differences in numbers, and by so doing, stand against crude majoritarian rule”.
These policies include group representation constituencies (GRC), which ensure there will always be a minimum number of minority representatives in parliament, as well the reserved elected presidency, which means that every race will have a chance to occupy the highest office in the land, Mr Murali noted.
Having twice contested in an SMC, Mr Murali, who defended his Bukit Batok seat at GE2020, said in his video he had experienced “coordinated attempts to politicise the campaign on crude racial lines”, and that he had brought this up in a 2023 speech in parliament.
“It’s a nightmare that all of us from minority races have to contend with, if we run for elections without a GRC system in place,” he added. “Some say these guardrails are not necessary … that we eventually be race-blind.”
