“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.”
Mr Murali recalled that his campaign poster was defaced during GE2020 and shared a photo showing the vandalism, which he labelled as a “sobering reminder to me that race is never absent in politics”.
“And it reaffirmed my belief that harmony in Singapore cannot be left to chance or wishful thinking,” he said.
“No doubt we aspire toward such ideals. But let’s be realistic. We will not become race-blind simply by removing race from our National Registration Identity Cards (NRICs) or scrubbing out self-help groups … in fact, taking such steps may cause things to worsen.”
Mr Murali noted that Europe was dealing with the growth of the far-right, while ethnic divisions in the US “have worsened” despite Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008.
Said Mr Murali: “We cannot strengthen harmony by pretending racial identities don’t exist. Singapore’s approach to race is different compared to other countries.
“When managing race relations, government must deal with the facts as they are, and not as we wish them to be.
“Our policies – from the GRC system to other safeguards – exist not to divide us, but to protect equality, representation, and harmony. These guardrails are not perfect, but they have helped us create a society that is peaceful and stable. One that is founded on mutual respect and shared progress.
“Dr Chee does not understand this. He prefers us to pretend that things will work out on their own. The more the PAP talks about race, the more sensitised Singaporeans are to this whole thing,” he said.
Mr Murali added in an accompanying Facebook post that Dr Chee “should know that what he is saying is untrue … he should know we put in place these policies to overcome our racial divisions, and strengthen unity among Singaporeans”.
CHEE’S VIDEO
In his eight-minute long video on Oct 17, Dr Chee noted Mr Shanmugam’s call for opposition parties to steer clear of identity politics, but questioned the practice of having a race category on NRICs, which he said “only accentuates the division among Singaporeans”.
He also brought up then Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat’s comments in 2019, when he said that while a segment of Singapore’s population was happy to have an individual from a minority race as their prime minister, the older generation was not ready for that.
“Is this not identity politics at its most repugnant?” said Dr Chee.
The government has said that GRCs – introduced in 1988 – ensure a minimum level of minority representation, but he rejected that rationale, highlighting that David Marshall was elected as Singapore’s first chief minister, late opposition politician JB Jeyaretnam’s Anson by-election win in 1981 as well as Mr Tharman’s presidential election win in 2023.
Dr Chee also called for a debate with Mr Shanmugam or other PAP members on “just who is engaging in race identity politics”.
