(extract)
Dr Vivian Balakrishnan yesterday described the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) team running against him as ‘strange bedfellows’ who do not have a shared vision or ideology.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, he said: ‘It has been brought to my attention – in fact it is the SDP which is suppressing a certain YouTube video, which raises some very awkward questions about the agenda and motivations of the SDP and its candidates.’
He declined to give more details about the clip.
‘I suspect Mr Tan had not done appropriate due diligence of his teammates and his party,’ he said.
– Sunday Times, 24 April 2011, ‘Strange bedfellows’ in SDP team
* * * * *
First: the video. It is pretty obvious that what is being referred to is an amateur video recording of an event some time around August last year in which lawyer M Ravi spoke of Vincent Wijeysingha as potentially the “first gay MP in Singapore”. You can watch it here.
A few seconds later, we hear Vincent Wijeysingha (but can’t see him clearly) saying: “Can I answer that question? I don’t think it’s for Ravi by himself to rally the gay community. I think the gay community has to rally ourselves. . .”
The rallying being referred to refers to gathering support for M Ravi’s proposed constitutional challenge over Section 377A of the Penal Code, Singapore’s anti-gay law. The event had nothing to do with this election.
[My comment: The video is not an SDP video, and has never been available on SDP's official website. Thus, SDP did not suppress it.]
Secondly, Ang Yong Guan is listed as a speaker-elective at a Christian conference last year that appears closely related to City Harvest Church. On this and perhaps other bases, florid speculation bloomed over the internet about Ang — and by association, Tan — being a Christian fundamentalist, with all that the term connotes.
Between Wijeysingha’s sexuality and Ang’s religion, Balakrishnan must have found enough grist to mill out his “strange bedfellows” statement.
Part 2- extract (here).
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