Singaporean politicians turn to music – Taipei Times

A curious election campaign trend has emerged in Singapore as the country gears up to vote tomorrow: candidates showcasing their musical chops, or lack of talent, on social media clips.
The displays of musical talent range from clips of opposition star candidate Harpreet Singh playing the saxophone for local broadsheet the Straits Times, to others beatboxing and belting out songs in dialect or giving an awkward rendition of the earworm APT, a Korean and English-language song by Rose and Bruno Mars.
One candidate, Samuel Lee of the People’s Power Party, has become a meme thanks to his self-written tune, badly sung, about looking left and right to find a career path.
Photo: AFP
Some clips are freshly shot this election season as candidates are introduced to media or speak at rallies, others are older clips resurfacing of Singapore’s guitar-playing Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) on stage with a local band, or the leader of the opposition Workers’ Party, Pritam Singh, singing at his party’s Lunar New Year celebration.
“They want to be relatable, but it won’t work,” said Walid Jumblatt Abdullah, a political scientist from Nanyang Technological University.
“These silly Tiktok videos, these music videos, aren’t exactly the best way to appear relatable,” Walid said. “Just speaking like a normal human being, that would make them appear for more relatable.”
Voters are more discerning, and would pay more attention to parties’ and candidates’ credibility, and what they say about causes that matter to voters, he said.
The vote is the first electoral test for Wong, who last year took over from former Singaporean prime minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) as leader of the People’s Action Party, which has ruled the city-state of 6 million people since independence in 1965.
The People’s Action Party is almost certain to win most seats in the election, with candidates fielded in all 33 constituencies for 97 seats in parliament.
See SINGAPORE’S on page 7
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition

source