I don't care much for procedural politics in general. My aspirations for social and political change are a little bit on the 'pie-in-the-sky' side. This is not to say, though, that I don't care to vote. Voting is important for some rather obscure reasons to do with the technicalities of particular representative democratic systems, barring some really exciting circumstances—and this comes from someone who normally likes pretty obscure stuff. Real life seems rather too important and straightforward for obscure reasoning, but in the absence of strong reasons to believe otherwise, citizens should exercise their voting rights.
So that is to say that I am normally pretty agnostic towards voting, but I am leaning more for it than against it. Now let me explain why I don't think voting is anywhere near the limit or the be-all-end-all of the exercise of one's capacity as a political (in the bona fide classical sense) individual.
In order to do so, it looks like I have to first explain why I have little faith in the electoral process as a mechanism for social and political change anyway. Perhaps I live under somewhat exceptional circumstances, but I have seen the election of new governments fail spectacularly to institute much meaningful change. In a country like Singapore, where institutions can be expected to be particularly sticky or conservative, the electoral process certainly doesn't inspire me with much hope.
I am not familiar with comparative and more empirical theories of democracy, and so I turn to bigger narratives to find reasons why it is the case that elections are not normally game-changing. There is a myth defended by the older stuffy liberals (sometimes known as conservatives) that voting is the ultimate exercise of one's capacity as a responsible political agent. This is the myth we are brought up to believe, which may explain the religious seriousness with which some attend to the matter of voting in elections. However, reflecting Habermas' narrative of the decline of the public sphere, elections constitute a dated procedure handed down from ages past, an old gentlemen's game that has been massified but nevertheless expected to retain the same significance for each individual voter. Meanwhile, as the actualisation of the sovereign will of the people, it is actively being circumvented in modern times by influential political organisations with direct access to policy makers and by purported political exigencies that are subject to little public scrutiny. In other words, your votes as individuals pale in significance to how much power and influence is wielded by a political elite, whose mandate to rule over you is ironically affirmed by your votes.
The only way forward, under present constraints of the prevailing democratic systems, seems to be in trying to match the direct policy-making influence of powerful organisations. We are in need of a large civil society consisting of citizen activists who would fight for the causes they believe in. The only way forward is through citizen advocacy groups, unions and active everyday participation in politics. The days of waiting for elections and for your representatives in parliament to make your voices heard are over, if they were ever there. Only then can the public put itself on the same playing field as elite organisations in determining the character of governance.
In a sense, the conservatives have it right: Don't trust the authorities. But that does not mean we should minimise government—the government does many beneficial things after all; it means we should have a civil society to match. This, if anything, is the true meaning of a big society.
For this to happen, however, there must be a lively as well as a quality culture of political participation in society. It takes a certain amount of awareness, political wisdom and community spirit amongst citizens to institute a strong civil society. Unfortunately, the current state of Singapore's society and its public discourse does not inspire me with much hope in this either at present. Nevertheless, the stirrings in the public, if rather too naively focused on the electoral process, might be a sign of the beginnings of change. This may also be somewhat 'pie-in-the-sky', but, ultimately, I think one should be optimistic and look forward to real change.
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