Two years ago, just before Singapore's General Election, Senior Minister of State for Information, Communications and the Arts, Balaji Sadasivan, warned that "persistently political" websites would be required to register with the government and be subject to the same restrictions as political party websites.Far from having a chilling effect on local "blogosphere" (the community of blogs), many bloggers simply ignored the directive. Numerous blogs sprang to action to cover the elections, discussing many issues which the government-controlled mainstream media had omitted. Mobile phone videos of almost every opposition rally were uploaded to video sharing site YouTube and cross-posted on blogs, despite a controversial law which bans "party political" videos in Singapore.
Local humour writer mrbrown created a series of digital audio recordings, dubbed "persistently non-political podcasts", in a spoof of the minister's warning. His podcasts used everyday Singaporean experiences to poke fun at various players in the election, particularly the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). One clip after the election results featured a student boasting to his friends that he scored 66.6% in his examinations. That figure was the percentage of the popular vote that the PAP had garnered, and which the mainstream media had proclaimed was a decisive victory. However, in Singapore's highly competitive academic culture, a score like that would be considered mediocre at best.
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