The scene at Hong Lim today
Published September 18th, 2006 in Singapore, Society, Thinking aloudAs some of us may be aware, SDP held a Empower Singaporeans Rally and March at Hong Lim park on Saturday, 16 Sept 2006. I passed by Hong Lim park yesterday in a bus and saw scores of people arounding what I would assume is Dr. Chee with reporters taking photos and lots of police around. This was reported in Election Watch and Yawning Bread.
Apparently the march was held in conjunction with a very important Lee’s birthday in Singapore… ahem… the oldest one.
Anyway, I heard from Alex that the thing is still on in Hong Lim park today and decided to pop down for a look, its about 4 pm already. The crowd from yesterday is gone as Dr. Chee and some of his supporters are now doing a sit-in instead. Its quite visible as you can see the police form a big circle around where Dr. Chee is resting. Where ever Dr. Chee and his sister went, scores of police in blue would follow him, including reporter.
But I must say that the atmosphere is a bit relax and some of the police or securities people were chatting with Dr. Chee and some other people in a freely manner.
Dr. Chee did get up at some point to visit the restroom and you see this ant trail of men in blue following him to the restroom. Its quite a funny sight.
The police creating a circle around where the SDP supporters are sitting in. The work in shifts, but I can see that they were quite tire. No smiles from them, despite out 4 million smiles campaign.
Lots of people with video cameras all around. Some are obviously the police, I think some are reporters and some I guess must be from the internal security.
Alas, due to the poor quality of my Treo 650, I could capture the many cute young men hanging around the fringe of the police circle. They are obviously not supporters because (call me jaded) I seriously doubt young people in Singapore are that concerned about politcs. Most of these are actually plain-clothes policemen and their job is to follow and question vistors who came into the circle to talk to the supporters.
The SDP supports taking a rest under the tree as part of the sit-in. Those people behind them are reporters.
There were also people observing from the safety of the road across. I would think most of them are on-lookers and maybe supporters.
As I left, it started to rain heavily… I hope everything works out fine for the next 2 days for them
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