Gomez, one of the 5 Workers' Party candidates in Aljunied Group Representation Constituency has repeatedly said it was an innocent mistake. He was supposed to have submitted his application to be classified as a minority-race candidate but amidst many other forms and distracted by the media, he put the form in his bag (perhaps intending to fill it up later) and completely forgot to submit it in time. He didn't realise his mistake until he was told by the Elections Department that he had not in fact submitted the form.

The PAP leaders have called on the Worker's Party leaders to withdraw Gomez as a candidate. Not succeeding in this, the PAP has begun to accuse the Low Thia Khiang, the Worker's Party chief, of keeping people of suspect integrity in his camp.

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The first question everyone would ask is: Where lies the truth?

I think it's impossible for anyone to know given the patchy information that we have seen, and given the partisan interests of all the parties involved.

What I can say is that one part of the PAP's theory strikes me as incredible. To suggest that Gomez did all that to discredit the Elections Department, and consequently to accuse the PAP of being incompetent at running an election, is beyond belief. What would the Workers' Party possibly gain from such a tactic?

It is simply not believable that the Workers' Party would want to play the game of martyrdom, i.e. deliberately making a candidate slip up and pinning the blame on the government in order to gain public sympathy. Creating an excuse to not contest a constituency they have spent years cultivating is just not their style.

Secondly, blaming civil servants for an administrative error is laughable as a route to gaining public sympathy. It's too small a deal. It won't gain traction as a public issue. Low Thia Khiang is too experienced a politician to conceive of or endorse such a hare-brained scheme.

So even if there were hidden intentions behind Gomez's forgetfulness, hatching a scheme to discredit the PAP via a cock-up about forms at the Elections Department cannot be it. It's simply not credible as an explanation.

But if that was not Gomez's intention, then what was? And if no one -– not even the PAP -- can suggest a more believable theory, how can one continue to argue that it was all a deliberate ruse? To achieve what?

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More pertinent is an observation by seasoned political observers that this fits in with the PAP style of fighting elections. Despite what the PAP claims, in no recent campaign has the PAP ever really fought on issues. Other than linking votes to upgrading, their main campaign tactic -– every time -– is to impugn the credibility of the opposition. Character assassination is the name of their game. In every election, heaps of accusations, usually founded on the slightest of facts, are levelled against one headline candidate, and when the opposition party stands by its man, the PAP then smears the entire party by association.

Francis Seow, J B Jeyaretnam, Tang Liang Hong, Chee Soon Juan. Now James Gomez?

In Singapore, we recall past elections by the name of the "devil incarnate". We don't recall past elections by the issue that dominated it like in many other countries.

For example, the recent election in Japan is remembered as PM Koizumi Junichiro's battle to get public support for his postal privatisation plan. In the recent general election in India, the issue was the BJP's claim to have achieved economic take-off for the country versus the Congress Party's contention that the vast rural majority has seen absolutely no benefits.

Can anyone name the dominating issues in Singapore's past elections as quickly as we can name the "devils incarnate"? If not, what does that tell you about the nature of our elections? And the nature of the PAP?

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This particular approach to elections truly sickens a number of Singaporeans. It makes a mockery of the claim that electoral battles should be fought cleanly, and not become a mud-slinging contest. It overturns the principle that we should be talking about issues that matter to the people of Singapore rather than personalities.

Worse yet, one can sniff the racism in this. It's a known fact that many Chinese hold a stereotypical view of Indians as sneaky and too clever by half. These people will find it easy to buy into an entire conspiracy theory from rather ambiguous video and audio recordings, rather than consider the matter dispassionately.

As Gomez himself said, this is gutter politics, the kind of thing that Lee Kuan Yew vowed to stamp out in the 1960s and 1970s.

As for the PAP's claim that the opposition parties don't uphold the highest standards in looking for election candidates, a claim that attempts to taint the entire Workers' Party by association, Chiam See Tong, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Alliance, reminded his audience at a rally recently that the PAP's own history is littered with crooks. National Development Minister Tay Cheang Wan and MP Phey Yew Kok were well-known examples. "These people were carefully selected by the PAP and yet they turned out to be crooks and lost public money."

Of course, this is not to say that we should tolerate crooks in parliament, but right now, there is nothing to prove that Gomez is one.

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Unfortunately, our mainstream media will do the government's bidding, and the barrage of accusations will have an effect on public opinion. The PAP knows that, that's why they engage in this kind of thing.

Low Thia Khiang, Sylvia Lim and the other leaders of the Workers' Party will now have to decide between 2 difficult options.

If they ask Gomez to step aside, they may save the party from being smeared by association, however groundless that smearing is. But the PAP may still not let up and continue to harp on personalities, drowning out the Workers' Party's message about the issues. In addition, the PAP may cast that withdrawal as an admission of guilt.

If they don't respond to demands to drop Gomez as a candidate, the attacks by the screaming PAP banshees will continue relentlessly, which may cause many voters to waver in their support for the Workers' Party.

The PAP's control of the media gives the opposition parties very little room for manoeuvre.

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I think what each voter needs to consider is what one's position should be in various scenarios:

Scenario 1: Worst case, assuming Gomez was up to something -- perhaps he wanted to pull an attention-grabbing stunt to gain publicity. He and the party admit it and he steps aside. The Workers' Party then has egg on its face. How does that change your opinion of the Workers' Party and what they stand for on the issues? Will your vote change because they pulled the stunt, or is your vote based on what the party or the PAP represents to your hopes for Singapore?

Scenario 2: Gomez steps aside in the interest of his party, so as not to distract the campaign further but insists that he did nothing wrong. Do you still believe that the Workers' Party represents your views better or that the PAP represents them better?

Scenario 3: The Workers' Party insists that Gomez will stay in the Aljunied team despite withering attacks from the PAP. How does that change your opinion of the Workers' Party or the PAP on the issues?

If your answers to all three are the same, then the Gomez affair is a sideshow to you. It doesn't figure among your priorities when deciding your vote. And if you think it is a sideshow, but a damn distracting one, then don't read the newspapers and switch off the TV.

Frankly, that's kind of like what I did today. I merely skimmed through the papers and watched American Idol instead. Gosh, am I turning into a politically apathetic Singaporean? If I am, whose fault is it?

© Yawning Bread