Remember this?

it shows a few of Singapore's Members of Parliament, those born on or after Singapore's Independence in 1965 (they call themselves P65), trying to communicate their ability to connect with the younger Singaporeans by attempting a Hip Hop dance during a national celebration event.

If you thought that was ridiculous... Try this...

Yet another attempt by our politicians to connect with their audience, this time, workers in the union. The attempt is basically a poorly-rehearsed performance by the union's Secretary-General Lim Swee Say (who is also Minister in the Prime Minister's Office) and its Directors singing to the tune of a wildly popular dialect song but with lyrics customised to reflect the government's current messages at the May Day Solidarity Concert.

If you go to 1:00 of the video, the Master of Ceremony goes:


It's like a Mediacorp drama. A simple recipe.
In a Mediacorp drama, there must be excessively crying and shouting. For the female lead to win Best Actress, she should preferably have a rape scene. For the male lead to win Best Actor, he must be granted an emotional scene which entails crying with mucus dripping from the nose.

In such people-pleasing performances by the politicians, the choreographer puts together what they think the target audience likes, but within the ability of the politicians, e.g. youths like hip hop = politician does some hand and body actions, middle age workers like that particular dialect song = politician sings a song. Usually, the government messages are forced-woven into the performance in a not-entirely-smooth manner. During the performance, the politicians just have to appear very enthusiastic by either moving vigorously or shouting in the mike.

I'm not sure why such performances exist. It's not a question of taste, but I wonder about its effectiveness. I am obviously not their target audience, i.e. I'm too old to be lured by an amateurish Hip Hop dance and I'm not part of the union. But I do wonder if they try to find out whether these antics work on their audiences at all. Or whether the unintended consequences negate any positive outcomes. As these politicians are very well-paid (some say about the highest in the world), one would expect them to afford some sort of PR/people-sensor to balance their political outreach attempts with their image. Like how a professional celebrity has a manager/PR person.

Because most things in life are relative, at least 1 obvious positive has come out of the abovementioned performances, i.e. they make the MDA rap look much better.