Dear Santa, I don’t like the cadre and secret cabal I got last year. Next year I’d like some openness, competition and democracy instead.

A cadre system is one in which the leadership of the Party selects certain members to be cadres. The cadres are then the only members who have voting rights. A discussion of the merits and demerits of cadre systems in political parties. The cadre system may explain why the PAP is incapable of learning new lessons .The Reform Party being the only political party in Singapore with a democratic constitution. It is genuinely worrying that so much of the Opposition shares the same mindset and set up as the PAP. This begs the question as to whether their leadership are genuinely interested in change or representation or whether it is merely power that they seek .