How important is it to have opposition win some seats

far away from home, i have taken to reading the straits times online regularly and now the main news are of the upcoming general elections, what struck me was that almost all ( or maybe in fact all) the news regarding GE were about the PAP? Does that hint that the newspaper is a little bias in this sense or that our opposition party are not making use of the media enough to get themseleves notices besides capturing headlines by being sued to bankruptcy by u know whos.

What really made me took notice was how bent the PAP is on winning back the only 2 seats that we have represented by the opposition. SM even said he will be the "resource person" for the Potong Pasir GC and hint that it will be easier for upgrading now if the consituency votes PAP. I fear we are going to become a truly single party nation very soon.

THis then raise the question, how important it is to have opposition? I have encountered many times people here who commented that SIngapore is a dictatorship...often i laugh to myself and in typical Asian manner conclude that these western do not know anything. But really before we make such statements as these, we will have then to reask ourselves how much we know about the Westerns? But i digress. But this is the image we project to those in te general, that and the notorious chewing gum law, but also our amazing ability in turning around our little nation from a thrid world nothing to a first class city in less than 50 years. For this I have to give credit to our enlightened leaders. So what if we have a so called dictatorship when this has proved to work for us as a nation? I am watching how this election will turn out. :-)