Disagreement Is Not “Widespread Support”

   

The following is a reflection from one of our volunteers on their experience going door-knocking.

   
   

By V

   
   

Going into my first door-knocking session for a subject as “taboo” as the death penalty, I expected scorn, resentment, apathy, or perhaps some handwavey regurgitation of the mainline arguments. I was surprised to be met instead with nuanced perspectives that go beyond simple “yes” or “no” answers.

   
   

Although most were hesitant to suggest changing death penalty laws, it seems there was a certain degree of pensiveness and discomfort when we broke down the abstract concept of the death penalty into concrete situations that have occured. We like to speak about this “strong support” for the death penalty here in Singapore. Recently, I have come to question if this obstructively obscures nuance.

   
   

Yes, on the surface it seems most Singaporeans believe that the death penalty is necessary or deserved for individuals who have committed certain crimes. However, this neglects what Singaporeans mean by “death penalty”, and the shape and form it takes. Do they mean that indeed we should assume as much as we do based solely on a weighing scale? Or do they mean something else? I’ve come to see that the widespread agreement breaks down more into the latter: we disagree on the specifics – judgement, procedure, administration – and this disagreement is nothing to be chalked up to “widespread support”.

   
   

I’ve come to understand the Singapore conversation of the death penalty not as something dead: a conversation that need not be started because Singaporeans somehow all fervently believe that it is obvious we should implement the death penalty in the exact shape and form we do here, but rather as something obscured by a societal assumption that this is the case.

   
   

It seems to me that this conversation must at the very least be revitalised and explored to its end, rather than handwaved away on grounds of intuitiveness or a lack of grounding for any conversation. Because the grounds for conversation are there; they lie in the details: we just aren’t talking about it enough to reach them.