If it thinks it is, then it is a process of deluding itself from self-made propaganda.

Everyone in political circles is laughing at the SDP and its secretary-general Chee Soon Juan who has a tendency to speak at people rather with or for the people.

Many people feel that Chee should drop his American accent and speak with less arrogance and more humility.

Chee's combative style is not helped with his vitriolic sidekick, Gandhi Ambalam. When Chee draws his guns, Gandhi is triggering the well-orchestrated shouting and ranting. When both are together it seems that the intention is to make so much noise that the ideas of other well-meaning people gets drowned out.

No wonder they have a membership problem. So they managed to rope in a couple of young people. But they can do no more than shout and sell newspapers.

These young people are being invited to stand for elections under the SDP ticket. Don't treat the electorate as fools. They deserve better. The SDP just scares away people not only joining them but also from listening to them.

This is a real pity considering the fact that nearly a decade ago the SDP was very much in the popular imagination of Singaporeans.

Now the SDP claims that their message cannot be disseminated to the masses because there is a media blackout on them. I do not blame reporters if they do not want to engage Chee and Gandhi Ambalam, because their style is so combative and they are filled with so much venomous hate that there can be no intelligent conversation with them.

The media is not interested in SDP's international projects or the projects of the Open Singapore Centre. In fact many of the international contacts have been duped to thinking that SDP is good.

This is because they do not address the real problems of the heartlanders and issues pertaining to the domestic problems of Singapore.

Chee has exacerbated the problems with the media by his intransigent attitude and his lack of establishing a concrete opposition platform for the local issues. Maybe if Chee chose his issues correctly the media would find it hard to ignore him.

They blame it on the PAP and expect people to give them sympathy votes. Real fighters do not wait for peoples' sympathies.

What has Chee done or is doing for the retrenched workers? At the height of the issues of ministerial pay hikes, bond breakers, the divide between the rich and poor and the rise of unemployment, all Chee could muster was to organize a forum about the state of the opposition in our region.

How was that particular forum going to get Chee votes and alleviate the sufferings of the working class man? How does the man in the street relate to him?

If Chee had taken along with him 100 retrenched workers and marched in public and made a speech without a licence and then gone to jail for it, people would respect instead of ridiculing him. It would show his convictions that he loved his people more than an archaic law which does not directly affect the poor and unemployed man's livelihood.

This would remain in the collective memory of the down trodden; the hunger strike or the civil disobedience of speaking publicly without a licence in contrast are seen by the public as self-serving political mileage.

Where was Chee Soon Juan when the National Solidarity Party organised its forum on the challenges for the opposition? He was not invited because he is out of touch with local issues. The truth is the opposition camp does not want to have anything to do with him or his party.

Chee just enjoys the international circuit and derives pleasure for being praised by foreign liberals for being a strong stalwart for freedom and in turn believes that that is his mandate to demand to be taken seriously as an opposition figure.

The voters in Singapore are least concerned with his exploits in the international circuit of human rights and democracy. It is all right to think global but the SDP did better to act local.

After his defeat by Matthais Yeo, I had hopes that Chee would concentrate his efforts on the issues of the people and stop wasting his time with liberal flattery. That false sense of security could cost him his deposit in the next election.

The Open Singapore Centre is a total failure and I urge Singaporeans not to waste their time with the centre. I hope the centre concentrates on workers' issues and try to help needy Singaporeans. The centre tries to ride on the popularity of the veteran opposition politician J.B. Jeyaretnam whose chairmanship of the centre is in his personal capacity. The Workers Party does not need the centre and is not interested in the objectives of the centre if there are any. The Worker's Party disapproves of his participation.

The two opposition politicians in parliament have not given any public thumbs up for the centre.

This would only mean, to the supporters of the SDP, that the two opposition members in parliament are PAP sponsored. Maybe it is a tactic utilised by the SDP to boost their morale to show that they are not in parliament because they are not PAP sponsored.

Dr Chee would never utter this during an election campaign and it would be counter productive to make these unjustified points especially when the SDP needs friends and mediums to get their news to the public.

It goes to show that Chee is just pushing an agenda that is not in sync with the people and he does not have the best people around him.

The SDP is just fractious and ill-disciplined. Chee issued the statement that the Speakers' Corner was a farce. Yet why was his party setting up booths and distributing its newspapers at Hong Lim? Why did some of its members make speeches there if it was a farce? Who is running the SDP? Is there any leadership or is everyone his own boss?

It seems to me that the SDP has a fantastic knack of saying one thing and doing another. It just goes to show that it has a credibility problem and this seems to be their own doing without any help from the government for the problem to be firmly entrenched in the peoples' minds.

It speaks volumes of their organisational structure or the lack of it and respect for their secretary general or the lack of it.

All these negative traits are also rubbing off its ill effects onto the Singaporeans for Democracy website which seems with each passing day as a mouthpiece for the SDP. It is open knowledge that the site is controlled by the SDP. Gone are the days when one enjoyed some balanced reports from the website and some intelligent news.

Nowadays, the space is just for shouting and ranting, and drowning out other ideas. It is a medium to attack other well- meaning ideas and projects.

In a way, it is no different from the newspapers that the SDP alleges as being controlled by the PAP.

It is a pity that the SDP is a laughing stock among the political community and the people.

Dare to change SDP, you first or be cursed and derided by the people especially the working people. Don't let them down again.