AWARE's president says biggest challenge is to harness support of new members
By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 03 May 2009 1646 hrs

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	Related News • Former AWARE president Dana Lam takes office as new president • Josie Lau's exco resigned "for the sake of AWARE" • Newly-elected AWARE Exco to amend constitution • New Exco of AWARE given vote of no confidence • Some 3,000 people turn up for AWARE EGM

SINGAPORE: Commenting on the AWARE saga, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean says the lesson learnt from the incident is for people with different views to not push their ideas too hard, and risk polarising society.

The newly-elected AWARE president Dana Lam says her team's biggest challenge now is to harness the support of new members.

Now that the dust has settled, members of AWARE's new executive committee are taking on heavy responsibilities on their shoulders.

Besides intense scrutiny, they will also need to answer to 3,000 members, up from just 300 a month ago.

And the biggest challenge says the team, is how to harness the support of the new members.

Ms Lam said: "While it has been traumatic, there have been much more positive things coming out of it than negative. We've never seen so much support, so much activism.

“For how many years we've been trying to reach the younger folks and this time, there are so many of them."

Issues pertaining to homosexuality, religion and feminism have also been debated openly during this saga, and a political analyst interviewed on Channel NewsAsia's Talking Point programme pointed out that it's a step forward for civil society here.

Eugene Tan, Assistant Professor, School of Law, Singapore Management University, said: "There will be some segments in Singapore’s society who feel this was a catfight that really went out of hand. But I think we need to give credit to the different parties that were involved. All camps were very passionate about what they believed in and it's this sort of passion, this sort of advocacy and activism that we need to see more in our very young society.”

Mr Teo said: “There will always be differences in our society. It's a question of whether we can deal with them in a sensible way, learn how to accept each other's differences, and still work together for the good of community.

"There are people in our society with different views and if… we push them too hard, there will be a push back from the other side. You are not going to resolve some of these differences because they are strongly held and you risk polarising society if you push too hard.

“If you believe that what you are doing is right, live a good life, do good work and persuade people by what you do and how you live, rather than by pushing your ideas on them. There are ways in which we can engage society, and still live with our differences… in a civilised way.”

With regards to the contentious sexuality education programme that AWARE has been running in schools, the new team says it stands by the programme as it is and that the term homosexual is a neutral word in this programme. But following much public debate over it, the new team says it is open to reviewing some of the terms in the programme.

As for AWARE's former president, Josie Lau, and her team, they have said they will be willing to serve as volunteers for AWARE, and the new team members have responded to say they will be welcomed to do so.

But the two camps still have some issues to sort out. AWARE usually spends about S$300,000 annually on operating costs and on its different programmes. However, the exco that has just been booted out spent S$90,000 in the last month.

The new team says it will need to examine the accounts further, before deciding if action will be taken against Ms Lau and her team.

For more discussion on AWARE's extraordinary general meeting, watch Talking Point on Sunday night at 10.10pm on Channel NewsAsia.

- CNA/yt