Tuesday, May 14, 2013

It's Not NS


Recently, there has been some talk about allowing women to serve National Service (NS). The talk came up when the Straits Times newspaper ran a report on letting women decide whether to serve NS. The report by Mr. Elgin Toh suggested that Singapore women have an “option” of whether they want to serve NS or not.

Sorry but isn’t that what’s happening now?

There are women in the Singapore army right now. They are there because they choose to be there, they signed on to be there. NS is called National Service because it is a service. There is no choice in it. There is no option for men to opt out of it. If you are going to allow women a choice to be whether in or out, you can’t call it NS. You can’t because it’s no different from what the women are doing right now.

Do we say the women currently in the Singapore army are doing NS? No, so why should we do it for the future? NS is not a choice. If it is...then it's not NS right?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Conscription is conscription, calling it national service is PR only.

Ghost said...

True but that's what we call it in Singapore so that's what it is. It's not National Service if there's a choice.