January 15, 2010
Foreign Minister George Yeo is one of the few PAP
ministers and MPs to maintain a Facebook to reach out to ordinary
Singaporeans, but it appears that he is more interested to boast
about his frequent overseas trips and meetings with foreign
dignitaries than to listen to the genuine concerns of Singaporeans
on his Facebook.
An irate netizen tipped us off on an exchange between George Yeo
and a young lady by the name of Miss Ang on 11 January 2010:
[Source: George
Yeo's Facebook, 11 January
2010 ]
Miss Ang reported a case of molest in November last year to the
police and has not received a reply from them yet.
Out of desperation, she asked Mr Yeo (and other people) on his
Facebook for assistance.
Instead of showing some empathy to the victim, Mr Yeo gave a
curt reply in a one-liner:
“Please see your MP.”
Miss Ang did not bother to continue the conversation and rightly
so.
Put yourself in the position of the victim. You were badly
affected, hurt and traumatized by the incident and after nearly two
months you made a police report, there is still no reply from the
police officer investigating your complaint who promised to call
you. You feel dejected, helpless and lost and not knowing where to
seek help, you post a comment on a minister’s Facebook hoping
that somehow he will be able to help you and this is the answer you
get from him without a single word of consolation as if you do not
exist. How will you feel?
Miss Ang had already indicated that she is “at a loss of
what to do” when she was typing the comment. Any decent fellow
human being would have offered some words of concern and support if
not assistance to her, let alone an elected minister who is
supposed to serve Singaporeans and take care of their
interests.
Where is your empathy, Mr George Yeo? You sound as if molest is
such a trivial affair that doesn’t deserve your time and attention.
Your reply is absolutely disgusting, callous and insulting, an
indirect way brushing Miss Ang’s concerns aside and telling
her to “get lost” and stop disturbing you.
And how will Miss Ang’s MP be in a position to help her directly
and immediately other than to write a letter to the police to ask
them to expedite their investigations?
As the highest paid Foreign Affairs Minister in the world, it is
appalling that Mr Yeo failed to comprehend the simple meaning of
empathy – to put oneself in the shoes of others, to understand how
they are feeling and most importantly, to show that you CARE.
Miss Ang is not really expecting you to help her as she even
apologized in her comment that she is “sorry” if she is using the
“wrong channel” to seek for help. What she needed most is a word of
consolation from you and that will suffice.
You could have said something like:
“Oh dear, what happened? It must be a traumatic experience
for you. Why don’t you drop me an email so that I can find out more
about your problem?”
OR
“I am not really in charge of the police, but let me see if
I can pull some strings and make a few phone calls to help you.
Please email me and I will see what I can do for you.”
OR
“You must be feeling pretty anxious, upset and even
angry right now. I am sure the police officer remembers your case,
perhaps he is too busy to give you a call. Just drop me an email
and I will try to contact the relevant authorities to attend to you
immediately.”
Mr George Yeo, are these few simple words beyond you? Do you
know what a world of difference you will make by typing any of the
above sentences in your reply to Miss Ang? She will feel so much
relieved, relaxed and refreshed upon hearing you, a minister in a
position of power giving her a few minutes of your precious time.
In fact, she may not even email you and will just wait
patiently for the police officer to get back to her.
It appears that Mr Yeo has been fraternalizing too often with
“higher mortals” that he has completely lost touch with “lesser
mortals” like Miss Ang, you and me.
Three weeks after a fatal road traffic accident at Bukit Panjang
involving a vehicle from the Romanian embassy which robbed the life
of an innocent young man, he had only this to say to the families
of the victims and the public:
“What happened was very bad.”
Oh, a woman lost her newly-wed husband of only one month, the
culprit had fled the country and his identity remained unknown to
this very day and that’s all you can say – “very bad”. What will be
considered a “disaster” to you, Mr Yeo? Only when you are booted
out of your office in the next general election?
To be fair to Mr Yeo, he is not the only PAP leader to be guilty
of such blatant arrogance, insensitivity and callousness. The word
“empathy” does not exist in the PAP’s dictionary at all as its
ministers and MPs are living too high up in their own ivory towers
that they are completely dissociated from the reality on the
ground, to borrow the words of Law Minister Shanmugam.
In the aftermath of the fiasco involving PAP MP Denise Phua who
was “threatened” by her constituent, a Singaporean by the name of
Lawrence Loh wrote a letter to TODAY relating his own personal
experience with a PAP MP:
“In February 2001, my older son died in a naval accident
whilst serving National Service. In that year, my younger son was
due for enlistment. A friend, a very active grassroots member,
suggested that I approach my MP, for help in exploring the
possibility of getting an exemption for my younger son. I was
reluctant but he went ahead to fix an appointment for me at the
Meet-The-People Session (MPS). I subsequently relented and he
accompanied me there.
..
It was in March 2001. That was my first appearance at a MPS, and it
was to be my last.I waited until midnight before I could meet the
MP. Prior to this, he was given the case paper which detailed the
objective of the meeting and the circumstances of my case.
When I entered the room, his first remark was “Yes, what can
I do for you?”. There was no attempt at offering a word of sympathy
or condolence.
I then related my situation and said that both my wife
and I were very traumatised. His next remark was:
“What traumatic? After two months, you won’t be
traumatic.”.
With that, I decided to end the meeting. And with that, my
respect for him hit ground zero. I was too stunned and
grief-stricken to react.”
Now back to the Denise Phua case. Her constituent, 49 year old
Ng Kim Ngweng was jailed for six months for criminal intimidation
when he called up the REACH hotline to complain about her
attitude.
During his trial, the father of two told the juge that on the
day he waited four hours to see Denise Phua, she was smiling and
‘looked proud’.
After complaining to her that the aid he got was paltry, he told
her: ‘Don’t forget, you just care that you have eaten enough and
don’t bother whether other people are alive or dead.’
Not only are PAP MPs known for their utter lack of empathy, even
small-fry PAP members think of themselves as “mini-LKYs”. A YPAP
member by the name of Eric How whose father is a prominent
grassroots leader in Kampung Kembangan constituency posted a
rather caustic comment on the YPAP Facebook attacking online
critics of the PAP:
“Do not be bitter and go on slapping on the Government
senselessly because you did not get any fruits or benefits from
your forefather. You will have to blame on your karma or your
forefathers for not getting all the paths right for their off
springs.”
Mr How also boasted unashamedly that his “folks” get him a
personal car so that he does not need to “squeeze into public
transport” like other netizens:
“My folks did the right thing by getting all the stuffs
ready for us and we will never ever need to nag about the
Government giving jobs to foreigners instead of locals. In fact, we
create jobs for others. Our folks even make sure that we guys do
not need to squeeze into public transport by getting each of us a
personal car.”
As if being insulted by fellow Singaporeans is not bad enough,
we have one new citizen from India and YPAP member Fredric
Fanthome who sneered at online critics of the PAP as “anonymous
hordes who sprayed venom at the government at every single
opportunity.” Wow, since when did we locals, the true, blue
Singaporeans who have risked two years of our life in National
Service need to be lectured by a former Indian national who is only
able to come here and leech on us thanks to the PAP?
There is a Chinese saying which goes – “When the upper beam is
not straight, the lower beam will be crooked”. These PAP MPs
are merely emulating their seniors who treat Singaporeans as
no more than “digits” in the economy which can be easily replaced
by their new pets elsewhere as exemplified by this most outrageous
remark to date by the PAP’s founder Lee Kuan Yew.
In a recent interview with National Geographic magazine, Lee
said it is a “good idea” that Singapore has welcomed so many
Chinese immigrants as they are more “hard-driving” and
“hard-striving” than the locals.
“If native Singaporeans are
falling behind because “the spurs are not stuck into the hide,”
that is their problem,” he was quoted as saying in the article
“The Singapore Solution.” by Mark Jacobson in a time when many
Singaporeans are struggling to make ends meet in the face of the
relentless influx of cheap foreign labor into Singapore which
depresses their wages directly leading to a lower quality of
life.
[Source: National Geographic]
Is empathy an important attribute of a MP? As a matter of fact,
it is more important than other qualities such as intelligence,
capability and passion for the job.
As public servants, ministers and MPs have the heavy
responsiblity on their shoulders to formulate and implement
policies which will affect the lives of millions of people on the
ground. How can we expect them to take our interests into
consideration when they are unable to empathize with our
concerns, worries and fears?
The root cause of the problem lies in our obsolete, archaic
and repressive political system which allows the PAP to parachute
outsiders with little grassroots experience or interest to
serve fellow Singaporeans into parliament directly either
through walkovers or by hiding under the skirts of a heavy-weight
minister to steam-roll over the perenially weak
opposition in the elections which have become no more than a farce
to masquerade Singapore as a “democracy” to the world.
One may excel academically, but that doesn’t automatically make
one a good MP or minister. The ingrained elitist mindset of the PAP
to select its candidates based largely on academic and professional
qualifications alone coupled with the lack of a solid opposition in
parliament to exert political pressure on its MPs to
perform has led to the untenable situation we have today where
the “great affective divide” (first coined by writer
Dr Catherine Lim in 1994) between
the government and the citizens is widening with each passing day
to the detriment of our nation.
Singaporeans are already paying the ultimate price for the lack
of empathy from the PAP leaders – we are finding ourselves
increasingly being squeezed into a corner by the relentless influx
of foreigners who have threatened to take away our jobs, our homes
and our futures and nobody within the PAP seems to realize
that.
But then again, if molest is considered a trivial matter by a
minister, what makes you think they will care about our life and
death?
When the next election comes, please don’t be deceived by the
goodies they dangle in front of you again.
Let us recite the PAP mantra to Singaporeans starting from
today:
“YOU DIE, YOUR
BUSINESS!”
http://www.temasekreview.com/2010/01/15/george-yeo-to-molest-victim-crying-for-help-go-and-see-your-mp/