PM Lee has asked people to come forward to ask for change.
That is a very good gesture on his part.
But what have gone wrong so that there is this overwhelming need to
ask people to do the bottom-up change.
Just look at what happened briefly in the past 40 years.
Government failed to respect wishes of the people in freeing up
press control and in lowering costs of doing business.
But despite feedbacks as posted to Feedback Unit for years in "20
Major Govt Policy Errors" problems were covered up due to lack of
alternative voices in parliament and press control.
People bear the burden of persistent tax-and-recover, double-taxing
high cost policies and drop in economic competitiveness since 1970s
due to failure to upgrade the economy and SMEs.
Businesses cannot survive and people cannot find jobs and are
leaving due to wrong policies of the past. This is because the
Government have implemented wrong policies to suit its own ease of
creating surpluses and raise its own self-rewards.
Government is the one who has refused to change many of these wrong
policies of the past. People are not at fault. Now, just go to any
HDB heartlands and watch many businesses continue to close shops
and people are leaving for greener pasture.
Clamp-down of the press and double-taxing on land and
triple-charging on vehicle are wrong policies. Farming out of
essential services to GLCs and corporatising these services to
allow all of them to suck more monies from people is another wrong
policy. Tax-and-recover system is another wrong policy.
Government should change all these wrong policies and encourge all
the smaller businesses to grow with supportive procurement
policies. Do not close all doors on the smaller guys so that the
smaller guys could go into business.
NTUC and GLCs should stop competing against its own people for a
living and allow them to do well and create jobs.
Because of all these wrong policies, government has caused
unhappiness and migration and finally has to resort to people
importing in the name of foreign talents.
We still have not attracted many top talents despite all the FT
policy and those who are imported are none other than those we
already have in large number. This kind of importing of people does
not add values to our economy or create new technology
start-ups.
Instead of importing lawyers, accountants, doctors, insurance
people and business adm graduates we should import scientists and
technologists who could help to branch out in new technology
applications and start-ups.
So if government really and sincerely wants to change it should
change the root causes of unhappiness and migrations - high costs
of living and failure to create new technology start-ups due to
conceptual leadership.
So where is the change if government insists on its right to stay
firm on all the high-cost policies and discriminatory recruitment
practices favoring only the few elites.
If there is the change the change should be to favor and give more
opportunities to its own citizens, treat them fairly so that they
will not have to migrate elsewhere to seek better jobs and higher
pays.
If government stays firm on its pro-foreign policy and does not do
anything to address the root causes whatever the change will be of
little use but only false pretences to cover up old problems.
