SINGAPORE: Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong said the
opposition will focus on policies which they think are not working
for Singapore.
He was asked to comment on reports that opposition parties
want to contest in Tampines GRC with the plan to turn growing
concerns over the affordability of public housing into an election
issue. National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan is an MP
there.
Mr Goh also noted that the opposition is trying to win one GRC or
one or two single seats. He added that the ruling People's Action
Party would have to convince the voters that the policies of the
government are right.
Mr Goh said: "Housing prices have gone up, but is this the work of
the minister or is it a wrong policy? Or is it the demand for
housing is so high? And the answer lies in liquidity. There is so
much liquidity in Singapore and the interest rate is so low.
"So anybody who can borrow money from the bank think they can just
hop to property and make a killing. But there is a danger. When the
interest rate goes up sometime in the future, are you able to
service your loan? Most people don't think that way.
"You can target on such policies, but the voters got to ask
themselves - are you just criticising without offering an
alternative solution? If they can criticise and offer a superior
alternative which the voters believe in, of course the opposition
will be in a strong position to win over votes.
"You criticise without an alternative solution and sometimes you
criticise without giving the full facts and the context. It is our
job to point out that you are just giving wrong information and
giving figures out of context. So this is the debate.
"One must expect the opposition to try and find fault with our
policies, but we will be able to defend our policies quite well.
That is the nature of this contest."
Turning to problems being faced by the Malay community in
Singapore, Mr Goh emphasised that there were national
problems.
Mr Goh explained: "Their performance in mathematics, in education,
dysfunctional families is not peculiar to the Malay community. But
for the Malay community, the sense of proportion of the whole
community is higher.
"It may be double what we see for the Chinese population or the
Indian population. We've got to attend to the problem in two ways -
one on the national basis, the national policies must be right and
also resources must be given to solve the national problems.
At the community level - that is, outreach and implementation - how
do you reach out to dysfunctional families? I still believe that
using Muslim leaders will be more effective than using a Christian
leader to reach out to the Muslim family on their problems."
Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zainul Abidin
Rasheed, added: "It is nothing like having the Malay-Muslim leaders
themselves being engaged in this, and Dr Yaacob and the Muslim
leaders, in fact, all the Malay-Muslim organisations are on
hand.
"They are working through the community leadership forum to work
out programmes. We are approaching them squarely and being honest
about it and we want to tackle as much as we can. We have made much
progress."
- CNA/vm