Letter from a Grassroots Leader to PM
Dear Prime Minister,
I am one of your grassroots leader. I’ve voluntereed and served in
one of your constituency for the last 20 years. I’ve had these
thoughts percolating in my mind for many months. With what I
observed in the last 2 weeks, starting with the Punggol BE then the
White Paper, I decided to take the risk and go ahead and send this
letter to you. I hope you do not take
any of these the wrong way.
After the GE2011 elections, the PAP was dealt a big blow with
the
unprecedented loss of a GRC. You did a post-mortem with us, and
with your MPs. One of the message we tried to send you then was:
You (meaning the PAP leadership) just didn’t listen to us. We told
you there were many problems on the ground, you did not listen.
After the GE, you said PAP will change.
The next challenge came in Hougang BE. You picked a great PAP
candidate and for a while, we thought he could pull off a win. But
against the advice of the candidate and the PAP grassroots, you
deployed your big guns (KBW, TCH etc) and hijacked the message on
the ground. You did not listen.
The Punggol BE decisive loss was unexpected. The PAP grassroots
told you to send one of us, a grassroots type person, to the fight.
You chose to parachute in an unknown, someone who just joined the
party weeks ago. He commited gaffe after gaffe. You did not
listen.
And right after the Punggol BE, you unveiled the White Paper.
I know that those close to you, including the mainstream media, are
praising you for daring to take on the problems of the future, of
not sweeping things aside. But let me tell you this : I think you,
and your top leadership, screwed up big time.
I am sorry I have to use this language. You see, I’m a business
leader too. I know what its like to be surrounded by people
reporting to you, who are naturally disposed to tell you what you
want to hear. Or are all molded in the same way. I am outside your
– sorry to use this word, “bubble” – so from the outside,
sometimes, I can see things a bit more clearly.
Virtually all your PAP grassroots leaders and members were taken
aback by the White Paper. And it became obvious very quickly that
so were all the PAP MPs. Seah Kian Peng said he’s skeptical about
the White Paper and thought the targets should be scaled by to 80%
(how's that different from WP's 5.9 million?). Jessica said that
she, and a few other MPs, would not have been able to support the
White Paper in its present form. Even Tin Pei Ling said she
supported the amended proposition with a heavy heart.
Why didn’t you bother to run through the White Paper with your
fellow MPs before you publicly released it? They could have told
you how toxic the Paper came across and how to refine it. Why
didn’t you do that?
In other words, once again, why didn’t you listen? Time and again,
our team scored our own goals because of the sheer arrogance of the
top leadership.
And look at how your top leaders handled the White Paper since
its
roll-out. Within days, KBW started back-tracking saying 6.9 million
was just a “worst case target, which we hope we never reach, that
is for planning purposes only”. And you quickly followed suit,
saying you agree. And the rest of the Ministers echoed the same
language.
And then it was pointed out to you that in the past, PAP had also
used the words “worst case target” or “planning purposes only”,
only to have those numbers quickly exceeded.
And you actually got ESM Goh, Mah Bow Tan and Wong Kan Seng to
speak in defence of the Paper? With MBT saying “lets go for the
maximum”? Are you and your leadership team really that tone deaf?
These are the very guys who are most associated with Singapore’s
“lost decade” – a decade where we seemingly pursued GDP growth for
its own sake, where the social fabric of Singapore was put under
tremendous (and some say, irreversible) stress,
where you yourself said to have “lacked 20/20 vision” in
infrastructure planning. And yet, you actually got these people to
speak? Do you know what message you are sending – you are
essentially thumbing your nose at Singaporeans and saying,
“So?”.
I now know why MBT, WKS, VB, RL, etc did not show the slightest
remorse over their egregious mistakes during their tenure. It is
because you, the PM, set the tone at the top. You did not see these
as any big deal, and that tone filtered through your entire
organisation. In other words, you still do not listen.
On the very last day of the Parliament debate, you said that the
population numbers for the future is for future generation to
decide. Huh ???? What then have almost 60 MPs been debating these 5
days ? You put up a White Paper, you start back-tracking and now
you think that just because you've muddied it up, its become
palatable?
Why did you put the party through this? Did it have to be handled
in such a – pardon my language again – incompetent way? And how do
you think we, your faithful foot-soldiers, feel ? You put us in the
difficult position of having to defend something we did not agree
with. How do we answer to our family members and friends, who asked
what are we fighting for, what's wrong with today's PAP
leaders?
Let me tell you something honestly. The reason I, and some of my
friends, volunteered was because we were grateful for what the Old
PAP did for this country. We believed in its policies and its
leadership. But in recent years, you and your team have gradually
undermined this reservoir of goodwill and support. You know, I
heard that in the Punggol BE, some PAP grassroots members actually
told their family members to vote opposition, while they put up the
show of canvassing for KPK’s support. In my heart, I also sometimes
root for the other side, especially the WP. I know. I should not
feel this way. But you guys just don’t listen.
Let me tell you something else too – I personally like you. And I
think many Singaporeans do too. You gave a good speech in
Parliament, just like you did in the last day of Punggol BE
rally.
But you know – after I actually got over the emotional high from
your speech, and think through about what you said, more doubts
actually crept in.
“Growth is not for its own sake. But growth is not unimportant. If
you are in the top 5, 10% of the population, you may say, well, I
have enough, I can manage .. (but) if you are in the bottom 10, 20%
of the population, ..it would be patronising for us to say growth
is unimportant… Our experience has shown that in fact when the
economy is growing, the low income Singaporeans get benefits, their
incomes go up.”
Mr PM, do you know that in the last 10 years, the bottom 10% and
20% didn’t see their real income rise at all? If the last 10 years
of growth, with 1 million increase in population, didn’t increase
their income or make their lives better, how do you expect
Singaporeans to believe you that the next 10 years of growth will
be different? And Mr PM, did you realise that, until Lim Chong Yah
came up with his radical proposal, even the top Union leader did
not even realise that incomes of cleaners etc have not risen over
the years, and didn’t realise they (the Union) have done nothing
about it? In other words, they – the Union – was caught with their
pants down (sorry to use this analogy, I know, Palmer-gate still
hurts).
“Singaporeans, "feel together" as when the nation grieved with Mr
and Mrs Francis Yap when their two sons, aged 13 and seven, were
tragically killed in a Tampines accident last week. And when
Singaporeans triumph, as Mr Nickson Fong, 43, did in winning an
Oscar this year for a new animation technique, the country
celebrates with him, said Mr Lee. .”
PM, Singaporeans did not feel together when Ma Chi crashed his
Ferrari. It became a symbol of how Singapore threw its door open in
wanton abandonment to the rich, and how they lived it up in
Singapore. And Singaporeans feel divided, not united, when the
China-imported table tennis team won medals in the London Olympics.
It became a symbol of the "instant tree" mentality of the Govt. And
I guess you now no longer cite the example of Feng Tian Wen as a
unifying factor because she'd said bye-bye to Singapore and moved
back to Beijing.
You see, Mr. PM, you cannot just quote examples in isolation, take
us to an emotional high, and assume it assuage all of our raw
wounds. Its almost like you are burying your head in the sand, when
it comes to examples that do not fit with your idealised notion of
how it should have been. We do not exist in that alternate reality.
When I think through these parts of your
speech, I actually wonder if you are disconnected from us.
“He concluded with the promise that the Government will "watch the
numbers" and make sure Singaporeans are clearly in the majority. It
will always treat citizens better than non-citizens, he said”
Mr PM, you may not realise this, but in our public spaces – like
the MRT, bus, Chinatown, Little India etc – we Singaporeans already
no longer feel we are in the majority. My children tell me of
attending classes in University, where Singaporeans are the
minority and they feel they are in a foreign country. Do you
realise that in some offices, large cliques of Filipinos or North
Indians prevail, and they tend to hire their own? You see, you work
in the Civil Service –when you look out of your office, everywhere
you look, you see Singaporeans. It is not like that in many
other offices. How do you “watch the numbers” when you do not even
have an accurate sense of the current ground reality?
“For Singapore to thrive, we Singaporeans must always stay lean and
hungry," he said. "If we lose our drive, we will lose out."”
OK, I now get it. Its all about money isn’t it? You are afraid
that
whatever counter-proposal anyone comes up with – whether it be
reducing our reliance on foreign labor, or improving SME
productivity, or reducing income inequality – you are afraid that
it basically means touching the reserves.
But isn’t your proposal to give additional grants for children also
raiding the reserves? And when KBW said that he (yes, not “we” but
“he”) has decoupled BTO flat prices from the resale market by
essentially increasing subsidies, isn’t he also – in the words of
MBT – raiding the reserves?
“You said that 6.9 million is a worst case, and you see that the
number for 2030 will be significantly below that. But that 6
million proposed by the WP will be too low and it will be higher
than that. And that after this, you expect that the population will
flatten out. The resident population is going to stabilise and the
non-resident population will also eventually level off”
Mr PM, do you know what you just did? You, and your team, have made
the argument strenuously that there is simply no way to grow the
economy without population increase. And that as the population
ages, we have to supplement with foreign labor.
And yet you are saying that between 2020 and 2030, this need will
magically disappear. In other words, there is no intellectual
coherence to your argument.
And do you know what this sounds like? You sound like someone who’s
hooked on drugs or gambling. And he’s saying : just give me one
last sniff, or just lend me another $100, and after that, I
promise, I will not need it anymore.
And the worst part is this – nobody is going to believe you that
6.9
million is not real. Because come 2016, as long as the population
increases from today’s 5.3 million to 5.6 million, the WP can
easily say : See, the PAP is going along the trajectory in the
White Paper. Ignore all their talk. Its already happening. If you
vote PAP, you will have 6.9 million people.
In other words, you have fallen onto a trap that you dug yourself.
How sad.
Let me end with the same words you used in your speech. You said
you and your colleagues got into politics to improve the lives of
Singaporeans. I do not doubt your sincerity. As I said at the very
beginning, many Singaporeans like you and want to see you succeed,
even though they disagree with your policies.
I am a grassroots leader. I’m spending time helping the PAP party
because I believed that this will help Singapore and Singaporeans.
I’m not paid for this. I’m doing it out of my own free will and
with my sacrifice of time.
I’m rooting for you to pursue the right policies. I’m rooting for
you to succeed.
But just like in GE2011, or Punggol BE, or in the recent White
Paper – you do not listen.
At this rate, you will continue to erode the trust (yes, trust) and
support of the people. Including people from the older generation
who remembered and are eternally grateful to what LKY did for
Singapore. In fact, the White Paper had turned out to be a big wake
up call to Singaporeans - they better think twice about putting the
PAP in such a dominant position in Parliament, if they want to
maintain the Singapore they know.
So what do I want from you, other than “listen to us”? A hallmark
of a successful, good leader is not his charisma, or his heart, or
his
eloquence, or his intelligence. The starting point is always this –
who is he listening to? Whose inputs do he value, whose has he
learnt to discount?
Some of the lousiest emperors in China surrounded themselves with
eunuchs who told the emperor what he wanted to hear. Some of the
best, like Qian Long, disguised himself as a commoner to understand
the true situation on the ground.
You do not have to listen to me. But find your own channels to
listen to the ground. Seriously think again about who constitutes
your inner circle.
But, listen, you must.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. Tan Ah Kow
...............widely
circulate........
this guy really need to read up on his history.
qianlong was a good emperor for his 1st 30yrs.
but head got very big for his last 30yrs + 4yrs as 太上皇.
the downfall of qing dynasty began during qianlong's last
half.
