February 4, 2010 - Temasek Review
OPINION
A staff of Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council (and suspected PAP
member) wrote a letter to the Straits Times Forum yesterday to
defend the PAP’s “track record” over the last fifty years.
Entitled “Imagining a Singapore without PAP”, Mr Ling Tuck Mun
wrote that “every Singaporean would likely become a millionaire
overnight” if the PAP were to distribute most of the country’s
reserves to all eligible Singaporeans to pay tribute to the PAP
government’s achievements over the last fifty years.
“I wonder if any Singaporean can still be confident of the
worth of having a million dollars without the PAP in power,”
he wrote.
It smacks of utter desperation of PAP members and supporters to
resort to such a hypothetical scenario which will never happen in
real life to defend the PAP’s continued political hegemony.
While we must admit that the PAP has done some good for
Singapore, we should not forget the fact that the bulk of the
credit should go to ordinary Singaporeans for building the nation
and not a few leaders of a political party.
Without hardworking, thrifty and sensible citizens to generate
year after year of budget surpluses, will the PAP government have
so much reserves to splurge on risky overseas investments now?
Besides, past achievements can hardly be used to justify the
PAP’s stranglehold on power.
Instead of “imagine a Singapore without PAP”, Singaporeans
should be asking this:
“Imagine a Singapore with the PAP in charge for another
50 years.”
A political party is only as good as its leaders are. The
present PAP is a pale shadow of its former self and has ceased to
be a political party altogether.
It is merely a political vehicle for a single man to govern the
country. No PAP member can ever hope to rise up in its ranks
without prior approval from this man.
The PAP has been enjoying a “good life” for far too long without
any opposition in parliament to check on it.
Due to the lack of political competition, it has become
complacent with many of its leaders losing touch with the ground
and forgetting that they are put into power by the people in the
first place.
There is little accountability or transparency in Singapore’s
present political system which resembles more like a third world
dictatorship than a first world democracy.
All institutions of the state are controlled by the PAP directly
or indirectly such as the police, media, civil society, grassroots
organizations and trade unions.
Repressive laws are put in place to curtail the civil and
political liberties of citizens under the guise of “public order
and safety”.
It is not a surprise that Singapore is described as a “textbook
example of a politically repressive state” by respected
international NGO Human Rights Watch recently in its annual
report.
The entire set-up is put in place to perpetuate the PAP’s rule
forever so as to prevent an alternative center of power from
emerging to challenge it.
Even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong admitted himself that
Singapore is better off being dominated by a single party than
multi-party politics.
Law Minister Shanmugam defended Singapore’s political system on
the basis that it needs an “efficient” government which makes fast
decisions.
The stunning policy reversals made by the PAP recently is a
testament to the failure of a rigid one-party system over-dependent
on a 86 year old “forecaster extraordinarie” to think out of the
box, anticipate future problems and to inspire an entire nation to
follow its leadership.
Based on current policy trends and direction, the following
stands a higher chance of happening than PAP distributing our
reserves to every citizen if we were to allow the PAP to rule
Singapore for another fifty years:
1. Native Singaporeans will become a
minority:
Due to the PAP’s liberal immigration and pro-foreigner policies,
foreigners now make up 36 per cent of Singapore’s population, up
from 14 per cent in 1990. Of the remaining 64 per cent who are
citizens, an increasing proportion are born overseas.
The birth rates of native Singaporeans, especially the ethnic
Chinese, continue to decrease despite a slew of government
incentives introduced to encourage them to bear more children while
the PAP has promised only to “slow down” the inflow of
immigrants.
At the rate they are mass importing foreigners elsewhere to take
up Singapore citizenship, it is only a matter of time before native
Singaporeans fall below 50 per cent of the population. In fact the
day is not too far away.
With Singaporeans becoming a minority in their own country, it
will become increasingly difficult for them to vote out the
increasingly unpopular PAP which is actively wooing PRs and new
citizens by roping them into grassroots organizations in a
desperate bid to hang on to power
2. Brain drain will accelerate:
According to figures from the Home Affairs Ministry, there are
about 180,000 Singaporeans working overseas, many of whom are
unlikely to return.
About 1,000 Singaporeans give up their citizenships yearly and
the number is set to rise in the coming years.
In an interview done by the Straits Times two years ago, more
than 50 per cent of youths interviewed had expressed thoughts of
emigrating.
Common reasons cited include stressful living conditions, lack
of social security in old age and a repressive political
climate.
Contrary as to what the PAP would like to believe, the degree of
political freedom in a country is an important factor in keeping
and attracting world class talents, few of whom want to live
forever under the shadow of a totalitarian state.
Furthermore, there is an increasing number of unhappy,
frustrated and angry Singaporeans who are voting with their feet
because they have given up hope of voting the PAP out of office
altogether.
The PAP is replacing the talented Singaporeans who left with
second and third class “talents” from China and India which will
surely decrease the quality of our “stock” in the long run.
How can Singapore expect to compete with China, India and its
neighbors when it is importing “inferior” talents from them while
its own talented people are emigrating in droves? The future of
Singapore is becoming indeed bleaker and bleaker with each passing
day.
3. Widening income gap between the rich and the
poor:
Under PAP rule, Singapore’s income gap between the rich and the
poor has widened considerably over the last two decades.
Singapore now has the highest income gap among the thirty most
developed countries in the world due to the PAP’s lop-sided
economic policies which favor big businesses at the expense of
ordinary citizens.
It is widely acknowledged among economists that Singapore’s
phenomenal economic growth over the last few years is a result of
its open-door policies to foreign workers which help to keep labor
costs down thereby boosting the GDP growth figures
artificially.
The relentless influx of cheap foreign labor has depressed the
wages of ordinary Singaporeans which remain stagnant at $2,600
monthly.
The PAP doesn’t seem to be concerned about the implications of
Singapore’s widening income gap as illustrated by Minister Mentor
Lee Kuan Yew’s reply to a question on it at a Kent Ridge
Ministerial Forum last year.
He said that Singapore’s widening income gap is an “inevitable
consequence” of globalization and it mattered little so long the
government continues to create jobs for Singaporeans.
He forgot the fact that some jobs offer too low a pay to afford
a decent standard of living in Singapore and that Japan, South
Korea and Taiwan have been exposed to globalization too and yet
they have a much narrower income gap than Singapore.
Singapore will soon become only a playground for the rich ruling
elites and foreigners while the poor continue to slog day in and
out to pay for the roofs over their heads.
