PAP: Time to change yr messages

Given the widespread cynicism among S’poreans about why people became PAP candidates, MPs or ministers, I laughed last week when I read, Potential candidates … should “have their hearts in the right place”, said Minister for Home Affairs and Law K Shanmugam said.

Earlier I was in stitches when I read, DPM Teo Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean has ask Singaporeans to ”vote for the party whom you can trust” . Had he forgotten the many instances when the PAP turned out to be party that could not be trusted

— the promise that the 2 percentage  point GST increase would be used to fund welfare spending. There is gd evidence to show it isn’t. There is a surplus.

— the handwringing by Mah Bow Tan that property price rises could not be controlled, “Free market leh”. Only for him to introduce a slew of measures to try to control property prices

— the “climate of fear” among ministers and PAP MPs over MM’s comments on the failure to integrate. Only after MM said, “I stand corrected”, did Michael Palmer say he and many in the PAP disagreed with MM. Left me wondering, if these people could be trusted to tell “Truth to power”.

I (and I’m sure) readers can provide more examples, but I’ll move on to PM Lee Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong calling on Singaporean voters to ”think carefully and calmly about the long—term future”.

Does the PM realise that he and his team are still working within the framework established by Goh Keng Swee in the 1960s? Then being MNC-friendly went against the conventional wisdom and we had the MNC market almost to ourselves. Since the late 1980s, Dr Goh’s view has become conventional wisdom around the world. We have lost our edge and can only be MNC-friendly by working “faster and cheaper”. What kind of future is this?

Secondly, seeing the balls-up by government in not coupling the liberal immigration policy with a commensurate expansion of  public infrastructure in housing and transport,  has left me concerned that the government doesn’t think straight

These old messages from the 1960s should be retired. Surely the generals, Tin and Janil could have come up with fresh messages for the post 65ers?

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