PAP, the most confident supreme political party ever

I am going to write something in praise of this great political Party. It has been so successful for so long that even its opponents have conceded that the Party will continue to rule till kingdom comes. I would like to caution readers that some of you may find the content upsetting, uncomfortable, unbearable and nauseating. Those with a weak stomach may choose to skip reading from here.

Historically I don’t think any political party has ever enjoyed such high popularity and dominating the Parliament with more than two third majority for so long, and be able to make changes to the country’s constitution almost at will for the good of the country and people.

The best part about the dominance and confidence of this Party is its ability to push through very unpopular policies with no fear of losing the votes from the people. Take the population growth as an example. It brought in about 2m foreigners into the country within a decade or so as if it was just a walk in the park. For the uninitiated, 2m is more than 50 percent of the citizen population. By the time the citizens realized it, it was too late to do anything. And better still, the Party even pushed through a very unpopular Population White Paper in the face of strong objections from the people to bring in another 1.7m people by year 2030. Oops, it was only a planning parameter.

By the time IF the new arrivals arrived, the Singaporean core will be an absolute minority. But the Party could convince the Singaporeans that the Singaporean core will be strengthened as a result of the immigrants. Simply brilliant.

The unpopularity of this Paper led to an unprecedented public protest, twice within a few months and with a crowd that was unseen before. Who dares to protest when 4 persons are considered illegal assembly?

And knowing how unhappy the people are, the party simply ignored the people, thumping its nose as if there is nothing the people can do about it. Any political party acting in this manner will find itself out of power before one can finish saying hallelujah. There will be protests and street demonstrations to remove the party. But no, the PAP is confident that nothing will be able to rock it from power. It will be in power despite the people’s unhappiness and protests cause it was doing the right thing.

The huge influx of people into the little island led to the inevitables, high cost of living, high property and car prices and congestion in roads and public transport and many more problems. And these problems were compounded by the housing ministry for slowing down its housing programme to a trickle. Such a huge housing problem would have thrown any political party out of govt. But the Party knew the people very well, that the people loved what the Party had done, the high property prices, the high car prices and the high cost of living were happily embraced, quietly, with just a little show of public disapproval.

The unhappiness expressed was not real. The Party knew what the people wanted and gave it to them. As long as property prices keep going north, the people would not be bothered even with their CPF statements and the money in the CPF. The minister may be smiling at his CPF statements, the people will be laughing everyday at their high property prices.

Many jobs were given to foreigners and many local professionals have been booted out. So what? These are the minorities and likely to be the losers, the untalented and undeserving. What would the people expect the Govt to do? Nothing really. A few statements that the govt understood the problem would be enough to appease the people. The people would not remember the problem the day after. The govt is also giving a lot of top management and CEO jobs to foreigners instead of Singaporeans and it knows that Singaporeans would not mind. This is a necessary move as no Singaporeans are good enough. So there is no complains.

The number of unemployed due to this will be too small to affect the Party from being elected again and again. The less experienced and less confident political parties would be having cold sweat alienating these voters, but not the PAP. While losing a few votes, they are getting more votes from new citizens who are so happy and grateful to the Party for the opportunities given to them.

Some parents have been forced to empty their savings for their children’s overseas education. They complained like having a lot of grievances against the Party. Would the Party worry? Definitely not. For every unhappy parent, the Party is making many more parents happy. And there are foreigners who are invited and paid to study in local universities, given jobs and are only too happy. As long as the Party knows that it is making more people happy than unhappy people, it is in good shape.

Many Singaporeans seem to think that the Party will be voted out of power by making so many unpopular decisions and anti citizen policies. But they are damn wrong. The Party knows that it is doing the right things and the people may grumble, but deep inside, the people knew that all the things done were good for the people.

That is why the Party can continue to do the right things without fear of losing power. They don’t even have to listen to the people, and know that things will be just like they have planned, in 2016, 2021 or further away. There is no way for this Party to lose power. People may deceive themselves to think that the Party is doing all the wrong things and its days are limited. Don’t bet on that. The little noises over the new media regulations will be just a little noise and will not mean anything in the 2016 GE.

Sorry to disappoint you guys thinking that 2016 will see a change. How can PAP be doing so many unpopular things to get itself out of Parliament? Cannot right? This is the most confident political Party ever existed in human history, and it knows exactly what it is doing. It may even win more seats by 2016, retake Aljunied GRC as well. There is no political party like the PAP.

I feel so good writing this article.

A betrayal of trust

‘This lens makes you more likely to share the distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme….

Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in the outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good….For a society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures….

He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths. He betrayed his friends. He betrayed his employers. He betrayed the cause of open government.’

The above is an extract of an article by David Brooks in the New York Times and reprinted in the Today paper today. Brooks used this article to thrash Edward Snowden, the young CIA spy that exposed the dirty works of the US Administration for spying on its own citizens in a scale never seen before, an outright violation of individual rights to privacy in the name of good for country and people.

The assumptions of Brooks are that the US Govt is honest, clean and virtuous and doing the honourable and right thing. Is that so? Or is the US Govt violating everything there is in the Constitution, abusing its power and privileges, and betraying the people, betraying its citizens and a scum in all counts? When a govt indulges in dirty schemes and things against its citizens, it is the govt that is betraying the people. And other than an exposure like what Snowden did, there is really nothing much the common folks can do to a rogue govt.

What is the moral of the story? A govt needs to act in a way that earns respect and trust from its citizens. When a govt betrays its citizens, there is nothing that the people can do about it except unconstitutionally.

Lesson 2 from China

I would like to bring you back to the 1930s, the days of Shanghai Tang or Shanghai Bund. Those were glorious days of a new but corrupt China under the Kuomintang. Chiang Kai Shek was presumably the President of China and the corrupt elite who thought more of themselves, preserving their personal wealth was the order of the day. There was no accountability and the wealth of the nation was like the private wealth of the elite, Chiang’s family and the Soong family were infamous. The line between what belonged to the country and what belonged to these families were non existence.

No one knew how much money was in the national coffer. They became private fortunes. And when the Kuomintang fell, these families took everything they could and fled. The CCCP were equally blur as to how much were taken out of the country, stolen, by the Kuomintang and the Soong family. The senior Soong was the finance minister then. Without knowing how much was lost, there was nothing that the CCCP could do. And with a hostile West in support of the Kuomintang, the CCCP could not send out hit men like the Israelists to track down the criminals.

Fast forward to 2050 when Singapore still exists but decadent and run by a corrupt govt like the Kuomintang. And the nation’s wealth, the reserves, was still in the country’s two sovereign funds. And the people still did not know how much were in these two funds. Then came the dreadful day when the govt collapsed, brought down by a popular uprising. And the fund managers, the people entrusted with the nation’s reserves in the two sovereign funds, just scooted with the money.

When that happened, when no one knew who were vested with the authority to move the funds, and when no one knew how much was at stake, and if the funds, the nation’s reserves, were to be shipped out of the country, how are these money to be recovered? How would the new govt go about tracking down the people responsible for the money and how much money they have taken out?

This may be a moot point now. But if the non transparent style and policy of managing our national reserves continue into the future, come 2050, there will be a little problem. It would be old China once again. Money stolen and gone, and no one is wiser, except the ones holding the money bag.

Ex CIA man says exposed US spy scheme to protect the world

By Mark Hosenball and Richard Cowan

‘WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency said on Sunday he was the source who leaked details of a top secret U.S. surveillance program, acting out of conscience to protect "basic liberties for people around the world."… Edward Snowden, 29, said he had thought long and hard before publicizing details of an NSA program code-named PRISM, saying he had done so because he felt the United States was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American.

Snowden, a former technical assistant at the CIA, said he had been working at the super-secret NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen. He said he decided to leak information after becoming disenchanted with President Barack Obama, who he said had continued the policies of predecessor George W. Bush.’

The greatness of the American people is that once in a while there will be honourable men and women who were pricked by their conscience to stand out and tell the ugly truth to protect fellow citizens. There were Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange of the Wikileak, and now this leak that revealed some of the obnoxious things the American Administration is doing in the name of good for the country.

Many leaders of democratic countries, walking under the halo of goodness, conduct and act in very dubious manners, even targeting their own citizens. And not many countries have civil servants who are honourable and brave enough to expose their evil political leaders. Some even drink from the same cup and enjoy the holy patronage and largesse.

This is what Snowden said, "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that (US$200k salary) because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

Free our Internet.

Vivian Balakrishnan making a political comeback?

‘Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Dr Vivian Balakrishnan has joined in the hawker centres’ cleaning disputes.

He said it is “arrogant and wrong” of Ms Sylvia Lim to make a political attack on National Environment Agency (NEA) officers for simply doing their job….’

Vivian is calling Sylvia Lim arrogant and wrong for taking a shot at NEA in the hawker centre cleaning dispute. So who is arrogant and who is not arrogant, and who is right and who is wrong?

Vivian has been out of the limelight for a while after the Youth Festival and the acrimony he incurred for blowing the budget by an astronomical sum. Netizens were quite hostile to him and only stopped when he went out of sight and out of the news media. He was eclipsed politically.

Vivian’s latest attack at Sylvia Lim is unwise as the bad blood against him is still there. What is he hoping to do by this attack? To defend his NEA officers is one thing, to attack another politician by calling Sylvia arrogant is not going to be well received. If he is thinking of making a political comeback, to be in the lime light again, he will be surprised. He will hoard the limelight for sure, but for all the wrong reasons and he might regret making this latest statement.

Personally I think his political career is over, even if he is fielded in the next GE. His public image is far from the early days when he entered politics or before he entered politics. He is always remembered for his infamous reply to Lily Neo in Parliament. That is quite a chip to get rid off from his shoulder.