In a feedback session on Budget 2015 on Feb 26, Senior Minister of State for Finance and Transport Josephine Teo said “service for the country cannot be measured in dollars and cents” when one participant suggested that National Servicemen should be paid more. (Strangely, the article on Channel News Asia which reported this can longer be found online though a cached copy can still be found on Google as this post was being drafted. I have also made a screen shot of that article in case it’s purged fro Google cache.)

There is no doubt such a statement has got a lot of Singaporean men riled up. Anyone who just use the following terms on Google – Josephine Teo NS – will get a pretty good idea what most have to say on some of the forums. Even one of my friends wrote an blog post on it.

There used to be a time when government ministers has the aura of infalliability and invinicibility. Not any more when you look at the likes of Lim Swee Say, Chan Chun Seng, Grace Fu and Josephine Teo. They don’t even look ministerial. As I once mentioned to a colleague and friend, the end of the PAP may come not because that the opposition has become more capable. It comes because the kind of “top talent” the PAP managed to recruit simply failed to command any respect from the people, as the vote swing in the previous Punggol East by-election has shown. To paraphrase what I told my colleague back then, “It’s like playing chess or soccer. If you keep playing against those whose standard is not your match, not only will your skills not improve, it will actually start to deteriorate.”

So, instead of lashing out at Josephine Teo for being a woman and having not served NS, or ranting about how the Singaporean male lose 2 years of the prime of their lives bearing arms instead of climbing the corporate ladder, I would say this to her:

“Ask yourself madam, how is it that some have to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the rest and yet become economically disadvantaged for doing so, while the rest gets to enjoy the benefit for free and even reap economic advantages from the sacrifice of those serving NS? How to even the sum?”

It’s high time the country give those who served reasonable benefits, when her own boss the Prime Minister justifies for the ministers’ very own “reasonable” pay. In the previous ministerial pay review in Parliament, did she tell the Prime Minsiter that “service for the country cannot be measured in dollars and cents”?

I doubt so. As a friend so rightly point out, the PAP’s slogan these days appears to be: “Practise what I preach, but not what I do.”

There’s a word for that – H Y P O C R I S Y.

And really, there are a lot of people who aren’t really anti-PAP. They are just anti-hypocrisy.

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The matter of hypocrisy reminds me of that entire charade on the audit of Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council. Don’t they have better and more important things to discuss in Parliament, for e.g. increasing the number of hospital beds, instead of wasting two days on an exercise to “fix” the oppositon? In fact, a friend said something to the following effect:

“The Parliamentary debate in the past two days made me felt like the Workers’ Party (WP) had caused the YOG to be 3 times overbudget, allowed Mas Selamat to escape, failed to prevent the two once-in-50-years floods in Orchard Road, lost millions of sinking funds in town council investments and yet asked residents to be thankful, allegedly moved tens of millions of funds in sham bonds to cover up losses, caused all the MRT breakdowns, failed to build adequate number of units to meet housing demand, and appointed the PM’s wife as the head of Temasek.”

Yep. There’s a lot of people who can see through the gross hypocrisy. I generally do not care much for the reactions from both sides of the political divide but when my friends who are politically apathetic start commenting I take note. When one of my most “bo-chup” (aka can’t be bothered) friends actually made two Facebook wall posts on this subject matter, there is nothing but pure joy to see that the “fixing” has thoroughly backfired even though the “Internet Brigade” was having a field day tearing at the WP.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the WP could have done better and avoided getting dragged through the mud like this. Much hope has been placed on Chen Show Mao but he hasn’t quite made a splash in Parliament, while my opinion is that Pritam has been a total disappointment. Even when I know it is the WP’s style not to be combative, I would say that the WP’s performance in Parliament hasn’t really meet my expectations, much less those who expect it to be more hard hitting when “slapping the driver”. Nevertheless, only voters of Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East are writing the WP’s report card so it doesn’t really matter what I think.

It is much consolation that the WP did not enter into a slugging match with the PAP on which side has been much worse in not owning up to mistakes. When Josephine Teo challenged Png Eng Huat on that, Mr Png was wise not to bite the bait. Otherwise, its support of the motion in Parliament critical of its management of the AHPETC would have been nothing more than just hypocrisy. And that’s no better than the lack of accountability from the PAP itself.

I am also glad that the Auditor-General’s Office did not find any corruption. If the Law $in$ter Minister K. Shanmugam really thinks WP is corrupted, then the Prime Minister Office should immediately instruct the CPIB (Corruption Practices Investigations Bureau) to begin investigations immediately. Otherwise, just plain S T F U.

Frankly, the more the PAP keep at it, the more ridiculously hypocritical they looked. As for harakiri… there’s at least one person who should really have done that after Mas Selamat’s escape. And here’s the perfect weapon for him to do so, even though the honorable Japanese typically used the shorter Wakizashi to slit their very own bellies. And no, it’s not the person in charge of the detention center who should be slitting his own yellow-belly in this case.

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【Addendum】A kind soul informed me that my post was quoted elsewhere, and the accusation of “deleting posts to protect their political masters” was made against Channel News Asia. Let me point out that there has NEVER any intention to make any such accusation against Channel News Asia. I unreservedly apologise for the misconception that arise as a result. See next post for further details.