It amuses me to no end when the TaliPAP shoots itself in the foot – such as the recent exchange between Hougang Member of Parliament Mr Low Thia Khiang (Workers’ Party) and Eric Low of the TaliPAP.

We now know the uphill task the opposition parties faced to reach the electorate. We now also know that certain positions of the elected MP are supplanted by the loser Tali-PAP candidate (or his successor), and some of the elected MP’s functions and roles in his ward are usurped by the same loser Tali-PAP candidate even when he has not been elected. It makes a mockery of the electoral process by disregarding the choice of the people. How is that even constitutional?

Mr Low Thia Kiang’s press release on the Workers’ Party website further exposes the fact that in Hougang at least, the People’s Association [PA], Community Club [CC] and grassroots organisations like the Resident Committees [RC] (which should be apolitical) appeared to serve as fronts for the ruling party to obstruct opposition parties. While I used to laugh off my father’s comments that members of the RC are nothing more than lackeys of the ruling party, it would now appear that there is some truth in the words my father said in his drunken stupor. In fact, there is now a deeper meaning when it was mentioned that foreigners should show their ‘willingness to integrate into society’ by participating in grassroots activities such as those of the RC. Perhaps that participation would have been a clear sign of their ‘loyalty’. A loyalty which I felt is not to the nation, but to the ruling party where the election results will thus vindicate its policies to let these people in.

The press release further exposes the fabricated perception that opposition parties only shows up near or during the elections, though I have know for a long time that the Workers’ Party has remained committed in Aljunied GRC. To be exact, one of their Youth Wing members personally invited me several times to some of their activities just to see for myself the work they are doing in between elections after I made the comment that opposition candidates who lost are only active during the election. Even the National Solidarity Party [NSP] understood the negative image of being perceived as an ‘election party’, and has resort to social media platforms (such as a Facebook page) to increase exposure and to make known their continual efforts in between elections.

This is the 2nd time in slightly more than 3 months that the Tali-PAP has shot itself in the foot. In early June, the government gahmen released the Town Council Management Report [TCMR]. It was of no surprise that the two GRCs headed by the Singapore’s ‘Holy Father and Son’ both respectively got top marks in management. It is ironical that two flash floods followed after the report in Orchard (which I believe lies in the Tanjong Pagar GRC) and parts of Thomson Road (which probably lies in Ang Mo Kio GRC) not long after. It almost seem like even God found the TCMR to be a load of crap and made a point Himself, if not for the fact that the drains and public roads aren’t the responsibility of the town councils. Anyway I’ve taken the news of that report with not just a pinch of salt, but with a whole bucket of it. After all, statistics are nothing but numbers and they can be interpreted in anyway favorable to the person giving the interpretation.

Statistical reports hardly mention the facts on the ground such as the satisfaction of residents into account, as stated in the article here. While this is just one blog post, let’s also take into consideration the hard fact that Potong Pasir town council headed by Chiam See Tong has built a walkway linking the MRT station to the housing estate all from its own funds and Hougang MP Low Thia Khiang used $500,000 of his town council’s funds to upgrade the lifts in several blocks on Hougang Avenue 3 and 7. Can you imagine that unlike the Tali-PAP wards, all of these funds comes from the proper management of the collective funds collected by the opposition parties from the residents of the constituency while the gahmen has contribute absolutely nothing to it? Don’t forget that the TCMR itself pointed out that the opposition wards had the most Service & Conservancy [S&C] arrears and the Tali-PAP had shamelessly called that an attempt to score political points by staying in the good books of voters. Even if that is true, I would give the opposition party points for this because I would have pulled my hair out trying balance my accounts just to score political points while getting the money to upgrade the lifts of flats under my charge or to build a walkway. It begs the question whether the Tali-PAP town councils with the least S&C arrears had simply been utterly ruthless in collecting them as well.

Meantime, the blocks which lifts were upgraded in Hougang were demolished seven years later, as if to erase the embarrassing evidence off the face of the Earth. A mess resulting from vandalised solar-powered lamps along a pathway in Potong Pasir left behind by Mr Sitoh Ho Pin was placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr Chiam’s Town Council. Yet both town councils took everything in their stride in spite of whatever stacked against them. If anyone want to consider me biased in my rejection of the TCMR, I would similarly consider that person biased since he hasn’t consider the above facts, much less interview the residents of Potong Pasir and Hougang.

Frankly, just how can one really accept TCMR in light of the fact that some Tali-PAP lost monies in their investments of sinking funds into Lehman-linked or similar investments? While in another other country, the media would have ‘done an Erin Brokovich’ by doing some investigations when these losses came to light, Singapore’s usually docile and utterly useless media has sat on their palms and done absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, it has all the time to infringe on the privacy of former ExCo members involved in the coup to capture the AWARE leadership lea-duhship – shamelessly informing us of these private citizens’s occupation and position in the company where they worked, the kids they have and who they are married to on the country’s national daily – while showing us nothing about the very person who exposed them!

I am not suggesting that the media create tension, outrage and an uproar among Singaporeans with follow up reporting. After all, it could have done exactly the opposite to quell the anger some people would have felt when shown just how little disrepair there is in the towns run by money losing town councils, or how long there haven’t been an increase in S&C charges in these town. In fact, had it been revealed that how some of those investment gains have always been used to cover S&C arrears of residents, it would even have scored a political point. At the very least, such investigative journalism would have kept certain certain politicians humble, and kept them from comments such as ‘residents should thank the Town Council for working hard to come up with a diversified portfolio to generate income so that residents do not have to fork out more money’ after losing a good S$8-million in sinking funds.

These two incidents showed that the alleged talent of Tali-PAP candidates is nothing more but a fallacy, a figment of imagination in the minds of the self-proclaimed elites of the Tali-PAP. They are certainly not infallible, and in spite of such sub-standard performance, some of them needs to be enticed with high pay to enter politics. It is not only what they have done we should take note of, but also what they failed to do, and what they failed in doing without being accountable. I certainly hope the electorate will remember all of it at the ballot box!