Finally browsed through Chapter 8 – the Public Housing portion – of the Workers’ Party’s [WP] 33-page manifesto. While I had to admit that the WP meant well by suggesting that the housing prices be pegged to median incomes, as a current lessee owner of a HDB flat with a vested interest in the continual appreciation of its value, I am duly concerned with the impact of such a move on the value of my flat.
That has really nothing to do with Mah Bow Tan’s fear mongering, because my common sense tells me that if their plan goes through it is almost certain that there will be some depreciation in the value of resale flats. After all, wouldn’t there be a reduction in demand for resale flats as first time applicants (except for those who are desperate enough to pay a high premium for a resale) would be enticed to purchase only new flats instead? Or perhaps the WP is betting on the fact that since Permanent Residents [PRs] can only get a resale, they would be the ones keeping the prices stable? But wouldn’t that drive PRs to private properties?
How is the WP going to assure those who have currently overpaid for their flats and still servicing their loans to accept such an arrangement? Even while the impact maybe very little to me since I bought mine more than 10 years ago (though I am still servicing my loans), I am quite sure many of us will like to know how much this move would really cost current property owners. The WP must do more by give voters the specifics so they can understand that this bitter pill they have to swallow is all for the long term well being of future generations of Singaporeans. Otherwise it would be be difficult for some voters to support this plan. Basically, we need to know whether the potential financial losses we will suffer will just be biting this bullet for the short term [一时的痛] or whether it would become a never ending pain on our chest [在我们胸口永远的痛]. To put it in an analogy, some people maybe able to accept getting slashed and bleeding for a short while, but it will require far more convincing to have people accept the need to amputate an arm or a leg even if they are told their lives depend on it. If WP wants to tell me that neither a slashing or an amputation is going to happen, convince me! I am all ears.
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Next, let me move on to the convoluted rubbish that Mah Bow Tan has been spewing lately. If he stopped after talking about the prospective losses that current home owners may suffer, that would have been good enough since that would have divided the electorate. People with vested interest would have jumped out to condemn the WP and the damage would have been done. But he went rambling on to the point that it is now becoming ludicrous. At times, there is seriously no need to exaggerate but of course the People’s Action Party’s [PAP] modus operandi is to make it sound so bad that we all get confused.
The vitriol and diatribe against the WP’s housing proposal in specific exceeds everything else that the government has thrown at the opposition. Has the WP’s proposal seriously harmed some ‘core interest’ some where? If it is true, I am not sure nor convinced that these ‘core interest’ are in the best interest of Singapore or Singaporeans.
From what I have gathered, Mah has called the WP’s housing proposal as ‘irresponsible’ and he suggested that for the WP to be able to pay for it, the WP would either have to cut spending in education, health care or defence. He said if the WP isn’t doing any of that, it would then have to raise taxes or dip into the reserves. He even suggest that the WP has an insidious, sinister and ulterior motive here by ‘reminding’ us that the WP had opposed the Elected President [EP] scheme and that so-called Chief Valuer which determined the price of the land is under the EP’s office.
He might as well have suggested that we should not think of the WP logo as a hammer, but that of a big bad wolf in Little Red Riding Hood *HoOOOoOOOOwl*. In spite of my exceptionally low opinion of Mah, I gave what he said some thought over the past few days, and these are some of the things I have thought about…
First of all, the government has given out 3.2 billion in a so-called ‘Growth and Share’ package, put S$4 billion that it had drawn earlier for the Resilience Package back into the past reserves and yet spent another 3.4 billion ‘longer term social investments for households’ this year. I am quite sure even though this maybe a one time windfall, is the government telling us that in other years, it doesn’t have any money which can be used to finance what the WP is proposing? If Mah is going to complain that by doing so it means the government would have no money for these packages and social investments, I wondered whether he has considered that when the people no longer need to slave their ass off paying for their pathetic little HDB flat, they would not only have more savings in their CPF, but also disposable income (because rentals will fall and thus slow down the increase in cost of living). Once that happens, it would have negated the need for one times hand-outs, or even Eldercare fund and Medifund top-ups. In short, it may probably be a zero sum game…
Secondly, Mah even gone so far to suggest that the WP’s plan is as good as raiding the national reserves. I sincerely wondered how is he going to substantiate any of that, since no one even know the exact details of the arcane mathematical formula (allegedly based on market conditions and valuation principles) used by this Chief Valuer to determine the value of the land in the first place. Mah would have us believe the land is really worth so much simply because he said so! That’s not mentioning that from what Mah had said it gives me the perception that the reserves is like some vampiric machine sucking our life blood into a nutrient pool. We are told that this nutrient pool is kept for the good of us just in case of hungry days. But many a time even during those days we are told to look at it to satiate our hunger – much like Cao Cao has told his troops to quench their thirst by looking up at the plums [望梅止渴]. Sincerely, if he wants to talk about raiding the reserves, talk about the million of dollars he is receiving every year. Last I checked, the ratio of their pay to Singapore’s GDP per person is *gasp* above 40. I take that to mean that if monthly median income is measely $2,500, the minister would be earning at least $100,000.
Even if I were to believe him, wouldn’t that mean to say that there is no way we can ever determine just how much national reserves there is in the first place since land prices can fluctuate. So how does he know whether the reserves are getting raided in the first place when the land’s value isn’t already fixed? In fact, at one point of time I thought we had a ‘perpetually growing’ national reserves since land prices can only go up as population growth and economic demands increase. I laughed that silly thought off as quickly as I thought of it.
Thirdly, I suddenly remembered when ex-President Ong Teng Cheong (the only President not given a state funeral) asked to be given the the details of how much reserves there is, he was rebuffed and told that it will take 52 man-years to do so. Now I understand why no one can do that for the ex-President. In fact, I even believe whoever told the ex-President that it can be done in 52 man-years must be frakking joking. After all, when the value of all the unsold land is yet to be determined, just who the hell can work out just how much reserves is really there to tell the President? Perhaps we should ask President Nathan if it bothers him that actually there is no way to know whether the reserves has grown or shrunk. In other words, just what exactly is the point of having an EP at all?
Either way, I wouldn’t go into talking about how little was paid out to obtain the land in the first place. Neither would I even go into explaining that this so-called subsidy is really nothing more than a discount (and thus the losses the HDB suffered is not real but hypothetical). But I would like to remind Mr Mah a simple fact – there is no use telling those who can’t even afford a HDB flat in the first place that its value would always be increasing in the years to come. Please wake up to the reality that some young people are already asking, “What exactly is the point for me to work so hard, and yet that house seem so distant and out of reach?” The Singapore Dream is dead! One can even tell some of these young people are angry, and all this talk about ‘asset enhancement’ is more akin to asking man adrift in the open sea to drink sea water to quench his thirst.
Really, stop treating us like idiots. Is there a predicament here preventing the government from being more transparent on how the land slated for building HDB flats is priced? If not, I am forced to believe that the government simply hold the people it claimed to serve in contempt. I am also forced to believe that the public housing scheme is nothing more than an scheme to siphon off our hard earned money into the national reserves for the GIC and Temasek Holdings unaccountable investments.
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