I have not commented on this because I was too tired working on the 7am ~ 4pm cover last week. I have to say this is utter bollocks because I am certain that even if the opposition MP wouldn’t care to explain or implement government policies, he / she would still want to connect better with the people who elected them. Furthermore, even if they are opposing certain policies, they might not necessary want to stop them but because they want to see them improved (or given some re-think). That’s not mentioning that if the government wants to connect better with the people to obtain feedback, there’s no better and honest feedback compared to those given earnestly and passionately by an opposition MP. (Really, all that other stuff from PAP back-benchers really means zilch when in the end they voted for whatever they seem to passionately opposed earlier anyway. I am not aware any of them had dared to vote “NO” in spite of the whip since Tan Cheng Bock did so when the Nominated Member of Parliament bill was passed.)

Now, back to the part about connecting with the people. There have been several events in the past few months this year at the void deck of my block. I am quite sure those were done by the Resident Committee [RC]. If I am not wrong, the RC is a part of the People’s Association [PA]. Basically, I have never been informed by anyone from the RC when such events take place. (That’s not mentioning that in all my 14 years in Jurong West, I have never seen my MP do door-to-door vists – not even during the elections. So much for connecting with the people.)

I happened to walk past one of the events one Saturday evening several weeks ago, and I didn’t even bother to take a look at what the event was. To be frank, I don’t give a damn. But as I approached, I could see that the attendance is pretty bad, because there’s probably just about 100 odd people. Now, there are 5 HDB blocks in my area, and each block has approximately 120 units. That makes 600 families and if each family has 3 people, there would be 1800 people within just that few blocks. Now, if there’s only just a 100 odd people, it means the attendance rate is not even 10%. How is that connecting the people? Frankly, I see more of the Muslim community attending the Ramadan prayers at the same area in the void deck because there are easily 300 faithful Muslims turning up to pray every night!

I wonder, whether these RC events are really meant to connect the residents or just for lackeys RC or PAP members only. If they are for residents, then I must say the RC (and in extension, the PA) has done a very bad job because I have no idea what those events were, nor were any invitations ever extended to us! I must point out that even if the events may not have been relevant to any members of my family (since I only have 2 old folks at home and no kids), it wouldn’t harm to tell us what activities is slated for the residents, right? No wonder my parents didn’t know where to get free food and be ferried to attend PAP rallies.

I also noticed that there is an RC notice board at the ground floor lift lobby so any event notifications could be there. Unfortunately, I have never seen anyone stopping to read them – because if they were I would have been curious what caught my neighbours’ attention and do the same. Though I do get some publications from the Town Council every now and then, I rarely bother to read them either. Simply put, I would consider the attempt to connect with the people to be absolutely feeble. If all of these were the PA’s means to connect with us, I must say that if there was a notice that my block would be demolished tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t know until too late just like that poor soul in Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”.

RC activities aside, I personally do not even know what else the PA really is doing. It seems to serve no useful purpose at all. I asked a whole bunch of people in my age group (between 35 ~ 45) and none (including myself) could ever remember participating in any PA or RC related activities. If connecting the people to the government and strengthening the bond between citizens are part of the Key Performance Indicators [KPI] for the PA, then it has failed spectacularly in both of them. After all, I do not even know just who the hell the RC members are, and I wondered who selected / elected them in the first place. To be frank, I don’t even know the faces of my neighbours further than 2 units on either side of my unit, and sadly I may actually know my Malay neighbours’ white cat a lot better than its owners since it often perched on the common corridor. (Or the other neighbour’s edgy dog which seem to panic and bark at everything and anything, including neighbours it sees everyday.)

A friend mentioned to me that the PA is a statuary board under a ministry (like the HDB) and thus it must be headed by a minister. That reminds me that the PA is thus funded by public monies. Since that is the case, I have to agree with the Workers’ Party [WP] that we should abolish the PA entirely because clearly it has utterly failed in doing what it was supposed to do (as far as I am concerned). Abolishing it would make no difference to the apparent disconnect between the government and the people. Abolishing it would end the spat between it and the elected MPs of Aljunied GRC and Hougang SMC. Abolishing it would release the funding this inept statuary board is doing and free them up for other more useful purposes or better means to reconnect the government to the people.

Had it been abolished earlier, it would even have saved the Prime Minister the trouble of explaining why the PA can only appoint members of his party to grassroot advisor positions. A lot of trees would be saved as well since there will be less to report on the papers. It is perhaps time for the government to do away with the PA dinosaur and endeavour in some political innovation to more effectively connect with the people it claimed it wanted to serve.