【Warning】 Long winded post. tl;dr, or proceed at your own risk.
The things I am not particularly happy with in 2011 is more or less the same in 2015, except for the details on why I am unhappy. I’ll list them down in this blog post.
1 – Population
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The root of all the problems we have is the population policy, and I will divide it into 2 parts.
A. Foreign PMETs – The government can really stop trying to confuse us between foreign workers (such as the cleaners and construction workers) and foreign PMET. Controlling foreign workers such as waiters and cleaners may give us the impression that something is finally done, but it’s not going to improve the employability of Singaporean PMETs. We also need better “quality control”, such as verification of their skills and qualifications, and also to root out those who slipped through the fingers with fake qualifications or those who have inflated their value with degrees obtained from degree mills.
Singaporeans should pay attention to the FTAs Singapore has signed and ensure that none of the foreign countries make use of certain clauses as a loophole to get around whatever quota restrictions we have, or to force us to take in more of their citizens with threats of taking the matter to the WTO. Take for e.g. CECA signed with India or the CSFTA signed with China. I am not entirely comfortable with the “movement of business persons” clauses, in particular with CECA where 127 specific professions were listed. Just take a look at this Times of India article published some time after GE2011, whereby it reports that Singapire is expected to hire around 60,000 from India.
If the competition for jobs isn’t bad enough, all of these foreigners working in Singapore also strained our housing supply and our transport system. This year’s El Nino effect brought the water supply from Johor to its knees and caused our water purification capabilities to operate at maximum capacity. Where was the pre-planning for the current population? With this in mind, regardless whether the 6.9 million is a population target or just for the purpose of infrastructure planning, it would be a hard sell. Looking at the NeWater plant in Changi, it appeared to me that this kind of insfrastructure is pretty land intensive. Really, what other price we need to pay to build or expand the infrastructure? We already have MRT tunnelling below our central water catchment areas and a road to be built over Bukit Brown. This growth at all cost policy will soon come to a head, when population will not generate more growth but simply more competition for jobs, and good and services resulting in simply more depressed wages and higher cost of living respectively.
Citizenship – Male citizens of this country shoulder a unique obligation – National Service. Some paid for it with their lives. Meanwhile new citizens get the benefits without the same obligations. A 2-week boy-scout camp for some of them will never be the same as the 2 years our boys served. Furthermore, is it even possible to revoke the citizenship of those who first got jobs in Singapore using false degrees or inflated qualification claims? The criteria in awarding of new citizenship should be tightened. New citizen applications should be seconded by at least two existing citizens – in particular neighbours – before they are considered. Social partipations should have nothing to do with faux or semi-political grassroots organisations like the Residential Committee (RC). This will allow us to root out the likes of Yang Yin, who are clearly serving in those organisations with ulterior motives. Above which, there should be a moratorium on the voting rights of new citizens. i.e. just like a home owner cannot sell his HDB within 5 years, a new citizen will not be allowed to vote until 5 years later. Above which, new citizens should be allowed to keep their old nationality for up to a year, which will serve as a probation period. In that one year, any new citizens who are involved in a crime, or found to have been employed using falsified credentials should have their citizenship revoked, much like new drivers on one year probation lose their driving license if they are involved in an accident.
By the way, I am also seeing an increased number of older folks of PRC origins in many neighbourhoods. I hope these are not Permanent Residents but rather just folks of those foreign PMETs (or new citizens) on social visits. Otherwise, I do not see why we should be taking in elderly people when we have our own to worry about. I also do not wish to elaborate on my concern on whether we have an adequate number of hospital beds as I have not done any research into this matter yet.
2. Public Transport
I have so far by the grace of God not encountered any of the MRT breakdowns, even the very first one in Dec 2011. While some felt nothing seems to have improved much in spite of the money thrown in, I have really very little to complain about as I have found acceptable alternatives I can use to get around the MRT system every now and then. That was pretty much how I escaped the 7th July MRT shut down (or 7/7 shut down for short) of both the NS and EW line.
However, experiences by friends on that fateful day exposed a critical flaw in our public transport system. It simply isn’t possible for some of them to use an alternative mode of transport to get to their destination within a reasonable time frame. The other modes of transport – buses and taxis – are simply incapable of taking on the load. When one of my friend’s bus reached Stamford Road, it stopped at the North Bridge Road junction (near Raffles City) for the better part of half an hour or so without moving. The aircon subsequently was turned off, and it was so stuffy in the bus my friend almost fainted. (We later found out that the bus wasn’t moving because there was a massive congestion in the Orchard area.)
Meanwhile, I attempted to help my friend find alternative bus services to get out of the area. It wasn’t long beforre I realised there simply isn’t any direct bus alternative to the destination. The LTA clowns who removed many of the bus services many years ago has done a freaking good job. Everything leads to the MRT. It is fortunate that the 7/7 shut down happened in the evening and not when the people are going to work. Can we imagine lots of workers failing to turn up to work on time? What impact will that do to foreign investor confidence in Singapore? Have overlapping bus services running alongside the MRT lines, and let the public transport companies worry about their own profitability. If the current operators thinks that those bus services are not going to be profitable running against the MRT, then open it to private operators. Perhaps the demand will initiate a kind of evolution to our transport system as long as the government is willing to let them have licenses instead of trying to control everything.
That brings me to the harebrained idea about mobilising the SAF for crowd control for a private company when the trains break down. Did someone simply think this is a great idea because the SAF has this ready pool of free cheap manpower to call upon? There is already very little pride to serve National Service when citizenship is given away ever so freely to some who may not even be worthy. Train breakdowns can happen very suddenly and has anyone consider the cost of the logistics involved for the SAF to mobilise, and move the troops into place? At optimistc estimation, it will be at least an hour before the troops are in place. There will be a cost to ferry all those troops around and it is not going to be free. Fuel is a strategic reserve for the military so why is it wasted to help out a private company? That’s not mentioning whether the troops are properly trained to deal with angry commuters. And depending on how long the breakdown will last, the troops assigned will be stuck there until such at time when they can be released and then ferried back to camp. If the breakdown last from the early evening to 12 midnight, then by the time the troops return to camp it will be early in the morning. Has anyone then consider the impact to their training schedule the next day? When these private companies are constantly making record profits and happily issuing dividends to shareholders, while failing to reinvest into their core business to ensure reliability, then they should face the consequences of such breakdowns and the associated public backlash instead of having the national army come in and wipe their sorry asses.
3. Public Housing
The prices may now have appreciated more slowly with a slew of new flats released, but it appears that the quality and standard have taken a tailspin, if not a dive. How the hell did something that didn’t even meet SCDF regulations even get off the drawing board and built? How the hell does one swallow moving into a unit costing more than half a million dollar only to find parts of the home broken and needing repairs / replacement? Some might feel that all these units with faults are just a small fraction of the total number of flats rolled out, but let’s not forget, the little things we experienced before SMRT finally admit there was a problem with their system – such as irregular stoppages along the tracks, or the scent of burning wires permeating throughout the train. Do we need to have more faults with new HDB units before we admit there is a problem?
4. CPF
The ever increasing of the minimum sum is a pain in the butt. While there are now changes to system which allows members to withdraw 20% first, the ever changing regulations in terms of withdrawal at old age allow the craps Lor Neng Roy Ngerng write to deal more damage to Singaporeans’ trust in the system. More should be done to protect the value of money in the CPF against inflation. As a suggestion – even though the government is adamant that the money the GIC and Temasek Holdings use is not all from the CPF – give one-off special bonus to CPF members when those entities perform way better than the rest of market every now and then.
Above that, there is also the matter of the Medishield premiums. Now that even those with pre-existing conditions are covered and covered for life, why are we paying a fixed premium perpetually when claims are low? Is the system meant to protect us from high medical bills or to profit insurance companies? If it is the former, then it is my considered opinion that certain rebates should be given back to us – as a form of incentive to those who has been keeping fit – especially when the insurance companies are making profits from providing Medishield coverage.
5. The People’s Association
The lapses of the People’s Association discovered by the AGO aside, I personally have no idea what function does this organisation actually serve. In spite of the name, it is clearly not formed by the people, but in reality a sub-political arm of the ruling party funded by Singapore government. The same goes for Citizens Consultative Committee and Residents Committees under its umbrella. My opinion is that they are irrelevant and should be disbanded, in particular the CCC.
The reason being I am sick of having a candidate of the ruling party who has lost in the elections (or a potential candidate) unconstitutionally usurp or supplant the authority of the elected MP in the constituency, and even act as a tripping block to the running of the town council. This person should have no position and should serve in no capacity whatsoever in the decision of the running of the town – such as upgrading and the maintenance of the facilities, or even the setting up of seasonal pasar malams. There should be no reason why such a person is allowed to distribute flyers to residents to cause anger and unhappiness against their elected MPs, especially when the police would come down hard on opposition parties doing the same in constituencies with MPs from the ruling party!
6. Military Men in Government / as Political Appointees
It would appear to me that beside the juntas of Thailand and Myanmar, Singapore has a disproportionate number of high ranking ex-military officers in either government or what is perceived as political appointees in important GLCs.
I have very little confidence that more military men in government and appointed to companies like SMRT is going to be very useful and helpful at all. Personally, I am already not very comfortable with political appointees, and I definitely have very little confidence in political appointees without the relevant experience or qualifications. There should be certain KPIs set if the government wants us to believe these are the right people for the job, and they should be fired right away when they failed to meet those KPIs within a year. Also, anyone losing 30 years of a company’s earnings in a fraction of that time, or running a once respected company into the ground, should learn the proper use of a Wakizashi and writing their final haiku. Otherwise, there should also be claw back clauses and a legal avenue to prosecute them if they are found to be negligent, instead of having the nation pay for the cost of their failures one way or another.
So, the above pretty much sum up the things I am unhappy about, and the reasons why I would not consider giving the vote to the ruling party. That said, it is not a given for any opposition candidate. Very rarely an opposition candidate can get elected simply by riding on public anger over policies. The only exception where public anger helps an opposition candidate win, would perhaps be a result of incumbents who have either failed to perform their MP duties to the voters’ satisfaction, or is viewed as snobbish or elitist. That may was well be the reason for the SDP’s surprise wins in Ngee Soon Central and Bukit Batok during GE1991.
So, if the opposition candidate has nothing much better to say other than repeating above all these things I have written above, I am probably better off voiding my vote. Really, even some vague idea on how you think can make things better would help. In fact, regardless how I felt about the SDP alternate policies, at least they try. The SDP is far better than the jokers who keeps telling me to vote the incumbent out without offering me anything. Simply put, between what I have now (regardless how bad it is) and nothing, I will NEVER “give a chance” to nothing!