Two-and-half years has passed since the last GE and it is about time to assess how the govt has been doing. The massive housing problem has started to show some results. The backlog of housing needed has temporarily been transferred to the waiting list of units under construction. I won’t give credit to this as it was a self-created problem due to bad management. In fact the govt should apologise to all the home buyers who ended up paying very unreasonable high prices. The fear of runaway housing prices has been removed. But prices are still high as they are still hovering near their peak after more than doubling or tripling in the last decade.
The trains continue their routine breakdown and disruption of services like a new normal of the 3rdWorld. Maybe we are having too many foreign engineers running it and so this is the standard to be accepted.
The huge influx of foreigners is still around and still growing. The number of cheats caught is more like a token, like they say, a little wayang. The FCF and paying an Indian company to check on Indian certificates are looking more like jokes.
Medical cost is continuing to rise, shortages of doctors and hospital beds have reached epidemic proportions to some critics. University places are still going to foreigners, including millions of dollars being thrown at them when the money could go to our children and save their parents from selling properties to finance their overseas education. The wastage of our top students going into medicine and replacing them with questionable medical professionals from questionable institutions will show its ugly consequences as a matter of time.
Has anything changed? Some ministers were seen working very hard with some results. Some were working very hard with no results. Some dunno what they were busy with. Some were all noise and no substance and attracting ridicule. Some were looking after dogs and pets and foreigners rather than citizens. Some were chasing after pampers. Some simply disappeared, never seen nor heard even in Parliament.
How should the report card be written? The apologists will give it a big A to be accompanied by big bonuses to be shared. It is a matter of who would get more rather than who would get less? Unfortunately this is a well kept secret and no one will be the wiser. One thing is for sure, the public court of justice will pass their judgement come 2016 using their own criteria for measurement.
Chua Chin Leng aka redbean
* The writer blogs at mysingaporenews.blogspot.com.