Part 1: TACTICS PAP IS USING TO BUY VOTES FROM SINGAPOREANS (PART 1)
Part 2: TACTICS PAP IS USING TO BUY VOTES FROM SINGAPOREANS (PART 2)
First, I thought the budget accounting of the PGP is SEXY to have expensed the full amount of the PGP in the current financial year. It does not meet with International Accounting Standard Board guidelines because it is a contingent liability, and does not meet IASB definition of “expense” accounting. No beneficiary receives or will receive any amount in the hand, not even one cent – the PGP is NOT spending an additional $8 billion in this financial year. The reality is PGP is clever accounting – a transfer of resources from Peter to pay Paul in exchange of votes.
Take a hard look at this budget lunacy. The employer will be required to increase its CPF contribution for those aged 50 to 55 by a further 1.5% but the policy is silent on those beyond 55. The mind-boggling mischief is why those 56 to 64 were conveniently left out? Too few in numbers of available vote benefits to harvest? Too few are still working and heading for fast extinction but their CPF savings remain locked up while they are trapped in survival struggle of escalating costs of living pressure without an income base or meager income base? And what offset of loving passionate pretended welfare care of this “near pioneers” aged? They are there to supply the fodder in Medisave savings to be siphoned silently, funding the PGP, by way of escalating premium deductions for Medishield Life – one quarter of the over 65s do not even have a Medisave account. As no cash transfer is involved, it has to be via an accounting transfer of money and resources from the younger non-beneficiaries to the designated beneficiaries of the PGP.
I am strongly persuaded and inclined to believe the PGP is indeed a SEXY electoral CON of a wicked deception – the aged beyond 65 are like big mature fishes, the “fisherman” baits all with a “big fat worm” called PGP. The fat worm of PGP looks delicious, and if they bite it, we all will be choked to death by its dangerously silent desperate politics I have enumerated in the previous articles.
I have come to the sad conclusion that PGP is not welfare but painful exploitation of those in the age group of 56 to 65. They may be unemployed but their CPF savings will progressively be stripped away by higher Medishield premium deductions. Understandably, many would feel aggrieved that their retirement savings are locked away and their property interest stolen against their will – just like theft of private property in English law precept. Maybe that is why even PAP won’t call PGP a “well-targeted” welfare assistance. Its harvest of usual clones of echoes sang the lyrics of “right focus”. It is NOT means or asset-tested, money just thrown at some “well-targeted” voters – I don’t understand where that mythical “right focus” is but I am certain it is not the character of this Government to provide welfare to the aged or the poor, whatever it might say of its vote-buying schemes. I smell a stinking rat elsewhere beyond welfare focus – not the focus that WP had in mind in 2011.
I further surmise the PGP is actually age-neutral, the 65 years of age cut-off is artificial and arbitrary. A lot of the jobless “dead poor” beyond the aged group of 55 won’t be able to afford it due to co-payment even it was made available to them. Certainly those in the age group from 56 to 65 have been left hung out to dry. Those beyond 65 years of age are in more dire straits of being longer out of employment and any income source. They too can’t access the benefits. They barely have enough to live on with a meagre monthly stipend released from CPF Board of their own retirement funds. How can they co-pay medical bills in thousands unless they have family-support, and assuming their families can afford those payments?
The mathematics is UGLY, not SEXY because in poverty distress, the pain of affordability escalates rapidly. If you take out the affordability irrelevance of those beyond age of 55, what exactly is this difficult-to-comprehend animal called PGP. PAP’s mouthpiece proudly proclaimed the younger generation does not mind missing out on this PGP animal. The Straits Times sub-title reads – “They don’t feel left out as the measures to help the elderly will lessen younger Singaporeans’ burden”.
The simple truth is that financial pressures are tearing families apart. Locking up the CPF retirement savings beyond 55 is unsustainable – both for the many poverty-stricken heartlanders and for PAP electoral prospects forward but PAP has no solution to dismount itself from this CPF tiger. The forward prospect looks even bleaker. All countries including Singapore are hitting the age demographic wall. For us, the contingencies are more acute as full Asean opening in 2015 will see a flood of more foreigners working here without having to contribute to CPF. The accelerating aging demographic wall will add tremendous escalating pressures on withdrawal demands for mere subsistence survival. Denying this survival bread is politically explosive for PAP’s political legitimacy to govern. It had a free hand to govern for 50 years and it failed. If allowed to continue to govern with a free-hand, we will see them raise the minimum sum requirements and raise withdrawal age.
Singapore is suffering from two-decade old sins of “stop-at-two” population engineering, the adverse effects of that aggravated by massive foreign influx in the last decade. The CPF retirement saving myths is about to be shattered. Our population economic policy is flawed to extreme toxicity. As one of the most globally exposed economies, our economic fortune rests almost exclusively on the turbulent global economic climate – not how many foreigners we flood in to eat, excrete waste, adding to our congestion and costs of living pressures and loss of competitiveness in its wake. Our model of foreign influx-based economy since 2006 was much lamented by LKY as a failed experiment. Our immigration politics aggravating all the distress visible before our eyes I won’t elaborate.
PGP IS A SEXY DECEPTION of bait-and-switch pork barrel politics, all for the cause of PAP’s political longevity and hegemony. It is a distraction of public attention from our nightmarish economic woes and major policy failures, and certainly not welfare politics of caring for our elderly or our young either. Unless PAP can come out with a major macro-policy shift agenda to move this country’s direction, past this malaise, I won’t dare to vote them back into office.
YOU DARE TO VOTE FOR PAP? WHAT DO YOU THINK?
OXYGEN