Abundantly talented Singaporeans are pushing the Government to spin out of control.
Yes, you’ve heard it right! There was never any dearth of talented Singaporeans to begin with. We know this PAP government, has for the longest time since our former and interim PM Goh, been trying hard, and sadly, with some degree of success, to stick the label of ‘untalented Singaporeans’ on its citizens. There are good PAP party-related reasons for doing this, and these reasons are beginning to surface if one is to read between the lines of comments being made by various ministers while they grapple with a better informed, more vocal, and highly talented Singaporeans – who are growingly less fearful when displaying their frustrations, frustrations that come about because of the lack of appreciation for their talents.
We recently hear, first from PM Pinky himself, that we have an oversupply of degree and diploma holding Singaporeans, so much so that it is becoming more difficult for these highly educated and talented Singaporeans to find jobs that match their talent. In short, for all the talk about being a global economy where this tiny nation had invested a huge amount of money and resources to attract diverse businesses to its shores, we are in fact not global enough when creating job opportunities for the diverse talents we have.
When such misalignment happens, it becomes inevitable that one quarter has to give, and it won’t be those who have the power to dictate and orchestrate the new tunes they release every now and then to suit their fancies. It therefore falls on the talented Singaporean to adjust and realign himself to what the state is able to bring to its shores. In other words, you adjust the position of your a**se-h**e to fit the rod.
And so it goes, that when a government has bad foresight, Singaporean talent will eventually end up suffering the lack of foresight from the governing clowns. Take for example the population control policy which peaked in the late seventies which is the cause of our population problems today. Couple this with the restricted intake of women who had sought to study medicine. Put the two side by side and one can clearly see a catastrophic outcome in the making.
Today, we have a reduced population not replacing itself fast enough, or at all; and we do not have enough medical staff to cater to a graying population. And because of this we have to consider retiring to some JB nursing homes.
What does this example teach us? First and foremost, you place yourself and your education at the mercy of government when you blindly follow what they tell you is the best direction for you. Look at all those citizens who listened to Old Harry. They chose manufacturing and engineering over medicine. I can still remember the Shit Times front page news at that time, of a woman wearing the white hard hat of an engineer.
Cohort upon cohort of new graduates were coming out from these fields as we thrived on nation building for the next three decades – until the government decided that we should be a financial hub instead. It happened so suddenly that we suddenly found mathematicians, accountants and economists hard to come by. The labelling of Singaporeans as untalented came about at this time. Singaporeans became the fault because we have an oversupply of obedient citizens who had listened to the PAP’s old tune, who are now too advanced into their careers and age, to reinvent themselves or to go back to accounting school.
The above illustration shows us that we are not as untalented as this useless government tells us we are. They are only calling us untalented because they do not know what to do with the talents we possess. As someone online pointed out, the Singaporean talent and his ‘obedient’ working attitude are attributes that place him in high demand on the global stage. Problem with us is that we are not as adventurous as the global opportunistic worker, who would take a lower salary than the local, and work longer as well, as long as the salary is higher than what he could earn back home.
And this is exactly what the PAP government seeks to exploit. The cheap foreign worker can be stretched to the full. Exploiting them would automatically translate to exploiting the Singaporean worker, for the Singaporean worker now has to match his commitment to that of the foreigner.
When you start hearing cabinet ministers echo the words of the PM, then it is confirmation that the PAP government has a problem out of hand and out of control. That problem should be a happy one for both the government and the people to work together on. Instead, as is the culture of the PAP, they become fearful of the intelligent citizen, and as always, they will try all ways and means to put him down lest the roles become reversed.