It’s about time Singaporeans take control of our collective destiny and not be fearful, greedy or apathetic come GE 2016.
The majority have been voting blindly for politicians who act as though they are CEOs of Singapore Inc and screwing up for years! In the real corporate world, epic screw ups are unforgivable unlike Singapore Inc where citizens are required to provide feedback, politely pointing out our CEOs’ mistakes.
Singapore Inc’s directors have attempted to give a semblance of accountability when in reality, none exists. Any independent party to check on Singapore Inc? Right and left all own people right?
Look at all the issues objectively and you will know all the PAP screw ups were preventable. Take for example public housing – how could any competent government controlling both the demand and supply simply ‘forgot’ housing is a basic need? HDB (page 3) constructed 158,000 units between 1996 and 2000, reduced to 55,000 from 2001 to 2005, and further reduced to 30,000 from 2006 to 2010. This while the population exploded by 1,500,000 within the same period. Did PAP expect to house them at Hong Lim Park?
Strangely, ‘CEO’ of MND remembered foreigners working in Singapore needed housing and sacrificed 4,000 public housing units in good locations under JTC’s ‘SHIFT’!
The PAP government comprises CEOs helming different ministries with only profit making in mind. So long as the PAP met its profit objective, never mind if the people paid the price for our ‘success’. When citizens demanded accountability from ministers and permanent secretaries, the PAP did just that – reward themselves with more salary increases and bigger bonuses for their ‘success’.
The high cost of housing is a non issue to the PAP so long as its ‘mistakes’ were rectified with the completion of 200,000 residential units by 2016. We are expected to accepted everything shoved down our throats and move on with life.
The ex-CEO for health had also somehow forgotten to expand the healthcare sector and needed feedback to understand healthcare is a need. No joke. A reduction in the number of hospital beds was actually not a mistake because the ‘ex-CEO’s’ main responsibility was to ensure higher prices to benefit Singapore Inc. But after being slapped by citizens at the May 2011 ‘EGM’, a newly appointed CEO informed citizens there would be a magical increase of 10,000 hospital beds by 2020. But will it be sufficient?
It appears the ex-CEO has no inkling the population increased by one million and and the current CEO has not planned for the anticipated increase in population to 6.02 million by 2020.
Do we want such CEOs to be responsible for healthcare knowing full well that they do not anticipate issues and their planning is based on … hope?
Then there’s also the transportation CEO who had ZERO relevant experience. As if a ‘CEO’ with military background wasn’t enough, an ‘assistant CEO’ from the military was appointed to take charge of our mass rapid transit system. Why are Singaporeans voting for disasters to happen?
The PAP has never concerned itself with the problems of ordinary citizens. To PAP, these CEOs have performed remarkably well, according to their profitability yardstick. Their objective has always been to inflate prices to generate higher revenue for Singapore Inc. Their ‘success’ is clearly visible from the number of ERP gantries, higher COE prices, higher healthcare costs, highest public housing prices, etc.
The PAP CEO system offers guarantees such as epic screw ups and a very high cost of living. It will again fail citizens and maybe some crocodile tears will be shed, pleading for yet another chance. We only have ourselves to blame for supporting such a system in the past. Hopefully more Singaporeans are now aware of the scheming PAP, through social media, and resolve to put an end to our unnecessary suffering by voting for a real government which looks after our well-being instead of the bottom line.
Phillip Ang
*The writer blogs at http://likedatosocanmeh.wordpress.com/