The State Media have reported Lee Hsien Loong’s speech to his Party cadres on Sunday night in their usual partisan manner. The man at the head of the Lee dynasty demonstrates how he regards Singapore as the personal creation and fiefdom of his family and friends. He demands absolute control over Singapore just as he has over his party through the cadre system: a system that Reform has repeatedly made clear is itself an affront to democracy. He constantly conflates Singapore an independent republic striving to be a modern democracy with one political party: the PAP. The PAP are not Singapore but merely one party that has acquired a stranglehold, denying progress for Singaporeans and democracy at every step.
Reform is most concerned over the PM’s bizarre warning that sufficient Opposition seats in Parliament will mean no progress for Singapore, no future for Singapore and indeed checkmate for Singapore. The PM would like us to believe that the end of PAP’s total dominance, even for a 5 year period would be game over for Singapore.
This is a hyperbolic, hysterical and quite frankly childish outburst from the increasingly petulant younger Lee. Reform Party also believes it is a shocking indictment of the PAP’s record .in office. Lee Hsien Loong is saying that the PAP with a grand total of 55 years of unchecked power (only rivalled by Communist Russia and China) has even so failed to put in place any institutions that will stand the test of time and that in particular can handle the transition to a new government.
If he was the CEO of a listed company (and yes the PAP runs the Country as though it were a for-profit corporation) it would not be acceptable for him to tell investors that the company he heads will fail if he falls under a bus or he and the management team are killed in an air crash. He would have totally failed in his most basic responsibility. No one would be interested in investing in a company if they thought that it would be impossible to replicate its formula for success if the management were to disappear. When Roberto Mancini stopped being manager of Manchester City did that team, its history of wins, its institutions and its progress, all collapse? No, far from being Game Over, a new manager, Pellegrini, led them to win the Championship of the Premier League 2013/14. (This is an analogy no preference for any particular team/manager intended!) Singaporeans are the players and their sweat and blood are responsible for our progress so far not any individual manager.
Similarly a country that lacks institutions that ensure it can weather a democratic succession is an underdeveloped country. It is one where the institutions of government have been usurped to benefit a particular family, group or class. It is in short a dynastic regime reliant on a bloodline.
Lee Hsien Loong also tells a shocking lie. Make no mistake, the system of democracy combined with Rule of Law and respect for human rights is in the best interests of all Singaporeans.
The PM says that only the PAP is a national party that governs in the interests of all Singaporeans. This is not true. The PAP governs shamelessly in the interests of an elite with a heartless disregard for those left behind by a fake “meritocracy”.
Lee Hsien Loong says that Every seat, every contest will be a national contest, not a local one. The PM and the PAP have changed their tune since previously they have always tried to pervert the role of an MP into being a Town Council manager rather than the proper one of holding the Government accountable and pushing for better policies. Every election the PAP with the collusion of State media have tried to make the election about local issues not national ones. Since the PM controls the Peoples Association and the Residents Committees as well as the HDB he must have thought he had an overwhelming advantage. After all the PAP has always tried to use state resources to intimidate and bribe Singaporeans into voting for them. Now that the Opposition have proved that they can manage town councils, Lee Hsien Loong has changed his tune. However the PAP have not given up trying to make it difficult for Opposition Town Councils to operate as demonstrate by the recent conviction of the Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council for running a trade fair without getting permission from a PAP-controlled organisation.
Lee Hsien Loong also accuses the Opposition of having no vision for Singapore.
This is certainly not true of Reform Party nor we believe of our colleagues in other parties. We have a clear vision for Singapore. We want to return power to the people which the PAP today exercises over every aspect of our lives from the repression of basic freedoms to the monopolization of key sectors of the economy. Our vision is of a free but fair economy, a just society and a valued citizenry where the government is forced to be accountable and transparent. But firstly and most importantly we need to restore democracy. Reform has put some of the major points from our manifesto at the end of this statement.
We expect you have not heard about our vision. That is because the PAP and Lee Hsien Loong control the media and ensure that you only hear what they want you to hear. They blank out the Reform Party unless they have something negative to hype up, because they do not want you to see that we have put forward serious alternatives to the PAP. Instead they use State media to try and portray all the Opposition as clowns.
It is the PAP that has no vision for Singapore. Their only idea is to continue the flawed policies of the past. These have generated economic growth without bringing broad prosperity to Singaporeans by making the economy dependent on cheap labour. Our productivity growth has stagnated and we are in danger of falling further behind First World countries like the US, as technological change accelerates and labour becomes less and less relevant as a factor of production.
What is truly astonishing is that the PM says he does not want to be accountable and he expects Singaporeans to buy into this. In Lee Hsien Loong’s words, for every one more “checker” in parliament there will be one less doer, thinker and leader in the government to serve the nation and the people. This has been the perennial excuse of every tyrant and dictator throughout history, from Stalin to Mao to Hitler. Every time once the records are opened they show that, far from being essential for economic growth, lack of accountability and absolute power leads to corruption, mismanagement and abuse at best and at worst, in the instances cited above, to mass murder.
Is PM Lee really saying that answering questions about where your CPF monies have gone or why you can’t withdraw them earlier is preventing his party from leading?
This could only lead any reasonable person to ask why Lee Hsien Loong is so scared of accountability? Why is it that giving a full account of his Government’s handling of the people’s money would get in the way of leading the country?
Is it because he and his team do not want Singaporeans to know what has happened to their reserves? Is it because he wants us to continue to accept the sham of a national Budget in which year after year apparently $30 billion of surpluses are concealed from the people? Where year after year there is the pretence that the returns from our reserves are being spent on the people whereas they are just being shuffled around from one unaccountable fund to the other.
Reform Party has exposed these subterfuges and deceptions practised on Singaporeans and Lee Hsien Loong is afraid that he may not be able to answer our questions if he is compelled to do so in Parliament.
Lee Hsien Loong says When we face problems, we acknowledge them publicly, and deal with them. We don’t pretend there’s no problem, no comments, studying the matter, thinking about it, will clarify one day. We settle now! You lie low hoping the public will forget the issue, and the issue will go away, the public will forget you, and might as well go away. What is the PM and the PAP doing by refusing to answer questions about the reserves and why it is necessary to keep our CPF beyond 55? Is he hoping the public will forget them? Perhaps by suing a young blogger into bankruptcy and making him unemployed he hopes Singaporeans will be cowed into keeping quiet? And by taking a group of young people to court for allegedly breaching public assembly laws at the only space where such protests are legal he hopes that this will stop Singaporeans from using it?
Lee Hsien Loong goes on to say Every time we put out a popular policy, they say ‘do more’, they don’t say ‘how’, they don’t say ‘money from where’, they don’t say whom they are going to take from in order to give more. Well it may surprise Lee Hsien Loong but Reform Party does not say “money from where” because we know very well where the money is going to come from. Nor are we saying that it is necessary to take it from others. Reform Party says that we can take it from the immoral surpluses that the PAP conceals from the people. If the money is not there, then we will not be scared to ask why it is not there? Logically there can only be two answers. Either there has been mismanagement of the reserves or there has been corruption. For the benefit of Lee Hsien Loong and the PAP’s lawyers we are not accusing anyone of corruption. We are not afraid to ask the questions and to go where the answers lead whatever the threats or intimidation. We note for the record that every attempt is made to prevent dissemination of our annual breakdown of the budget and our notes that the budget is not presented in an internationally approved format.
As for Lee Hsien Loong’s contention that the Opposition do not want to take over the Government, this is not true for the Reform Party. We have always known what the true purpose of an Opposition Party is. On the very first day that our founder J B Jeyaretnam launched his new Party he made it very clear that he was left with no other option as he did not want to be involved with shoring up the status quo and would be satisfied with no less than full reform of our institutions. Although our strapline is “Transparency and Accountability Equals Democracy” we have never shied away from stating clearly for the record that the aim of any Party should be to get into government. That choice is vital and that merely acting as a checker or a voice is not sufficient. That is the proper role of back benchers or specialist lobby groups. Like the brave students in HK fighting for democracy we do not enter into a fight for democracy by calculating our chances of success. Reform is fighting for a better Singapore.
In fact we believe an alternative government with a solid economic plan such as Reform’s may well see the biggest unleashing of prosperity, freedom, creativity and innovation in Singapore’s history.
Some of Reform Party’s Policy Proposals
- We want to give people the freehold of their HDB to create a true property-owning democracy
- We want a proper accounting for Temasek and GIC’s performance and the transfer of ownership to the Singaporean people
- We want a vibrant free market economy which means ending Government control through monopolies
- We want rules that prevent the Government accumulating obscene and immoral surpluses and squandering our reserves without spending the money on Singaporeans.
- We want the reform of Medisave and Medishield to create comprehensive universal health insurance.
- We recognise the importance of education for Singaporeans. Rather than giving scholarships to foreigners we want to see universal free education up to secondary level and the abolition of fees for tertiary education for those who have served NS.
- We want to remove the Government’s control over our CPF savings and to give Singaporeans control over how much they wish to save and whether to withdraw their savings at 55 apart from the amounts necessary to fund health insurance premiums and a basic old age pension.
- We want to introduce a new layer of democracy with elected Town Councils with real powers rather than allowing the PAP to pervert the proper role of an MP which should be holding the Government to account to one of becoming an estate manager.
- Lastly we want restoration of our basic freedoms and the dismantling of Government monopolies over information through its control of broadcasting and the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act. Without democratisation and political reform there can be no broad-based prosperity.
Reform Party
Source: Reform.Sg