Roy: The CPF is Not about My Fight, It is about the Future of What S'poreans Want

I know some people don’t agree with what I say, or some of what I say. Some people don’t agree with what I do or my actions as well.

But I hope you understand that this is besides the point. You don’t have to agree with me. In fact, I don’t want you to agree with me. It is not about me.

We should all do our own research and readings, so that we know what’s really going on in Singapore, so that we can rely on our own knowledge and analysis to make up our minds on what’s really happening and decide what to do about it.

Don’t listen to me, or the PAP, and take what we say as the truth. It’s up to you to read and decide for yourselves.

And when we have read up and realise for ourselves what’s really going on, we can then decide what we want to do about it.

When I first started writing and speaking up, I didn’t do so by echoing what others said or did. I have been doing my own research and readings, and that was when I got into a shock at what the PAP was doing with the country. The PAP government was pretty much taking the money of Singaporeans, not only from the CPF, but also from taxes and the money we pay into the government-linked companies, to earn money for themselves.

When I saw all that, that was when I realised how the PAP government was corrupting the lives of Singaporeans. That was when I realise we need to speak up and fight back, in order to save ourselves, in order to save Singaporeans.

So, please understand, you don’t have to agree with me. You shouldn’t. You should make up your own minds and decide for yourself what’s best for you, and how best we can get there.

For me, the answer is clear. The PAP government has been taking the money of Singaporeans to enrich itself for at least 30 years now and we cannot allow this to go on.

At the rate that they are doing this, more and more Singaporeans will earn low wages and more Singaporeans will go into poverty. Already, poverty has increased from about 15% in 2000 to 30% today.

But you have to decide for yourselves what’s important for you and what you will want to do.

You also have to understand that for some of us, our lives might be relatively ok. We are still able to get by and so we might not want to acknowledge the lives of other Singaporeans who live with lower incomes and have to struggle to survive – it’s real, by the way. There are 30% of Singaporeans who simply cannot earn enough to even spend on basic necessities, and so they go into perpetual debt.

But you see, the sum of our country is the total of everyone who is here. As long as someone else’s lives do not get better, at some point, it will affect us. We might only want to focus on our lives now and pretend that atrocities that the PAP has done to Singaporeans do not exist, but when the effects spill over, what are we going to do? Or when we are the ones who get hit, who will help us if we’ve never reached out to help another?

And the reality is that more and more people are getting hit, when they lose their jobs, their CPF, or cannot pay for their homes or hospital bills, and that’s when they realise that they need to do something. But do you want to wait until you get hit before you do something?

So, you see, it is not about me. It is not about my fight. What I do doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t. But what we, as people living in Singapore, want to do, this is what really matters. Whether our country survives into the future, it depends on what we are willing to do, to acknowledge the truth and to work together to make things better.

Or we can be like an ostrich and pretend that things are fine, but look at what this has done to the PAP.

Do your own research, think up your own ideas, and then we can see how we can come together to make our country tick.

One day, I will be nobody but the people in Singapore will still be around, if our country remains, and the people here will be the ones who will have to decide how they want to fight to keep their country alive.

If we sit and do nothing, our country is not going to change, or it will just be pulled down by the PAP. So it’s really up to you now.

I know that when the PAP attacked me and when they set me up and said I “heckled” the children, some people were willing to withdraw. There appeared a reason to step back and justify that I was wrong, and there became a reason to disagree with me. It became safer to do so, some people reasoned. They thought that by doing so, the government won’t go after them.

Yes, you can do so. But if you decide to draw back, please still continue fighting. If withdrawing was only an excuse to stop fighting, then why do we allow fear to guide us? Why do we allow ourselves to criticise some people who help us fight, because we fear?

At the end of the day, where this country will go is up to you and what you are willing to do.

No, don’t agree with everything I say. No, don’t go for personalities to “save” us.

Read up for ourselves, find out more for ourselves and decide for ourselves what we want to do and how we can change things, so that at the end of the day, we can protect ourselves.

Really, this is all that matters.

What I am saying is we have one chance to take a stand and to change things. So it’s up to you now.

We can either continue to sit and wait on a ticking time bomb, believing that all is sundry and well, or we can take a clear look at what is going on in Singapore, to recognise it and to decide to do something about it.

We cannot just hold on to what worked in the past and hope that things will remain the same in future. We are already seeing how things are falling apart and how the PAP government is going downhill with its policies, if you can even call them that. But why do many of us still pretend it’s ok?