http://ithinkiseeiblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/if-you-are-so-disenchanted-why-not-leave-singapore/
An Average Heartlander Speaks
If you are so disenchanted, why not leave Singapore?
Published on 14 Dec 09
During a YPAP Forum held last week, a participant (Bernard Leong) challenged a critic (Alex Tan) who was embarrassing the PAP MPs present with point-blank attacks on the PAP to leave if he was so disenchanted with Singapore.
How often do we hear the same sentence uttered to us in one form or another whenever we want to voice out our grievances, frustrations and resentment?
There are two assumptions in the statement which are fundamentally flawed.
1. Criticising the government/ruling party is an act of betrayal to Singapore:
Due to the dominance of the ruling party in Singapore, the boundary between the state and the party has been blurred so much so that an attack on the PAP is often misconstrued as an attack on Singapore. But the PAP is only a political party which has to be voted into office by the people every five years and not Singapore itself which encompasses not only political parties, but civil society, NGOs, religious organizations and much more. So when Singaporeans criticize the ruling party, they are not necessarily disenchanted or unhappy with Singapore itself, but rather at the way Singapore is being governed or mis-governed. On the contrary, it is precisely because they still care about Singapore that they bother to speak up.
2. Critics should stop complaining because they have a choice of leaving Singapore:
Unfortunately, many Singaporeans do not have the option or luxury of emigrating elsewhere due to other considerations and constraints. According to the Home Affairs Ministry, about 1,000 Singaporeans give up their citizenships yearly, some of whom must have done so because of sheer disenchantment with the place. For those of us remaining in Singapore, many have harbored thoughts of emigrating at one time or another, but unable to do so for a variety of reasons. First, it is not easy to uproot oneself completely and start life afresh in another country especially when one is doing well in his career or just started a family. Second, emigrating to another country will necessitate leaving one’s parents and friends in Singapore for good and simply isn’t an option for many Singaporeans who have to take care of their aged parents. And lastly, despite our intense hatred of the ruling party, we still have some feelings for Singapore and are not quite prepared to sever ties with it completely.
The government is nothing more than a servant of the people. Just like diners in a restaurant have the right to complain against lousy food or poor service, citizens have the right to provide feedback to the government, constructive or otherwise.
Imagine complaining about long-waiting hours for buses to SBS and it reply is: “If you are so unhappy with our buses, why not take taxis?” or service staff who cannot understand English in a posh hotel and the manager retorts: “If you cannot communicate with our staff, why not leave our hotel?”
Are commuters supposed to give suggestions to SBS on how to improve their services when lodging their complaints and guests expected to brainstorm of ways to improve the operations of the hotel before they can provide feedback?
The ruling party often makes major decisions concerning the lives of ordinary people with ease and haste in parliament without much of a discussion or debate and it is us who have to bear the brunt of their mistakes, not them.
If we are not even allowed to complain or told to “shut up and sit down” whenever we tried to make ourselves heard, then how is the government able to know if its policies are working well on the ground for the people?
It is the duty of the government with access to state resources to think of ways to improve the lives of Singaporeans and not the other way round.
Citizens do not have the obligation to help the government do its job, at least not when they are the most expensive government in the world.
Our job is merely to provide them with a frank, if not blunt assessment of their performance, point out their flaws and exert pressure on them to tweak and reverse unpopular policies which are hurting us.
Deputy prime minister Wong Kan Seng said recently that a government must have the courage to implement unpopular policies for the benefit of the people, but he forgot the basic fact that the government is merely a representative of the people and therefore must be subjected to the collective will of the citizenry.
A government which thinks it knows best and acts arbitrarily on behalf of the people without consulting them is tantamount to tyranny. Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot all thought they were rendering a great service to their nations, but ended up causing immense suffering to their people instead.
During a speech made in 1962, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said:
“If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I would not have the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.”
How can he be sure that he is governing Singapore in our interests and not in the interests of the ruling party especially when the identities of the state and the party have become almost synonymous with each other?
As a result of this “blind spot”, what is beneficial to the ruling party may be detrimental to Singapore. For example, the relentless influx of foreigners helps to keep Singapore’s GDP figures up which translate into higher pay for the ministers, but end up depressing the wages of ordinary Singaporeans, especially those from the lower income group.
In another instance, Lee was reported by the Straits Times in 1987 to say:
““I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”
Lee was proven wrong on many counts and admitted himself lately that he messed up Singapore’s bilingual language policy, but why didn’t any ministers, MPs or civil servants point that out to him earlier? Because there is no space for any views contrarian to the establishment’s to be aired in the public domain and there is no opposition in parliament to debate with the ruling parties on issues and policies affecting the nation.
The era of “government knows best” is gone. Nobody in this world has a monopoly on wisdom, let alone an octogenerian whose world view is still stuck in the 1960s.
If the government continues to talk down on Singaporeans and turns a deaf ear to their complaints, there will really be more and more Singaporeans who leave Singapore because they are so disenchaned with it.
An Average Heartlander Speaks
If you are so disenchanted, why not leave Singapore?
Published on 14 Dec 09
During a YPAP Forum held last week, a participant (Bernard Leong) challenged a critic (Alex Tan) who was embarrassing the PAP MPs present with point-blank attacks on the PAP to leave if he was so disenchanted with Singapore.
How often do we hear the same sentence uttered to us in one form or another whenever we want to voice out our grievances, frustrations and resentment?
There are two assumptions in the statement which are fundamentally flawed.
1. Criticising the government/ruling party is an act of betrayal to Singapore:
Due to the dominance of the ruling party in Singapore, the boundary between the state and the party has been blurred so much so that an attack on the PAP is often misconstrued as an attack on Singapore. But the PAP is only a political party which has to be voted into office by the people every five years and not Singapore itself which encompasses not only political parties, but civil society, NGOs, religious organizations and much more. So when Singaporeans criticize the ruling party, they are not necessarily disenchanted or unhappy with Singapore itself, but rather at the way Singapore is being governed or mis-governed. On the contrary, it is precisely because they still care about Singapore that they bother to speak up.
2. Critics should stop complaining because they have a choice of leaving Singapore:
Unfortunately, many Singaporeans do not have the option or luxury of emigrating elsewhere due to other considerations and constraints. According to the Home Affairs Ministry, about 1,000 Singaporeans give up their citizenships yearly, some of whom must have done so because of sheer disenchantment with the place. For those of us remaining in Singapore, many have harbored thoughts of emigrating at one time or another, but unable to do so for a variety of reasons. First, it is not easy to uproot oneself completely and start life afresh in another country especially when one is doing well in his career or just started a family. Second, emigrating to another country will necessitate leaving one’s parents and friends in Singapore for good and simply isn’t an option for many Singaporeans who have to take care of their aged parents. And lastly, despite our intense hatred of the ruling party, we still have some feelings for Singapore and are not quite prepared to sever ties with it completely.
The government is nothing more than a servant of the people. Just like diners in a restaurant have the right to complain against lousy food or poor service, citizens have the right to provide feedback to the government, constructive or otherwise.
Imagine complaining about long-waiting hours for buses to SBS and it reply is: “If you are so unhappy with our buses, why not take taxis?” or service staff who cannot understand English in a posh hotel and the manager retorts: “If you cannot communicate with our staff, why not leave our hotel?”
Are commuters supposed to give suggestions to SBS on how to improve their services when lodging their complaints and guests expected to brainstorm of ways to improve the operations of the hotel before they can provide feedback?
The ruling party often makes major decisions concerning the lives of ordinary people with ease and haste in parliament without much of a discussion or debate and it is us who have to bear the brunt of their mistakes, not them.
If we are not even allowed to complain or told to “shut up and sit down” whenever we tried to make ourselves heard, then how is the government able to know if its policies are working well on the ground for the people?
It is the duty of the government with access to state resources to think of ways to improve the lives of Singaporeans and not the other way round.
Citizens do not have the obligation to help the government do its job, at least not when they are the most expensive government in the world.
Our job is merely to provide them with a frank, if not blunt assessment of their performance, point out their flaws and exert pressure on them to tweak and reverse unpopular policies which are hurting us.
Deputy prime minister Wong Kan Seng said recently that a government must have the courage to implement unpopular policies for the benefit of the people, but he forgot the basic fact that the government is merely a representative of the people and therefore must be subjected to the collective will of the citizenry.
A government which thinks it knows best and acts arbitrarily on behalf of the people without consulting them is tantamount to tyranny. Hitler, Mao, and Pol Pot all thought they were rendering a great service to their nations, but ended up causing immense suffering to their people instead.
During a speech made in 1962, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said:
“If I were in authority in Singapore indefinitely without having to ask those who are governed whether they like what is being done, then I would not have the slightest doubt that I could govern much more effectively in their interests.”
How can he be sure that he is governing Singapore in our interests and not in the interests of the ruling party especially when the identities of the state and the party have become almost synonymous with each other?
As a result of this “blind spot”, what is beneficial to the ruling party may be detrimental to Singapore. For example, the relentless influx of foreigners helps to keep Singapore’s GDP figures up which translate into higher pay for the ministers, but end up depressing the wages of ordinary Singaporeans, especially those from the lower income group.
In another instance, Lee was reported by the Straits Times in 1987 to say:
““I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”
Lee was proven wrong on many counts and admitted himself lately that he messed up Singapore’s bilingual language policy, but why didn’t any ministers, MPs or civil servants point that out to him earlier? Because there is no space for any views contrarian to the establishment’s to be aired in the public domain and there is no opposition in parliament to debate with the ruling parties on issues and policies affecting the nation.
The era of “government knows best” is gone. Nobody in this world has a monopoly on wisdom, let alone an octogenerian whose world view is still stuck in the 1960s.
If the government continues to talk down on Singaporeans and turns a deaf ear to their complaints, there will really be more and more Singaporeans who leave Singapore because they are so disenchaned with it.
