The Alternative View
Dear Singaporeans,
Tomorrow is Cooling Off Day, a day set aside by the PAP Government at the last General Election in 2011 for voters "to reflect away from the hustings of the campaigning period on who they would be voting for".
To help you reflect, the PAP mouthpieces which are disguised as a National Paper, will surely attempt to slant your thoughts toward voting for the PAP tomorrow.
Before that happens, we hope voters will have a checklist of their own to see what they value in their lives and to see who provides the most number of checks when comparing among the political slate of candidates and parties on offer. We have included a checklist at the end of this article to help you along. You may add your own.
Singaporeans know that any initiative coming from the PAP is always disguised as a good thing i.e. PAPa knows best. Seriously, we need more time, now than ever before, to cool ourselves down from the PAP failures of these past ten years under Lee Hsien Loong.
Imagine, that it is already this bad with things happening in and around Singapore - the 6.9M Population White Paper which he does not seem to want to discuss with us, the health care system and it's infrastructure where Government Subsidised Restructured Hospitals meant to serve Singaporeans are redesigned to cater to the medical tourists - and where senior doctors, Consultants and above, are posted over to privatised clinics that are refurbished to cater to these rich tourists within the restructured hospitals. It also means critical medical and surgical equipments could be prioritised for used by the rich and cash free medical tourists over our own sick and poorer citizens.
It used to be said that you can die but cannot fall sick. The pun today is "you will die waiting to be seen by the doctor". And these foreign patients are adding to your waiting time - for consultation, for admission, for surgery, for post--surgical care and for healing.
Imagine, what our public transport system would continue to be like with the continuing breakdowns and with no workable solution at hand. Why don't the PM just take the whole damn system back from SMRT and deal with it from there? At least if the breakdowns continue to happen, Singaporeans can stop being anxious about the next fare increase as the privatised SMRT is wont to do to recover costs of service and maintenance even when it is not performing to expectation. The government can buffer that pain for us.
Imagine, what our Education system is going to try out next. In the past decade, we have seen the Chinese syllabus going from rote learning to character recognition to hanyu pinyin and to just having the conversational ability will do. Our mathematics for our primary school students are way above what secondary school students are grappling with abroad.
And now, with foreign talents now easily available and their acquisitions made easier by the sellout pacts the PAP have made with our ASEAN neighbours and with India and even as far as North America, the emphasis on our own children's education has been lowered with the introduction of non-academia schools and colleges.
Apart from the unimaginable 6.9M population, our transport woes and our health care deficiencies, there is also the fundamental aspect of our subsistence as citizens of Singapore. We work our whole lives for one purpose, that is, to provide for ourselves and our children.
Providing for ourselves does not mean living from hand to mouth. Minister Khaw has been reported to have said that as long as you can pay for the monthly mortgage amount for your HDB flat, the HDB flat is affordable. Never mind if it takes both husband and wife to pay it for the best part of their lives.
The HDB flat has become a bugbear to Singaporeans. The best entrepreneurial years, the most daring years, and the years a person would most likely challenge his own ability are taken away from him because he has to see to the roof over his head. How is the Singaporean's adventurous spirit ever going to surface when it is depressed by the crazy prices of housing? How are Singaporean couples ever going to consider having a bigger family of more than two kids, let alone one?
It all adds up and the PAP does not want to listen or have anything to do with what we are saying except to say it knows better and it knows best.
So, we are cool. We wanted to see the PAP address all these issues on the most crucial dates it has marked out for itself in its own calendar, dates they set themselves.
Alas, the oppositions came better prepared to discuss these issues but all the PAP wanted was to laugh its way to Polling Day, choosing to smear characters, engage in scare mongering and engaging in gutter politics.
The PAP of Lee Hsien Loong is unrecognisable from the PAP of Lee Kuan Yew.
The latter may threaten, but he showed results and he engaged minds. Never mind if he did it the correct way or not.
The former insults, looks down and talks down to citizens, dare not engage or debate, has teams of yes-men surrounding him and knows nuts about the suffering common man - even going as far as declaring himself a naturalised aristocrat.
So, Cooling Off Day tomorrow is a wonderful day for us to reflect on what the PAP government under Lee Hsien Loong has so far done for us - or rather, done to us.
Let's ask.a few.questions to examine:
1. Can you name a thing or two you can really attribute to Lee HL and be proud to say you are proud of?
2. If LHL is to leave behind his legacy today, what is the one thing you will remember him by?
3. What is it that is different from the PAP of LHL to that of the PAP of LKY that you will stand up for?
4. How has your life changed for the better after all the promises that have been made to you by the PAP?
A. Have you gotten back your CPF in full after 55 as promised by LKY?
B. Has The Next Lap of Goh Chok Tong taken you to the next lap of Swiss standards, or are you still wondering whether that next lap has ended already?
C. Are you enjoying 'More Good Years" with Lee Hsien Loong after more than 10 years - a quality of life now being shared with almost the same number of foreigners among you, competing with you, your children and your parents?
D. Are you enjoying 'More Good Years' with frequent train breakdowns and being late for work and staying back to finish your daily job, or being late for medical appointment when you are in pain, or missing that dinner with family or friends which you could only do once a week?
E. Are you having 'More Good Years' when you shout out to be heard and no one is listening, and then you see your MP sleeping in Parliament or only spoke up "impactfully" once in the last 5 years?
5. Do you think your life will be better served by voting in the same folks who promised you all of the above?
6. Do you honestly think they are With You, For You and For Singapore?
7. Or do you think you should start Empowering Yourself by having the courage to change things around?
8. Do you dare go back to 1965 and do what your parents did, have the balls and guts to dive into the untested but just based on the instinct of Trust, trusting yourself?.
9. Do you want to regain Your Voice in Parliament?
10. Do you want back your life, a dignified life and a life to be respected?
So now we are cooled. Let's get ready to cast our votes.
Majulah Singapura!
Vote For Change
Photo of Lee Hsien Loong from Xabryna Kek CNA
Photo of Lee Hsien Loong from Xabryna Kek CNA
