some comments elsewhere;
DazALot • 2 days ago
Only a weak incompetent leader would feel the need to surround himself by a bunch of Yes Men to boost his own ego but fail the country. With the kind of leadership of Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore is too small to weather the abuse from the top. He is riding on his father's legacy and his father's left over economic momentum fr a while. But the LKY momentum could only go so far. Singapore will eat up its own relevancy in a decade or two.
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Raymond Hsu • 3 days ago
the route for the son becoming PM is fraught with setback, twist and turns.
Mr Goh Chok Tong becomes PM in nov 1990 was widely viewed as seat warmer for the son. The son was made deputy prime minister then. While LKY continued to hold 'minister mentor', a new post created after giveway PM post to Goh By that, it means, LKY is still tightly overseeing and monitoring the change over of leadership in the future.
Working under the heavy shadow and demand of his father,
The son was diagnosed with intermediate grade malignant lymphoma in 1992.
He was certainly not born to be a leader with so much hard work and pressure to ascend to the top.
Undergo more relax transition of take over plan after contracting cancer, the son took 12 years to under study to be potentially a PM by both Goh and LKY.
Eventually, the son was finally given a chance and green light after 12 yeas of understudy.
Still, Goh becomes 'senior minister', and LKY continues to be at the supervisory and monitoring role.
Now, the son was closely monitored by 2 mentors as a PM for more than 6 years,
then, finally, he wanted LKY to letgo to let him have a free hand in running the country.
Immediately,
In 2011, with the 'freehand', the son suffer the worst election setback for the ruling party, first time, the opposition labour party clinched additiaon 5 more parliamentary seats.
The son has not visioned or drafted any ingenious or innovative idea to lead the small nation since taking helm since 2004 till now, the son simply inherits all the same old idea from his father legacy, ie., being the hard and smart labour for MNCs, and try to add-value to renowned products and services and establish SG as a regional hub to support MNC expansion into the region.
Because with no new idea, new direction, and no new vision, the son continue the same old policies of his father and think hard to squeeze on productivity, and cutting cost to ensure profitability and good GDP figure during his tenure
This lack of foresight without continue to building a robust local workforce and industry spell trouble after few years at the helm, yes, GDP figure continue to be good, productivity figure continue to be impressive, but this is at the expense of stressing the existing infrastructure to support the overcrowded rapid influx of non-skill and skill foreign workers.
The foreign worker be it skilled or non-skilled displaced the locals, with much lower wage, and with much younger age and equal or higher productivity.
Locals being displaced are left with no jobs or have to settle for a job losing much of the seniority, or have to embark on a new job at fresh entry level, most of the time, a much unprofessional job compared to the previous job.
For locals who are continuously unemployed for more than certain number of months, the statistical department would put these long-term unemployed as 'retiree' status, hence, the statistics of local employment rate is always sustained as impressively low figure.
By leverage on foreign worker, young, some well educated, willing to work extra hours, and get lower pay, SG manage to sustain a impressive productivity figure, and profit for companies, and hence good GDP figures.
This is at the expense of rapid growlng pool of 'young' retirees, and many previously local professionals now turns to non-professional jobs, for example master degree holder becomes taxi driver.
The rapid influx of foreign workers also put great stress to infrastruture due to lack of foresight to ramp up the maintenance and upgrading the capacity and performance of infrastructure.
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Which lead to property price boom and very congested public transport system.
Then, one day the pubic transport train system suddenly collapse and major breakdown, and the frequency of major breakdown increases, then, worrisome, the son then decides an overhaul to ramp up the public transport infrastructure with tens of billion of investment.
Then, one day, property bubble curbing and prevention measures suddenly kicks in to force and curb the demands.
Then, one day, famous 'little india' riot involving hundreds of south asian foreign workers, first time in SG history since 1970. The rior is Widely perceived to be motivated by poor foreign worker hostel and welfare and treatment in Singapore. And a year after the riot, millions pour in to improve the foreign worker living, working, and welfare condition in Singapore.
The local renown universities NUS and NTU, with board of directors from the ruling party, was also under heavy criticism.
Many full scholarships have been opened to foreign students with free or very low boarding fees, until they graudate, and immediately, these foreign 'talents' was highly sought after by companies in Singapore with few years working contract.
The criticism is on nurturing foreigner in full instead of spend to nurture the locals.
Hence, the slew of unhappiness led to major setback of the son's 2011 election results.
Have to admit that the son is very much 'mediocre' compared to his father.
Though his ruling party have legislated a bill to pay all cabinet the highest pay in the world,
most notably, with the son take home 4 times the annual pay of US president.
However, the performance of the cabinet don't measure up to the demand,
the lowest 20% local income earner continue to struggle to make ends meet daily,
with staple food, and necessities inflated more than 3% yearly, and healthcare cost inflated more than 100% in the last 10 years, while lowest 20% local income earner's salary increment is much below the cost of living increases. And since taking helm in 2004, little has done to change that until critically pointed out by opposition party in 2011 election.
The son style of ruling has been very much reactive and responsive when major problem occurs than proactive, stem the potential major problem before it arises.
In feb 2015, the son again announced to the public to have contracted prostate cancer, his father demised in march that year.
A grand and prolonged, very costly and huge funeral, and all SG media broadcast only sombre contents for several weeks,
and few months later 2015 SG election begins.
all the above could very much set the stage to garner sympathetic votes to win voters by indirectly signal to voters that the son has been 'very sincere' and 'have tried his very best' to bring about the betterment of SG, and milk from the legacy of his father who has brought SG to current city state's success few months before the election and the son finally manage to win a landslide election victory in sep 2015, winning voters' votes not by meritocracy based on impressive betterment brough to local Singaporeans (as the solid facts of Singaporeans well being prior to election is not impressive) but by careful political manoeuvre to influence voters' sentiments.
On this backdrop, an incident happens prior to election was not immediately reported, in fact only 7 months after the incident took place was the incident first reported by govt controlled public media. SG oldest government linked hospital, SGH's lapses led to hepatitis C outbreak in mar 2015, At least 21 kidney patients have been infected with hepatitis C at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), with the needles used to inject insulin coming under scrutiny. Eight of these patients have died, with four deaths linked to the viral infection that affects the liver. Three died of unrelated causes while a question mark still hangs over the last death. This news was only first released in Oct after Sep 2015 election. So you can tell that a lot of political manoeuvring
In aug 2016 during national day speech in front of live TV audience of 3 millions locals, he again collapsed halfway through his speech, rested 2 hours before continuing.
This prompted the call for urgent succession plan.
Existing deputy PM Tharman is widely viewed by public to be the best successor to the son based on his performance and his calm, composure, ease of handling when faces crisis, however, was not given the chance to take on the helm.
Instead, a close relative descendent, of LKY's wife was widely rumoured in the web to be expected to take on the helm,
so far, very rapid promotion was seen as compared to other cabinet members having the same number of years of experience served, and was given many opportunity to take on important role and exposure.
Though, the performance is in the eyes of the public, he is a mediocre, except being eloquent, but lack of vision.
So, the next successor if not selected based on meritrocracy, wlll certainly spell the end of LKY lagacy
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Arnold Chong Raymond Hsu • 3 days ago
Let's not even talk about LKY's legacy.
If you read what the experts are saying, the regime doesn't know what to do to generate economic growth anymore.
They are merely just following policies made 40 years ago and tweaking it a little.
With its neighbours growing rapidly, Singapore could become irrelevant to the region and the world in about 15 to 20 years.
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Arnold Chong Raymond Hsu • 3 days ago
"According to Ponzi demography, population growth — through natural increase and immigration — means more people leading to increased demands for goods and services, more material consumption, more borrowing, more on credit and of course more profits. Everything seems fantastic for a while — but like all Ponzi schemes, Ponzi demography is unsustainable."
https://www.theglobalist.co...
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Arnold Chong Raymond Hsu • 3 days ago
"With a weak recovery of the world economy, Singapore has been vexed by sluggish economic growth in recent years. How to reform and renovate the country's economic pattern is still unclear during Lee Hsien Loong's term in office."
Even this writer is saying that the regime has no idea how to grow the economy.
Right now, all it comes down to is building more and more 'pigeon holes' in the sky and sell it to foreigners at an exorbitant price.
Some are comparing this to a population Ponzi scheme.
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Arnold Chong Raymond Hsu • 3 days ago
Mr Barr said: “They are facing so many new challenges and they are out of ideas. They are still running on ideas Lee Kuan Yew was having 40 years ago and they haven’t updated them".
https://www.ft.com/content/...
