[lg policy] If you are so disenchanted, why not leave Singapore?

Wed Dec 16 15:12:46 UTC 2009

If you are so disenchanted, why not leave Singapore?

December 16, 2009 by Our Correspondent

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 its
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 party 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.

http://www.temasekreview.com/2009/12/16/if-you-are-so-disenchanted-why-not-leave-singapore/

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