It seems that silencing legitimate debate is indeed the modus operandi of the PAP. Hri Kumar proves the point I made at the rally yesterday! Here is my speech if you are interested to read it: The CPF has come to symbolize our government’s relationship to us; and it is not a healthy relationship because it was formed in fear and thrives in silence. There is a famous story about Mao Zedong. He once visited a factory and was presented with some Hunan mangoes, his favourite. In thanks, he gave back one of the mangoes to the little girl who had presented them. The factory manager had it encased in resin and each morning the workers had to assemble before it and bow. Eventually it started rotting so the manager boiled it in water and instructed the workers to take a sip of this holy, rotten, mango water. Needless to say, the factory lost hundreds of person hours. Our public finances are like that Hunan mango. They have poisoned the public debate so anyone who raises an intelligent discussion becomes, not a threat to the policy, but a threat to the status quo. Over these 55 years, the government brought all public institutions under their supervision. By one method or another, from the control of promotions to the promise of bonuses, from the availability of citizen resources to the registration of societies, from detention to torture, your citizenship depends on your willingness to share the government’s worldview, even if only by your silence. And against those who have not, who have been brave enough to challenge it, the government has used every means - all of them legal - to extinguish. Recall Mr Jeyaretnam and Mr Tang Liang Hong. Ask the Operation Spectrum detainees and the survivors of Operation Coldstore and Operation Pechah. Ask those detained in the so-called Euro-communism affair. Ask Tan Wah Piow. Ask Dr Chee and the leadership of the SDP. Ask Leslie Chew. Ask Lynn Lee. Ask Han Hui Hui. Ask Alex Au. And you can ask me too because I also had some love letters from Tan Chuan Jin. So, my friends, we are not met today to discuss the CPF but to undermine the notion that good governance, stability, requires the state to bully its citizens, to sue, to imprison, to torture. This event is about Singapore’s right to good governance and the information on which it must rest. You may disagree with Roy’s findings or his way or putting the information across, but there is no one on our island today who is not, at the very least, unsettled by the management of our public finances. And the government is unsettled too because the CPF is at the heart of its entire policy framework. The government’s assertion that the CPF is our money and the best public welfare policy is simply untrue and ministers know it. If after 55 years of uninterrupted government, we still have fellow citizens selling tissue and cardboard and cleaning toilets in their extreme old age, if we have elderly people committing suicide because they cannot afford healthcare, if we must have a Maintenance of Parents Act so the elderly can sue their children to take care of them, then we do not have a good system. Try as they might, the Cabinet cannot run away from this fact. Unless they reveal the entire structure of their policy; which they refuse to do. At its origin 60 years ago, CPF was a straightforward pension scheme. But slowly, after the PAP came to control Parliament when the Barisan walked out, it became an operating policy, to remedy failures in other areas. In 1968, funds were released for housing because people were not buying HDB flats. Then they were released for education to placate parents whose children suffered from restrictive university admission. Then came Medisave which allowed the government to avoid providing affordable healthcare. Then privatised share purchases when the PAP wanted to sell off our public assets. And in a roundabout way, the CPF guarantees ministers their exorbitant GDP-linked bonuses. And also locks people into waged labour because of the near total absence of social security. The manipulation of the CPF system has fixed the PAP in power and reduced citizens to economic digits. It has enabled the PAP to safeguard its longevity and keep us, the voters, in a constant state of subjection. This is the reason for Lee Hsien Loong’s sensitivity to criticism, because even a cursory glance at it suddenly shows the PAP to have benefitted from it far more than we have. When ministers defend the CPF, they defend themselves, not us. Ultimately, the CPF has come to denote the relationship of the PAP to Singapore. Not to the people of Singapore, but to Singapore Incorporated, the tremendous money-making machine we citizens service at the expense of our elderly, our sick, our children, our disabled. Our dignity. Ultimately, Roy Ngerng is not the slanderer of his neighbour’s injured reputation. That someone, who has been an MP for 30 years and Prime Minister for a decade of a party in power for 55 years, should be so aggrieved by a single internet article, says more for the policy than the man defending it or the man undermining it. Roy Ngerng is the casualty of a regime that depends for its endurance on silence. He asks questions that, if answered, would unravel the lie at the heart of the claim that the PAP cares for us citizens. Its claim to be the best leaders we could ever have. Because leaders stand on their policy outcomes, not in the libel courts. Roy Ngerng has told the emperor he has no clothes. And the emperor or, in Singapore’s case, the crown prince since the emperor is still alive, although he is retired, has begun to panic. It is panic we have seen from the PAP these three weeks. Cry if you must that Roy’s data wasn’t complete or his words intemperate. But we, citizens, if we are to be citizens, cannot pretend that the crown prince isn’t naked. That Roy has gathered such stunning support - I think I am correct in saying that $90,000 is one of the largest amounts ever given to an opponent of the PAP - is not an indication of his popularity or the quality of his data. It is simply that we are tired of being bullied. We are a people beginning to see the mirage that is the PAP’s claim to good governance. And the closer you come to that imagined oasis, the clearer it becomes an illusion. Let’s not allow this moment dissipate. Let’s not allow it to become a footnote in the legal textbooks. Let’s not allow the PM to silence those who speak for us, the ordinary citizens. These causes that make the PM and his friends so nervous need resources to continue their valuable work. The police have told Roy that he cannot put out donation boxes today. But as I understand it, a private appeal for donations among friends is not against the law. And since you are all my friends, I am making a private appeal, although I use a microphone to do it because I have so many friends. Give to Empowering Singaporeans and to the many causes that are working to improve our country. As much as you can: your money, your time, your commitment. But most of all, your citizenship. Do not let the state define your citizenship any more. We will define it ourselves.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Jun 2014 10:02:13 +0000
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