This year election in Singapore has been one of the most anticipated elections in many many years. There has been a higher caliber of candidates from the various opposition parties and coupled with the introduction of a new PAP team which has been perceived as more of an elite group and not able to appreciate the ground sentiment.
In addition, the ground sentiment is that the government in the past few years has not paid heed to the various grievances such as cost of housing, public transportation, in flux of foreign workers and inflation in Singapore
This has made this election much more of a closer call and I would dare say it could be the benchmark of the upcoming few elections as the Generation Y voters will play a more significant role in the votes casting.
This is the first election in which social media such as facebook, Twitter and YouTube plays more of a significant role and it allows more people to view the speeches provided by the various candidates. I have been very impressed by the eloquences and energy of some of the new opposition candidates.
The opposition parties also brought up a lot of ideas. The below are some of the proposals and areas which I am impressed and the government should consider looking into it.
1. Pegging minister/members of parliament pay against a multiplier of the median pay in Singapore rather than GDP. GDP is an overall number and is not reflective of the ground situation. A Median pay will be more representative of the ground sentiments and will drive the MPs to look into ways to improve the overall pay of Singaporeans. I do not fully subscribe to PAP idea of paying top dollars for MPs. We must reward the MPs for their sacrifice to be in parliament but if they are going into parliament for the pay then it defeats the core principle of an MP. An MP is a representative of the people on the ground and should serve the people.
the current perception is that the people are tax to give high pay to the MPs.
2. Public Transportation, the proposal to de-privatize the public buses and MRT. Though the concept of privatizing these crucial infrastructure is to lead to more competition and lower prices. However the opposite took place as transport keep on increasing prices as they are run as private business and are accountable to their shareholders. These key infrastructures should be run more as a public service. When average Singaporeans are finding transport cost is increasing and when you hear SMRT profits is running in the hundred of million, it is quite mind boggling.
3. Using other means of measuring Singapore Growth, GDP is only one aspect but it may not be the best and the opposition had proposed a couple of other means which may be more reflective of the society.
In my opinion, the government in the last few years has project an image of arrogance as they do not seem to take the ground sentiment seriously. It also seems to be less caring as they are always looking at GDP numbers and other hard numbers which are not reflective on the ground.
In spite of that, the government in general has managed to keep the country growing and our strength of our dollar is very strong. At least in my case, the candidate had delivered what he promised in the last election.
Also some of the proposals raised by the opposition is also not realistic such as the idea of free education and health care, who will bear this burden. Now we will be able to do it as our budget is plentiful but in the long run how will it be possible to sustain. The idea of moving our of manufacturing and fully focus on service is not viable. Manufacturing is one of the core of the economy and hires a large amount of people. Getting rid of it will cause a lot of lose of jobs. Manufacturing is an area which is less volatile to cyclic downturns unlike service industry.
Now the key issue for all Singaporeans is whether would you want to vote for a change in the system and it is a step into the unknown or you would rather keep to the present situation and hope the government understand that we are not always looking at hard facts but want them to engage us and appreciate what the ground is feeling.
We only hope that we will not end up in a situation where we will spend all our time debating issues without any actions while the world overtakes us.
We will know on the 7th of May 2011, how things will develop.
No comments:
Post a Comment