On Saturday, a series of National Day Dinners were held across the island and attended by key members of the PAP. Each had similar things to say about what the government is going to focus on going forward.
DPM Teo spoke to attendees at SengKang, while DPM Tharman addressed the residents of Bukit Batok. Over on the West Coast, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office S Iswaran gave a speech and Dr Vivan Balakrishnan spoke at Senja-Cashew.
They had cited feedback from the Our Singapore Conversation sessions as useful in forming government policies. Over 46 000 Singaporeans had participated in the sessions since the beginning of the sessions last year.
The key areas that were discussed by the different Ministers were Housing, Education, Healthcare and Transport.
DPM Teo had highlighted that healthcare policies aimed at providing peace of mind especially to seniors. He also talked about the Community Health Assist Scheme which allowed middle to lower-income Singaporeans to receive subsidies on certain treatments.
DPM Tharman had also emphasized in his speech that the government is going to help more elderly Singaporeans with their healthcare costs.
Talking about housing, some of the Ministers said that the government was going to keep home ownership affordable; focusing especially on first home buyers.
As part of their efforts to improve Education, DPM Teo had said that more focus would be put on preschool education, as well as post-secondary school options to allow all Singaporeans to grow to their full potential. He also shared that more focus would be put on special needs children.
On the West Coast, S Iswaran said that “Our challenge is to ensure that Singapore remains the best home for our families, with a heart that cares for every one, and hope and opportunities for all. The government will work with all Singaporeans to chart a new path to realise this vision.”
This seems to sum up the general direction that all the Ministers were trying to portray and is in line with PM Lee’s message in his 2012 National Day speech of Hope, Heart and Home.
These promises are all very heartwarming and it’s clear that the government is focusing more effort onto pleasing the citizens with their policies. Perhaps this change is due to their decreasing popularity as evident from the vote count in 2011.
The National Conversation initiative was launched in 2012 and was introduced as a way for the citizens to be heard by the government. Clearly the results in GE2011 were a wake-up call for them to initiate more Singaporean-first polices.
However, despite the minor improvement, many unfavorable policies are still being forced through such as the MDA regulations and the Population White Paper.
If losing 6 seats in GE2011 (7 after Punggol East) caused the PAP to change their policies, having more opposition voices in parliament would only force the PAP to listen even more to Singaporeans.
Even for those who believe that the PAP is doing a good job, it is apparent that having more opposition voices forces the PAP to bring in more pro-Singaporean policies.