Reform Party National Day Message 2014

Dear Fellow Singaporeans,

Today we celebrate our 49th National Day, one year short of the historic 50th anniversary that will be used by the PAP as a springboard for their 2016 General Election campaign. Over the next year, our Government-controlled media will step up their campaign of propaganda and disinformation on behalf of the PAP. The media will bombard you with images of how well off you are now compared with 1965. They will say that this is due to the genius of the PAP and to Singapore’s so-called “founding father”, Lee Kuan Yew. They will say that you wisely chose prosperity over freedom and accepted authoritarian rule in preference to democracy.

While of course you are better off than in 1965 (as is most of the global population) to say that we would not be where we are today without sacrificing freedom is a completely false rewriting of history. Whatever the PAP would like you to think Singapore was never a mangrove swamp until the genius of the Lee family conjured a global city out of nothing.

The Straits of Malacca has for centuries had an unequalled strategic position at the crossroads of world trade routes. Singapore has always been best-placed to profit from it. Singapore was already one of the richest cities in Asia. When the British left Singapore they already left in place an infrastructure that was well ahead of most of the other cities in the region. They also left behind a significant presence in many of the industries that constitute Temasek today including shipbuilding, ship repair, a port that was already the fourth busiest in the world, aviation services, aircraft repair and financial services associated with trade.

Over the decades since independence we have had rapid economic growth. But while living standards may have risen rapidly in the first few decades, since the mid 1990s most economic growth has been generated by population growth. The PAP may point to our GDP per capita as being one of the highest in the world. But if we look at GDP per hour worked, or productivity, we rank poorly compared with other advanced countries, let alone the global cities we should be compared with such as London, New York and Tokyo. A UBS survey in 2011 put Singaporean workers’ living standards on the same level as those of workers in Kuala Lumpur and behind Seoul, Hong Kong and Taipei. If we look at cities like Hong Kong which grew as fast as Singapore over the same period pursuing free market economic policies from a much lower initial level of income then it is complete rubbish to say that we needed the PAP to build prosperity.

In fact Singaporeans could be forgiven for thinking that we never gained our independence and were still under the yoke of our colonial masters. The PAP took power by trickery with the aid of our former masters, the British, as a result of Operation Cold Store in 1963. They took power through a walkover and since then have tried to ensure they retain power through walkovers. Until 2011 the PAP were used to taking power again at each election on Nomination Day because less than half the seats were contested.

The PAP have relentlessly tilted the electoral playing field in their favour and harassed their opponents until Singapore is more like Russia or Kazakhstan than a real democracy. But we Singaporeans bear much of the blame for what has happened. By voting for the PAP in election after election, by allowing ourselves to be intimidated by the threat of losing amenities like upgrading that are ours by right or by fear of freedom, we have allowed ourselves to become second-class subjects in our own country.

The PAP want you to think that what has been good for them and the Lee family has been good for Singapore. But this has never been the case and is not so today. Without freedom and democracy we do not have innovation and technological progress. Government control of the economy through Temasek and its monopolies has meant the dominance of old industries and old companies, a factor that has been pinpointed in the US as a contributing factor to slowing productivity growth.

What does it mean to say we have become second-class citizens? The PAP’s mantra is that we are a global city and that “Singapore belongs to everyone”. The land, which is 80% owned by the Government, is treated as the primary asset and our people are regarded as disposable, because they can always be replaced by cheaper foreigners.

Reflect on how few rights you have on this the 49th anniversary of independence:

• 90% of you do not own your own homes but hold them on a 99-year leasehold where you can be moved on by the HDB if it sees a profitable development opportunity, a profit that you will not share in.

• You do not control your savings since the PAP Government can alter the terms at will on which you get access to them. Promises have been continually broken and the reasons why the Government needs to retain your money make no sense unless GIC has been mismanaged to the point where it is in deep financial trouble.

• You compete for jobs in your own country with foreign workers on an unequal basis. The Government you elected will continue to increase the population without limit because without a continuously growing population the PAP economic strategy will start to unravel and may end up bringing down the pillars of PAP control, HDB, CPF, Temasek and GIC.

• You cannot risk falling sick because of the danger that this will end up bankrupting you, your family and your relatives before the Government will step in to help

• If you are a man you give up two years of peak earnings, and many years of reservist liability, to make your country safe for wealthy foreigners, PRs and new citizens, some of whom have become PAP MPs without fulfilling their obligations

• You are told that there is no money to help those who fall through the cracks and that taxes will have to go up yet the figures the PAP Government tries to hide from you show that the Government runs a surplus of $30 billion a year and apparently has net assets of $400 billion. Yet without transparency and accountability we will never find out the truth.