July 10 , 2008

This morning, when I was queuing up to buy coffee, I noticed the ST papers at the coffee shop shelf. Front page, there is a familiar face, Dr Chee’s adversary. Beside the picture, written Singapore to go the Swedish Way. And the same front page, Tharman warned about pay rises to workers no cure for inflation.

Very interesting topic. Let me talk about Swedish Way. We have heard so many about swiss standard of living many years back with the theme “more good years”. Our way of life, policy, social integration, infrastructure more or less copy from that of 1st world country. It is good that we have progress but one thing our leaders can’t make up their mind is the population policy. Many years back, the government said stop at two. Then it said three if you can afford. Now with the dwindling population, our leaders want to boost the birth rate, it then borrow the swedish ideas of taking care of children, meaning free child care and so on. Our population problem existed since 1980s, many schemes and incentives had been implemented but the numbers just don’t seem to increase. As a result, the government has to import from foreign country to boost up the numbers. So it goes to say we must have minimum 65% locally born to maintain Singaporeaness. Foreigners just can’t integrate into our society. But I say, will it be too late to implement the so called Swedish Way of child care, meaning everything is free for the child, this will become a nanny state, why the leaders do not think of this idea way back say 10 or 20 years ago. Is it because at that time, their ministerial salary is too low, and they can’t think of any ideas or they just follow the tune, ” no free lunch”.

Back to the issue of pay rise to tackle inflation. I find no logic at all not to increase the workers pay to help them tackle the high cost of living. We face the worse inflation in 26 years, and we know many residents can’t cope any more. Some have to work two jobs to supplement their income. The poor can get $290 grant per month, but for others, the GST rebate is just simply won’t help at all. GST increase according to PM Lee is to help the poor but in fact the increase help the government to gain extra revenue and sulplus. We really don’t know how much is channelled to the poor. To the lower middle income earners, they don’t qualify for any thing. That is why the Tak Boleh Tahan campaign comes in. That is what Dr Chee is doing now to highlight the income disparity and high cost of living. The famous 18 will go to court on July 11, Friday to answer charges of illegal assembly about TBT campaign. If election were to be held now, I can bet my last dollar that 10 to 15 opposition MPs will emerge, though it won’t be like political tsunami in our neighbouring country.