A PAP Comic Opera

Workers' Party chief Low Thia Khiang is to be highly congratulated for his chivalrous performance against the arrogant PAP in Parliament. He displayed a seldom seen fiery spirit in portraying the PAP as a government party using high-handed tactics against its political opponents as a bullying politicial culture. He asserted that if the government uses "differentiating measures" to punish those who voted for the opposition, it would breed a culture of divisive politics.

There is no doubt that Mr. Low has hit the nail on the head. The response was a disconcerted scramble by the leading PAP jesters falling over one another to attempt to vindicate an untenable factual situation. It is an irony that PAP MP Indranee Rajah could stoop to quote an old issue which is now academic that Workers' Party (WP) had given out contracts worth millions to its supporters without going through a tender, about which the WP had satisfactorily exonerated itself, in support of her argument against the WP. If this is an unpardonable sin of the WP, then would it not be a greater sin for the PAP to sell off a whole computer system of the Aljunied Town Council to a PAP-owned $3 company for a song? It seems more like an ad hominem attack.

Was Mr. Low making a wild allegation that PAP was pursuing a bullying political culture? The most glaring is the recent case of the unfortunate public-spirited blogger Roy Ngerng coming to grief with the inexorable PM Lee Hsien Loong over his blogpost on the CPF account which PM Lee has claimed to be libellous. Roy Ngerng did not accuse PM Lee of misappropriating CPF funds in so many words but this is for the court to decide. The crux of the article is that the PAP Government takes over our CPF to invest in GIC and Temasek Holdings to earn 6.5% to 16% but returns us only 2.5% to 4% in our CPF but neither PM Lee nor any other PAP leader has found it necessary to give an appropriate answer.

PAP is the government and commands the majority in Parliament. If it pursues a bullying political culture, there is nothing the WP or any other opposition political party can do to rectify the situation. The PAP has suffered a set-back in the last general election in 2011 and it is now determined to retrieve the unfavourable political situation in GE 2016. So PM Lee and his side-kicks suddenly became uber-ebullient overnight in introducing political and social benefits to ameliorate the livelihood and well-being of the electorate, especially the underclass, to pave the way for the PAP to regain their prowess in GE 2016. The so-called Pioneer Generation Package is a typical example. The wheel of history only moves forward and for it to move backwards for the PAP will have the historians flabbergasted. The Singapore electorate are now more discerning and will know how to cast their votes.