PM Lee missed opportunities in NDR speech

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

The most notable aspect of the 2015 National Day Rally (NDR) was the sentimentality expressed for the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew. The NDR also came across as a campaign speech by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. That much was very clear. PM Lee said that he would be calling a general election soon.

Lauding his Government’s achievements, he asked Singaporeans to give him and his team a strong mandate. Specifically, PM Lee talked up the credentials of some of his Cabinet Ministers, most notably Dr Vivian Balakrishnan (Minister for Environment and Water Resources) and Mr Lim Swee Say (Minister for Manpower). He pointedly said, “Please support me. Please support my team.”

The late Mr Lee was mentioned throughout the NDR. And, from that, it seemed that the People’s Action Party (PAP) will go into the upcoming general election campaigning on the legacy of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister. The question is how will this go down with the voters? The ruling party will have to strike a right balance of invoking the late Mr Lee without being seen as going over-the-top in campaigning purely on his legacy.

Singaporeans’ gratitude to LKY for being instrumental in building up the Singapore of today might not necessarily translate into votes for the PAP. This is something that the PAP will have to be careful in not miscalculating. Here, it is sufficient to say that Singaporeans tend to be heavily pragmatic, and they are not usually given to easy sentimentality.

On specific giveaways in this year’s NDR, remarkably they seemed similar to things that had come into focus in past NDRs. These related to home ownership and housing affordability, to family-centric schemes intended to encourage young couples to have babies. These were good policy announcements that targeted specific groups of Singaporeans but many people might have been left wondering about the absence of broad-based pre-election sweeteners.

That said, an effective pre-election NDR speech need not have included major giveaways if they addressed current voter concerns.

In that regard, it could be argued that PM Lee missed an opportunity to squarely take on one of the key issues troubling very many Singaporeans — the continued huge influx of foreign talent (FT). PM Lee spoke merely in general terms about the tightening of the inflow of foreigners so as to achieve a balance to keep the economy humming along, and that Singaporeans would be treated fairly at their work place. These might be nice-sounding statements, but many Singaporeans might wonder how practical they are.

Singaporeans have already been told several times before that the foreigner inflow has slowed down but there has been general scepticism that the policy regarding FTs has changed to any significant degree.

And over the past year the main concern regarding the FT issue has actually focused on reports of foreign nationals who have landed high-paying jobs on the basis of dubious credentials. All that PM Lee needed to do was to give an iron-clad assurance that the Ministry of Manpower would be redoubling its efforts to screen the qualifications of all those who sought to work in Singapore.

The FT issue is a major political hot potato because not merely are there questions about the quality of the migrant inflow but that some FTs with dubious qualifications might have secured employment in Singapore by displacing native Singaporeans.

By not addressing this key concern of Singaporeans, PM Lee might have given the impression that the Government was in denial that this issue exists and that it has serious political ramifications.

To be clear, the issue over the FT influx was not as apparent at the last General Election in 2011. It took on significant proportions with the adoption of the 2013 Population White Paper by the Government and its commitment to bilateral and regional free trade agreements which will inevitably mean greater access to the Singapore jobs market by nationals from a number of countries.

Another concern of Singaporeans has been the rising cost of living. Again, PM Lee did not address this issue.

Instead, the NDR painted a rosy picture of Singapore. It looked back to a pioneer generation who helped build the country, and it promised a bright future for Singaporeans if the right team — the Prime Minister’s team — was chosen.

The Workers’ Party parliamentarians who decided to absent themselves from the NDR would feel that they called that one right.

In an NDR that seemed to be more about form than substance, PM Lee invoked the title of one of Singapore’s national songs, “One People, One Nation, One Singapore.” Ironically, the Prime Minister might not have realised it but he is currently presiding over a country that is divided politically. It remains to be seen whether that division becomes less obvious or more pronounced at the upcoming general election that he has promised to call soon.

http://six-six.com/article/overlooking-voters-concerns


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