The turning point in Singapore really came in 2015. The general election that was held then was widely known as the “last chance” among Singaporeans. However, Singaporeans then did not realise how dire the situation is. For a few, it was clear that in the 1980s, the government had started introducing policies that would make it more difficult to withdraw from their retirement funds, while the government could also earn from the medical payments by Singaporeans. By the late 1990s, the wages of Singaporeans were being depressed, while prices shot up – the cost of living shot up from being ranked 97th in the world in 2001 to 6th most expensive in 2013, in just over 10 years. The purchasing power of Singaporeans was severely undermined.
Meanwhile, Singaporeans were still submitting to the doctrine that they had to continue to “work hard” and be “self-reliant” on themselves, so that they continue to keep buying branded goods to keep up with their lifestyles. Unknown to them, the government had wanted Singaporeans to be “self-reliant” so that the government could then be “reliant” on the citizens for their retirement funds and medical payments for investments, while the people received very little back.
Still, the people continued to ignore what was really happening in Singapore. Still, the people believed that the government would one day have a change of heart and might start helping them. For the few who had been tirelessly advocating for change, they were in dismay – how else could we allow Singaporeans to understand that the government of the day had taken advantage of Singaporeans for 30 years now, and wouldn’t be likely to have a sudden epiphany that helping Singaporeans is the right thing to do.
And thus when the general election came in 2015, Singaporeans again voted for the ruling party. Unbeknownst to them, right after the general election in 2015, the ruling government announced a whole slew of policies which would marginalise the people, which would end up in droves of Singaporeans leaving thereafter, and where the poor would become a servant class of the elite rulers.
Singaporeans had a chance, but they were scared. They were ruled by fear and they continued to allow themselves to be scared of things – what if the country would fail? What if things would break down? In their hanging on to their fears, they don’t realise that things are already breaking down – the trains, the hospitals without enough beds, the long waiting hours at the hospitals. In their fears, they forgot that the country is already failing – that many of them have lost their jobs, that their wages wouldn’t grow, they they couldn’t earn enough to survive, that they wouldn’t be able to retire because they couldn’t take out their retirement funds. In their fears, Singaporeans chose to ignore and continued to pretend that their lives were OK.
In their want to hang on to their dear belief that Singapore is a First World country, they keep hanging on to this belief, not realising that Singapore was already slipping into a Third World country – that their lives was becoming a Third World one. Full story
