Veteran opposition politician and People’s Power Party chief Goh Meng Seng has lashed out at Singaporeans regarding their supposed political apathy and blind faith in the PAP government.
Writing on Facebook, Goh slammed Singaporeans for not putting enough effort to analyse policies, and blindly believe that PAP-implemented policies are better than those proposed by the opposition.
Goh questioned whether it was opposition politicians like himself spending time and money to conduct forums and organise protests if Singaporeans simply don’t care.
Goh Meng Seng first joined politics as a Workers’ Party member, contesting in the 2006 General Election.
He went on to lead the National Solidarity into the 2011 election, and recently fought and lost in Chua Chu Kang for the PPP in GE2015.
“I was actually thinking of conducting a forum on FAIR TRADE ABOVE FREE TRADE when I return Singapore in due time. This is to debate, deliberate and raise awareness on the pros and cons, cost and benefits of TPPA to Singaporeans. This will put focus of TPPA on the agenda of public political discourse.
However my various chats with fellow Singaporeans in Hong Kong actually made me have second thoughts. The other little part of observations made on Singaporeans is that those who are from the 10 or 20 percentiles or below do not really care about whatever policy issues raised by opposition. They are only interested in the amount of handouts they can get from the PAP Government.
As for middle ground, they are too busy working, earning their money and enjoying their life like going for Holidays to be bothered by such policy issues. Even if you could raise intelligent, intellectually reasonable points about any policy issues, they will throw you all sorts of irrelevant questions and regard themselves to know better even though they may be ignorant about the policy and issues revolving around the policy. Most could not even understand simple implications of data analysis or even simple ideas like Separation of Powers, least complexity of economic issues like international trade and FTAs.
At the end of the day, due to their lack of understanding of the issues at hand, they will come to the convenient conclusion that PAP must know better than people from opposition!
That is the main reasons why most Singaporeans still voted PAP despite all those grumbling against them. They have no love nor passion of PAP, didn’t even bother to attend and listen to their rallies but will just vote for them out of trust of convenience.
They have been told and made to believe PAP knows everything, has all the talents and trust that they will bring them good life, never mind if PAP irritated them from time to time.
Most importantly they don’t see the need for them or anyone to really scrutinize PAP’s policies unless they are being hurt. They won’t be bothered with complex policy issues and put more doubts on opposition views than really give a critical thought over the existing policies.
What do you think? Should I continue to raise policy issues and spend time, money and resources to conduct such forums or organize protests over these issues when most Singaporeans don’t really bother about these unless or until these policies started to hurt them?”
Anonymous
October 16, 2015 at 12:42 pm
dont waste your time and money.you had already stated the fact .sporean not worth fighting for.retire early .
Tubby
October 18, 2015 at 11:59 am
You mentioned singaporeans simply does not care about what the opposition says….so are you trying to say you spend the past 3 elections doing the audit for us singaporean by first in the WP in 2006, NSP in 2011 and PPP in 2015? Been hard on you.