A New Era?

In the General Election (GE) in May, the PAP got 60% of the total votes which was its lowest share of votes in some decades. Not only that, they lost a GRC (Group Representation Constituency) to an opposition party for the first time. It was tidal wave result as the GRC was designed to safeguard seats for the ruling party.

Worse was to come on August 27th, when the PAP backed candidate, Tony Tan, managed to scrap only 35.2% of the total votes to pull off a win in the Presidential Election. With these results on his mind, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong publicly pledged a “new PAP for a new era” in his speech during the PAP party convention. He promised that the PAP will adept to the new political environment and be more interactive with the Singapore population.

Most Singaporeans I know treat his promise with a yawn.

The problem is that these promises had been made before. Countless PAP ministers and members of parliament had promised to listen more to the ground even before the GE in May. These include issues that affect Singaporeans like high housing prices and the presence of foreigners in Singapore.

However housing prices are still high and the amount of foreigners in Singapore is still vast. To many Singaporeans, like me, the PAP has been saying the right things without doing anything. Take the housing prices for example. For months, a string of “experts” from the government has come out to insist the housing prices will come down next year but thus far, there has been no data supporting this assessment. All Singaporeans seen so far is a series of half-hearted "cooling measures" that had cooled nothing. Housing prices has NOT come down and Singaporeans are basically tired of hearing the PAP trying to talk down the market without nothing anything.

No one want to just hear the right things from the PAP, they are now waiting for the right actions. As they say; talk is cheap! The PAP need to come out with new policies to convince Singaporean they are serious about listening to the people.