Imagine that you
are leading your men to an imminent battle. And all you can do is to pick on
your men’s weaknesses and coerce them into believing that victory will never be
won.
That doesn’t help
at all in inspiring your men does it?
Instead of encouraging
your men to rise up against the odds, you simply send them to perish fighting
for your battle while you stand aloof to watch.
未战先败。Losing a battle without even fighting it.
A defeatist mindset is the worst trait that one can
find in a leader, especially a political leader. One who unabashedly shies from challenges and
unthinkingly compromises the welfare of his people for easy alternatives.
The result of a
defeatist political leader is catastrophic for a nation like ours. One which is
deeply-seeped in political influence in every aspect of our lives—well beyond
political spectrum. Where “values” of filial piety can be dictated through laws
and “anti-family” behaviour of the unmarried individuals could be rectified
through public housing policy. Even personal matters such as to what languages
to speak and what we should put into our mouth could be decided politically.
Ever ready to surrender on all fronts
“There is no
way in which you are going to be able to protect either Singaporeans or Singapore
because we are a small country.”
How resolute do
you think a leader is in fighting for his people when he already hands out a
death sentence to them? When the death sentence is merely a subjective judgement
of his.
The fact that we are
a small country needs not be interpreted as a disadvantage. It could be an
advantage by itself. Additionally, and more importantly, being a small country should
not be the indicator of resigning ourselves readily to whatever fate the
currents of globalization should bring. Neither should that deprive us the liberty
to prioritize our own values and goals. With certainty, our size is neither a
determinant to the amount of courage for our leaders to take on challenges.
“We
don’t set prices. We are a price-taker, not a price-setter,”
Our political
leaders readily surrender our people to external and internal unfavourable circumstances
in which they claim that both are beyond their control.
Blame it on the
globalization, they said instead. And shirking their responsibilities to our
domestic inflation, hot property prices, soaring healthcare costs or even our
transport woes in the name of globalization.
On our wage costs,
our leaders choose to stick in the third-world mentality of offering cheap
labour as the only means of competitiveness. They place our workers who hail
from a first-world living cost to work at a third-world wage price as the most
convenient way out to enrich their economic pie.
Globalization may be a fact but given the talents of our political leaders and
the purpose of formulating policies, we could do, really, is the decision, with
the necessary determination, to minimize the impacts of globalization. We may
be a small country but we are a sovereign country and therefore entitled to control
the extent of “openness” of our country.
If we have allowed
“globalization” to wrench our power from calibrating how “open” our economy is,
does that not reveal the fact that our near 5 decade-old economy/nation that we
have come to build is an unsustainable one? We have built an economy and a
nation that we have no absolute control over against external economic
influence? Yet, we have absolute maneuver over our internal political
landscape.
The inconvenient reality
is, the sky is the limit for the greed of our leaders who pursue economic growth
at the expense of the masses and who reserve a larger portion of economic pie
for smaller group of people like themselves.
Our
vulnerabilities are not justification of surrendering our people without even a
pretended attempt to fight for them. It should
be the spur for us to explore ways to insulate ourselves from the volatile
world.
But no, let’s surrender. It’s
easier to do so. Said our leaders.
On fertility woes, aging population worries our political leaders to the extent
of instant mass humans import. However, their inert response to the increasing
needs of an aging population in the areas of affordable nursing homes and
healthcare costs just bare their pretentious concern about the aging issue.
Khaw Boon Wan took it a step further by urging Singaporeans to consider living
in nursing homes in neighbouring JB. [Link]
That will save him the hassle of addressing local healthcare issues.
LHL threw in MediShield
Life through increased premiums to buffer us against healthcare costs, which is
just a disguised way of getting us to pay more for our people without forking
out a single cent from the deep pockets of the PAP-led government. [Link]
On transport, our
private train and bus companies privatized profits but socialized the operating
costs and their inefficiency costs. These companies are given the green light to
do so.
“Not only would people have to pay more,
nationalising the operators could result in a stagnation of service quality or
efficiency over time”
- Lui Tuck Yew, Transport
Minister, 2011. [Link]
A simplistic
assumption about nationalization and a few illustrations of failed nationalized
transport systems were cited to maintain status quo for our public transport
system.
Our leaders oversimplify
the failures of others, lacking an apparent courage to tread where others have
failed; lacking the conviction and confidence to create our own path.
Yes, there are
others who have failed due to reasons which we may not have fully grasped. Yet,
our leaders recklessly determine our own fate based on the fates of others. No, our leaders say we can't succeed and
therefore we will resolutely fail.
On the environmental issues, they are equally defeatist and hide themselves
behind climate change. They are averse to challenges and reluctant to address
the changes either brought about by climate changes or by our own swift pace of
urbanization.
"You can't design
for rainfall of this level, it is just too huge. The thing we can accept is
that we can only design our canal of a certain size, and at the end of the day,
we have to live with some of these occurrences which occur once in 50 years
or so".
- Environment and Water Resources
Minister, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim,2006.[Link]
It is not possible... to plan for every event.
Thursday's weather... occurs once in 50 years. If we design for the largest
rainfall or highest tide, then we are going to have huge canals in Singapore.'
-Dr Yaacob Ibrahim, Environment and Water Resources Minister, 2009. [Link]
When VB took over
NEA from his predecessor, he threw money at the installation of CCTV cameras to
monitor flood situations. CCTV cameras do not alleviate flooding. It is another
way of passing on the flood problems back to the people.
“Somethings
are beyond (that); it’s an act of God unless you want to lose half the roads
and have canals.”
-MM Lee Kuan Yew, 2010. [Link]
Spiritual forces were
also roped in to justify the defeatist mindset. An irony considering the fact
that the same person who resigned our floods to God is the same person who clinched
and created every political opportunity, however slight the opportunity might
be, in extinguishing Lim Chin Siong’s political life during the 60s to pave way
for his own mighty dynasty. He persevered to achieve his goal and did not leave
things to the will of God…then.
When haze
descended, NEA and MOH were ill-prepared for crisis management. Our law
minister came into the scene more promptly to defend our leaders’ helplessness than
ensuring our access to N95 masks.
"If it was within our control we will never allow
this to happen. My point to Singaporeans is we will continue to do our best,
please understand the limitations of international relationships and foreign
policy and the fact that every country is sovereign and we have limited control
over what happens in Indonesia.”
- Minister for Foreign Affairs
and Law, K Shanmugam, 2013. [Link]
He was quick to highlight
that they are legally unable to change the situation for the better.
Deliberately leading us to focus on what they cannot do.
We need no law minister to enlighten us on the fact that Indonesia is a
sovereign country. Neither do we need leaders who could only persuade us into
resigning our fate to any of our current unfortunate situations. We are in dire need of real leaders who could
LEAD in crises.
Instead, our
premium leaders could only lead us to surrender to whatever problems that cross
our paths while they remain 100% insulated in their ivory towers.
Selective determination
Being told that we
are a small country with no natural resources and thus to resign ourselves to
being a price-taker.
Unexpectedly, our
size did not deter the political will to build up a strong and expensive
defence. Contrarily, our size intensifies the determination of having a
formidable defence force, leading to the search of possible alliances to expand
our safety net for our little red dot.
On the issue of
our defence, our political leaders refused the fate of a “price-taker”; they
chose the more difficult option, to defend this tiny island with a dwindling
local population.
On other matters,
they choose to give up. Bukit Brown is one. The possibility of engineering an
underground tunnel to preserve our oldest cemetery is shot down quickly, yet they
toy over the daunting idea of an underground city to cater for even more population
growth when our flooding woes have yet receded; they gave up on Singaporeans
and declare anyone foreign as talent; they endorse Singapore’s openness and
subject Singaporeans to unlevel competition with foreigners, yet guarding
meticulously at the doors of our political arena, quick to slam the door at any
alternative political parties that may threaten PAP’s own survival.
It is demonstrated
of their selectiveness as to where to put forth their tenacious fighting spirit.
Fighting spirit is strictly reserved for matters that concern their own
survival.
Shirking responsibilities
The last thing we
will want is to be caught in a tsunami situation with a leader who could only shift
our attention to his broken record of what he CANNOT do instead of what he can
do or at least try to do. Or hoping that in the process of monitoring the situation,
the tsunamis would have a change of heart and target elsewhere. The tsunamis is on the brink of sweeping us
away, should we just abide by our leaders’ sacred words to accept our fate as
there is nothing they could do?
Succumbing to the first sign of
adversity is an act of an opportunist, not a leader. Yet, we are paying
out-of-the-world salaries to these people whose only solution that they can
offer in times of difficulties is their inertness.
We may not be necessarily guaranteed of success in whichever decision we make
for ourselves, however, the least we could do is to give up a battle without
even trying to fight.
We are not living in a perfect world void of problems. There are understandably problems and challenges. We do, however, expect
political leaders who are entrusted with the task of leading our nation and
people, to LEAD. To lead us in search of solutions, to err when necessary in
the pursuit of the right path and to admit and address mistakes before moving on. Place the
well-being of our people first before
nation or themselves.
The nation has to be built for the people and not the other way round. Else, it is just another hotel in disguise.
Let me remind
myself that a third of our current Cabinet ministers hailed from the army. Our
current Cabinet is led by someone from the army too. These people led their men
in the armies; and they are supposedly to
lead our people.
But if Singapore was
to face an imminent threat of tsunamis now, how different do you think our current
batch of leaders would say?
Somethings
are beyond (that); it’s an act of God. It is not possible... to plan
for every event, and at the end of the day, we have to live with some of
these occurrences. We will continue to monitor the situation. Bear with it. Either
you survive the tsunamis or you will perish.
The above was purely
my conjecture.
After all that is
said about them being defeatist, it is the
money-at-all-expense mentality that drives them to be what they are.