PM Lee - an admission of incompetence?

29th January 2013

Lee Hsien Loong - Prime Minister of Singapore

At the conference on Singapore Perspectives organized by the Institute of Public Policies, Hsien Loong surprised the audience of local and foreign dignitaries by admitting that the govt was not perfect and had caused a lot of problems related to the influx of foreigners and the squeeze on building housing and infrastructure to cope with this high demand. This is the second time after the last GE that he has admitted to flaws in govt policies. This is reported in Channel News Asia, ‘Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has admitted the government did not have 20/20 foresight, resulting in problems with inadequate infrastructure in the country….’

What is Hsien Loong trying to achieve for this admission? For a govt that prides itself as the best in the world and paying itself out of this world salaries, will the people accept such a grotesque mistake when you don’t need a university professor to see the problems coming up? When the govt brought in 2m people in such a short space of time and neglected in ramping up the supporting infrastructure and housing to provide for such a huge number of people, is it a case of mistake, incompetence or something else? It is not unbelieveable. It is amazing!

The most horrifying part is the freeze in building housing when any idiot will know that 2 million people would need that much more roofs over their heads. And this 2m number is nearly a doubling the population of slightly more than 3m, bringing the population to 5m plus. This is not an elephant in the class room. It is a dinosaur and nobody could see it and to provide for it. And we paid millions for the super talents to at least do a decent job. Can we expect them to see the dinosaur? Hey, no rocket science ya?

So what, shall the people excuse and forgive the govt for this oversight? We are not talking about any third world govt that are paid peanuts. We are paying everyone of them, the crème al crème, according to their weight in gold and more.

What do you think?

article from Chua Chin Leng aka redbean