The Government must review its budget policies to help Singaporeans while continuing to save for future generations, declared Non-constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Leong Mun Wai in parliament on Wednesday (7 Feb). Letting the motion sink in, Mr Leong looked smug. It was as if he had just broken the fourth wall in his theatre of the absurd. In his head, he is the only person with the guts to speak up. Everyone else in the room? Just a herd of sheep that bleeps away.
And so Mr Leong rambled away, sanctimoniously in fact. “There is a cost to accumulating reserves,” he said while members in the chamber looked on. It is a farcical statement. Unfortunately, part of being in a parliamentary democracy is that one has to let the other side speak their mind, no matter how preposterous the ideas are. But patience does run thin, and there is little doubt the question on everybody’s mind. What exactly is this man going on about?
More precisely, what are Mr Leong and the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) achieving by stating the obvious? Any responsible government will be consistently tweaking its policies to help its citizens, which is something the PAP has done so for over fifty years. As for reviewing the budget, isn’t that what Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Lawrence Wong intends to do for the Budget next week? And finally, on saving for future generations, Mr Leong might as well state that the Earth is round. At the very least, the latter would provoke the contestation of flat earthers and open up the motion to a flow of ideas and debate.
But no. There would be no such intellectual rigour to look forward to. Instead, what we have is a generic, motherhood statement that reminds us of a Q&A segment in beauty pageants. It is also one that reflects the utter lack of imagination characterising the PSP. Since entering parliament, PSP politicians have inundated Singaporeans with plenty of incendiary suggestions and ludicrous proposals. Short of suggesting a committee to engage with extra-terrestrial lifeforms, they have set their sights on the reserves this time around.
“On the other hand, the AHS (Affordable Homes Scheme) will ensure that every Singaporean of each generation will be able to afford an HDB flat because he pays only the construction cost and not the land cost. The land cost is waived because public housing is considered a public good. This is the most equitable way of distributing the benefits of our land to Singaporeans.” – Leong Mun Wai, 2 Mar 2023.
Imagine how much better your quality of life could be if the government would just open up the coffers. That seems to be what the PSP is suggesting. Yet this recklessness and seemingly lack of foresight in policymaking is what makes Mr Leong and his cronies such a danger to this nation.
Reserves are sacrosanct for a reason.
Ever wonder what happens to countries that spend (and spend)? They go broke. And the reason why we don’t hear much about them is because they have become too poor to be relevant. With Singapore being an island-state, one can be assured that nobody would pay us any attention if we were small (and poor).
Of course, that is just one of the reasons why we guard our reserves judiciously with passion. Countries accumulate reserves to guard against emergencies. While the opposition would (more often than not) pour scorn on the concept of saving for a rainy day, the COVID-19 pandemic shows just how important reserves are on matters of life and death. Singapore has taken a hit, but it has also recovered well. That was mainly possible due to the resilience of its people and the billions of dollars the PAP Government had pumped into the economy to keep it afloat. What is most extraordinary about all this is – we did it without burdening the next generation with unimaginable debt.
“Again, in Covid our reserves were a tremendous advantage, it gave us confidence, it gave others confidence in us. We had the financial muscle to do everything we needed to do without getting heavily into debt unlike so many other countries … so we spent $40 billion in the end, is $40 billion enough ? Covid will not be our last pandemic nor our most serious one, and it is far from being the worst thing that can happen to Singapore. If we find ourselves at war like Ukraine, how much is enough?” – PM Lee Hsien Loong, 7 Feb 2024.
In the end, we must remember that our reserves are sacrosanct for a reason. It exists as a kind of life insurance for the nation rather than a credit facility. To do what Mr Leong suggested would be akin to treating our reserves as a Buy Now, Pay Later scheme. It would be foolish, irresponsible, and demented even to raid the reserves in the way Mr Leong proposed. Now, did he think that Singapore was sitting upon a self-replenishing vault of gold hidden under Bukit Timah Hill?
Common sense has always eluded the PSP, but their latest motion has shown just how foolhardy they are. And if given full reign, it will not take long before they run this country, which our forefathers have built with blood and sweat, to the ground. Fellow Singaporeans, do not let Mr Leong raid your reserves to score political points.