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The Singapore government’s political honeymoon is being chipped away as the establishment struggles and stumbles to tame the Covid monster. It is nearly two years since the public has been rattled by restrictions, relaxations and more restrictions.

And the complaints, even from people who used to jump to defend the ruling government, are getting louder by the day. One was very upset with the hospital crunch he experienced when he went to seek treatment in a hospital.

“I was there for five days. I saw hospital beds on the corridor, doctors and nurses scrambling to treat patients… This is a scene I would associate with a Third World country, not a modern nation like Singapore.”

My personal Covid moment happened when I read the news on Sept 22 that hospital ward visits will not be allowed for a month. I follow Covid news reports religiously. Yet, there was nothing that prepared me and, I presume many others, for this shock to the system.

A friend talked about his trauma when his 90-year-old mother, who has a history of strokes, was hospitalised recently. He could not be with her because of the restrictions. He found a way to communicate with her via the laptop he got a nurse to pass to her.

“… she was incoherent and she couldn’t recognise me. She appeared very frail,” he said.

As the new restrictions kicked in on Monday and as light in the tunnel gets dimmer by the day, the time has come for Singaporeans to ask what the country will be like once the virus is tamed.

Instead of getting frustrated and angry over how the government is faltering in its response, our time will be better spent hitting the pause button and focusing on the political changes the country must introduce as the 4G leadership tries to establish its mark on how the country is run.

Our immediate future depends on this group, and it will be a good opportunity to think about how their playbook must change.

Covid has exposed the yo-yo way the leadership tried to achieve a landing with as few mishaps as possible. Which phase of the game plan are we in?

So many terms like Dorscon Orange, circuit breaker, heightened alert and transition phase have been thrown up that just serve to confuse the people. For the PR people, these are words they like to spin out of nowhere. But for the ordinary people struggling to keep their lives decent and sane, they mean nothing.

As I look at the press conferences and Facebook posts of the ministers put in charge of taking us out of the pandemic, I am aghast at how out of touch they are. They allowed the Ministry of Health to declare those with mild symptoms to recover at home.

“These patients must be able to self-isolate in a room, preferably with an attached bathroom,” it said.

Now, somebody missed the ground reality that not all flats have attached bathrooms. In the grand scheme of things, this may not be such a big thing, but it shows how little our civil servants and politicians know about life in Singapore.

Such slip-ups go to the heart of how the PAP chooses its leaders. The emphasis is on those who have solid degrees from the best universities. Then there are the military generals who come to the rescue when the numbers are not enough for a general election. They are all intelligent but are not smart to make decisions during the worst crisis like Covid the country is facing now.

These leaders need to listen intently to what citizens and critics are saying. Listening is one thing, acting is another. If they had done both, the dormitory calamity is unlikely to have happened.

We need leaders who must have a streak of rebelliousness in them. Leaders who are brave enough to move out of their comfort zone and come out with unthinkable solutions for a country that is moving on listlessly.

These people must not be ring-fenced by laws and older leaders. They must be thrown into the lion’s den and told to fight their own battles. Let them fall, get up and fight again.

Some will fall by the wayside, some will survive, and some will just give up. Out of this baptism of fire will emerge a bunch of politicians who should be able to take Singapore to a new future.

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PN Balji is a veteran Singaporean journalist who was formerly chief editor of Today and The New Paper. He is the author of the book Reluctant Editor and is currently a media consultant.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of The Independent Singapore. /TISG