[Your letters]: The hard truths behind Singapore’s glamorous skyscrappers

From: Vhemli

Economically, the late Lee Kuan Yew brought Singapore from a Third World to First. Now, we have the current premier and his ‘paper generals’ undoing the good work of the respected old man.

It’s easy to claim credit that the government is a successful one when there are all sorts of attractions such as casinos, shopping centres, sports hubs and beautiful ‘gardens’. Interestingly enough, the last two are white elephants which have been losing money.

The underlying social problems are a different thing altogether though.

The PAP would rather invest heavily on second-tier foreign ‘talents’ hoping for quick glories rather than nurturing our local kids. They have forsaken our old folks, leaving them to do back-breaking exercises rather than retire in the parks as how our Malaysian counterparts are doing.

Our government would rather pump large amounts of money towards global ventures that have been losing money rather than spending some of that money doing proper maintenance of our transport system.

In the late 80s, we did not have any of the diseases such as dengue despite the massive construction of the MRT line. Now, the lack of foresight could not be more apparent as our leaders did not proactively eradicate mosquito egg-laden puddles at construction sites despite their ever-increasing numbers.

Our next pool of  paper generals ‘YES men’ will be the worse bet; changes to the Presidential Criteria are now bent and changed openly or subtlety only to self-serve and to cling onto the coat tails of power.

We need more opposition for a simple reason – a true healthy democracy must always allow for change of power when things turned awry.