By Aaron Loy
Dear Prime Minister and the PAP,
Here’s the happy truth – Nobody wants to waste their time, effort and emotional energy hounding and criticising everything you do.
As with everything in life, if you’re doing a good job, chances are nobody will notice because you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing anyway.
The question is.. why is there so much frustration and ‘bad vibes’ flowing in your direction? It’s because you’re asking for it. Think about it.. Who in god’s name would want to waste their time focusing on you and criticising your every move?
True. There are some who were born to be unhappy and be critical about everything. There will always be trolls. There will always be haters. Here’s another truth however: those are a minority and for the rest of us, we just want to get on with our lives.
Problem is we can’t; Your decisions effect our lives.
Not only that; As a Singaporean, it’s embarrassing to see our government, who is made up of ministers who fancy themselves as good as, if not better, than top level private sector management (and pay themselves accordingly) behave like childish cry babies, incapable of taking criticisms, always pushing the blame onto others.
What I find amusing is that you guys seem to have very poor people skills considering you’re some of the highest paid ministers in the world. Don’t you realise that people becoming increasingly unreasonable and critical of the PAP is just a symptom of the frustration being caused by you?
Another thing you guys probably don’t realise; The fact that mainstream media is controlled no secret of course, but your use of it to try and steer public opinion, sometimes in a blatant face-palm worthy fashion, is actually undermining your own credibility. OMG right? So it’s not really ‘unbalanced criticisms‘ that are undermining trust in public institutions but often the institutions who are undermining the public’s trust in themselves. It’s amazing how scholars have not thought of that possibility.
In the past, there was no need for an opposition. They had little contribute to society. Their criticisms often fell flat and gave them a childish vibe. The funny thing is the current political climate is actually the result of your own undoing. All the trolls, haters, whiners, moronic websites like ‘The Real Singapore’ and the increasing number of opposition parties with flourishing support are symptoms of your growing… ‘incapability’.
Yes, PAP, strange but true. You need to stop treating yourselves and your institutions as the cute, innocent and infallible babies that can do no wrong.
Your confidence in yourself is in a way inspiring, and kinda cute, in a naive kinda way, but then again, it takes true confidence and intelligence to be able to realise when one has made a mistake and own up to it (instead of, like, you know, blaming the internet).
So, please, for goodness sake, get over yourselves. Stop taking things personally and whining like babies, grow some common sense, stop chasing numbers for the sake of it, learn to correlate numbers with actual results (vs perceived results) do a good job and there will be absolutely no reason for us to waste our time on you. We can all go back to being the guai productive workers you want us to be and the MDA can stop awkwardly flapping around like a fish out of water.
Win-Win.
In the mean time, do consider attending some courses from the WDA with a focus on subjects like ‘Handling Criticisms’ and ‘Dealing with Rejection’. You created it, we’re paying for it, many have benefited from it, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t benefit from some lifelong learning as well.
Thank you for your time.
”When an archer misses the mark, he turns and looks for the fault within himself. Failure to hit the bull’s-eye is never the fault of the target. To improve your aim, improve yourself.” -Gilbert Arland
This letter was first published in Aaron’s blog.
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*Disclaimer – This letter does not represent the stance of TOC or of any editoral position.
