Mdm Halimah Yacob unveiled her campaign slogan at the NTUC Centre on Tuesday (29 August) and introduced the members of her campaign team.
The former Speaker of Parliament and People’s Action Party Member of Parliament announced that her campaign slogan is “Do Good, Do Together”.
She said, “It allows us together as one people to come together and do what is good for the community and the country – I think that is the most important part of it,” and added, “We ‘do good, do together’ regardless of race, language or religion, and we come together to make Singapore a home we can all be proud of.”
Is this slogan arguably, grammatically correct?
Can those who teach English give us their views on this?
As to “calling on all Singaporeans to join her in building a community of excellence that is inclusive and progressive” – arguably, how can we be said to be “inclusive and progressive” when
- we discriminate against unmarried single mothers below age 35, by denying their eligibility to apply for a HDB BTO flat
- and in so doing – arguably discriminating against their children too
- we give higher income mothers as much as $80,000 a year in procreation tax benefits, when lower-income mothers may get very little
- our gini (inequality) is the second highest in the world
- the “$500 million shareholders equity of a company” requirement for private sector presidential candidates is estimated to be such that about 99 per cent of the populace may not be eligible to stand for election
- in the two years from 2015 to 2016 – it is estimated that almost none of the 11,400 jobs growth (37,300 foreigners’ jobs growth) to locals – actually went to Singapore born true-blue Singaporeans (61,005 new PRs and 42,917 new citizens granted in the same two-year period)
- from a cashflow perspective – the Government may still not be spending a single cent on CPF, HDB and healthcare (total annual Medisave contributions plus the annual interest on total Medisave accounts’ balances may exceed total annual government spending on healthcare and withdrawals for medical expenses and insurance premiums)
- Singapore is 4th in the Crony-capitalism Index 2017 (The Economist)
- we have the highest paid Ministers, Members of Parliament and top civil servants in the world – and therefore, arguably, the biggest gap between the Government’s salaries relative to ordinary workers, in the world
The above are evidentially – elitism and a society that is arguably, not “inclusive and progressive”.
