by Rudy Irawan Kadjairi
I had casually asked around about people’s thoughts on who willl be the next Prime Minister (PM), and I can tell you why many Singaporeans couldn’t be stuffed about the matter one bit.
Why would anyone care who would be PM, when they are busy figuring out how to pay last month’s pile of bills?
In all of our short history, not one Prime Minister had bothered that there are those in the population who struggle to make ends meet – the elitists in the country would always only suggest that people need to pull up their socks and dig in to work harder. Despite whatever the denials, the wealth gap is deeply more apparent today than it has ever been.
Many believe that whoever becomes PM will make no difference to the fact that the costs of living and essential services are still going to rise, prices for public housing will still be pushed skywards, water and electricity tariffs will continue to climb, petrol will also still go up as well as almost about everything else.
There are those who wonder how anybody can feel invested into who becomes PM when everyone knows that the real power in choosing one rests famously behind closed doors. So why even pretend as if our opinions even remotely matter? Which part of the history of the People’s Action Party (PAP) suggests that they bother to listen to the people, the bootlickers, the critics and all?
So many have lost absolute interest because the one they know is the best candidate for the position has been ostracised and purposefully ignored even as a choice simply because he wears a darker skin tone. All the following excuses that came with it was just too stomach churning to even listen to.
And the circumstances surrounding this whole sordid episode speaks loudly like an oversized amped up boom box about the PAP, its supporters, and the rest of the willing, ignorant population. And Tharman himself.
All the hypothesis and analysis of how the PAP is at its weakest and most vulnerable for not being able to produce a decent statesman who can lead an entire nation, makes little difference to segments of the population who have been so deeply disaffected, uninspired, muted, conspicuously detached, and intellectually thumbed down by an establishment who feels superior above everyone else, but ironically, cannot produce superior leadership.
With all of these to contend with, is it any wonder why many couldn’t give a rat’s puny little arse who the blardy ruling party chooses to become PM?
Many have even alluded to me – we could even have a monkey at the helm, and no one would bat an eyelid and life would still go on.
That’s how disaffected many are about Singapore politics.