Kenneth Jeyaretnam’s blog post on Tuesday (28 Feb), titled “PAP’s Eugenicist Policies Will Turn Singapore into a Ghost Town,” was a scathing criticism of the People’s Action Party (PAP)’s continued push for more immigrants and new citizens in Singapore.
The Reform Party Secretary General argued that the PAP’s claim that Singapore needs more immigrants and new citizens because of the falling Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is flawed. This is in relation to the speech made by Ms Indranee Rajah about the need for immigrants to be welcomed in the face of the declining birthrate of the country.
He wrote, “In the best PAP traditions of ensuring that anything must be due to factors beyond the Government’s control while anything good is the result of the PAP’s superior foresight, she [Indranee Rajah] tried to blame it on last year’s Year of the Tiger.
“However, the trend has been steadily downwards from the 1980s when it was already well below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population,” wrote Mr Jeyaretnam.
Mr Jeyaretnam also criticized the PAP’s lack of family-friendly policies, saying that they have been slow to adopt such policies.
He wrote, “Reform Party has since 2015 advocated paying mothers a taxable child benefit of $300 per child per month to the age of 18, an amount which should probably be increased to at least $400 now. In addition, we have said preschool and university education should be free and all education fees abolished.”
Mr Jeyaretnam argued that the PAP’s argument that such policies would bankrupt Singapore is flawed, given the government’s large surpluses.
He wrote, “This year’s Budget takes baby steps towards providing more help for families with children in the form of enhanced cash payments, they only last till the children are 6 and a half whereas support should be given till the child reaches adulthood. Furthermore the Child Development Account can only be used at approved institutions, such as kindergartens (where the PAP benefits directly through the PAP Community Foundation) and in paying for medical care at hospitals under the MOH Holdings umbrella.”
He wrote, “In the context of the Government’s admitted staggeringly large surpluses of nearly $400 billion since 2005 and total public sector (including Temasek and GIC) surpluses of well over $1 trillion over the same period, with total reserves of about $3 trillion, the Government’s indifference in the face of our plunging birth rate and unwillingness to do more than provide a few crumbs, magnified to appear a generous hand out by their media monopoly, looks absurd.”
Mr Jeyarathame also criticized the PAP’s eugenicist underpinnings, citing the Working Mothers Child Relief Scheme as an example.
He wrote, “Far better to provide a fixed cash benefit for all mothers with children which can be clawed back by making it taxable. The Government’s eugenicist underpinnings are also evident in the Working Mothers Child Relief Scheme.”
Mr Jeyaratham also accused the PAP of ruthlessly extracting a surplus from Singaporeans while lying and deceiving. He argued that PAP’s policies have resulted in a situation where, in the absence of immigration, Singapore would rapidly become a ghost town.
Criticizing the PAP’s claims of safeguarding reserves for future generations, he called it “particularly nonsensical.”
Mr Jeyaratham urged Singaporeans to question who precisely the reserves are being safeguarded for, suggesting that the philosophy of social Darwinism could be a facade and that the reserves may have disappeared.
