RISING COST OF LIVING IN SINGAPORE, WHO IS TO BLAME?

*TRS Editorial Piece**

Based on the latest statistics from Singstat [Source], Singapore’s consumer price index(CPI) has continued its general upward trend in all aspects today by about 5.5% higher than it was during GE2011 in May 2011. Leading the CPI increases are Transport, Housing, Food and Healthcare, to which the PAP have failed to reign on soaring prices even when the Sing dollar has appreciated.

The increasing cost of living in Singapore has been a key cause of concern for most Singaporeans who are finding it increasingly hard to survive on the backdrop of dropping wages brought upon the PAP’s policy to increase its voters base. Recently, the PAP tried to manage cost increase by introducing a series of cooling measures in Transport and Housing. However, none of the new government policies worked out with property prices still increasing [Source] and COE prices remaining unaffordable to the average Singaporean.

It is apparent that the cost of living in Singapore will continue to increase because of the increase in domestic demand from an increasing population. The influx of new citizens, Permanent Residents and Foreigners are pushing prices higher to the point where Singaporeans are seeing a dip in their quality of life. The middle class and the low income families are the hardest hit, aside from having a free flow of cheap foreign labor to depress their salary growth over the last 5 years [Source], most Singaporeans are putting off saving, retirement planning and family planning due to the relentless rise in cost of living [Source]. Having grown disillusioned with the PAP’s empty promises to keep costs low, Singaporeans are turning to the electoral polls to reflect their unhappiness with the PAP’s incompetency to get anything done. In the recent by-election in Punggol East, the PAP candidate was humiliated with a record low 43.71% result in the PAP’s incumbent ward.

Knowing that the younger generations of Singaporeans are growing increasingly frustrated with the ruling party, the PAP reacted by mass importing over 1 million foreigners over the period from 2003 to to 2013, and invite them to become new citizens. Newly imported citizens are widely known to be very supportive of the PAP government because they are given immunity to National Service conscription and the rights to enjoy all benefits.

Some 18,500 new citizens are sworn in each year [Source], with the majority coming from China because of the PAP’s unspoken ethnic quota to maintain the Chinese population at more than 75% each year. As foreigners are given citizenship hastily, most of them do not integrate with true blue Singaporeans, and they prefer to mix and form social conclaves with their own kind. One such new citizen from China, Li Ye Ming [Link], is widely known to speak only Chinese and maintains a forum that interacts only with the Chinese-speaking [Source]. Showing typical traits of a new citizen, Li Ye Ming is also widely known to criticize Singapore’s Opposition with his latest accusation in the state-controlled mainstream media Zaobao on Workers’ Party’s Low Thia Kiang that the latter was fanning xenophobic sentiments in Parliament. Despite many Singaporeans’ unhappiness with new citizens like Li Ye Ming and their desire to strip the ingrate of his citizenship, they can only complain on independent news sites like The Real Singapore.

However, online press independence will soon be a thing of the past as the PAP government is preparing for GE2016 by starting to introduce a series of censorship against online news sites. Minister of Propaganda(MICA), Yaacob, who was earlier fired for his incompetency as the Environment and Water Resources Minister, have passed a law to regulate news sites with local content. It remains surprising how did Yaacob manage to pass the law without raising a motion in Parliament, and also in a short notice of only less than 5 days. News sites that posts Singapore news will need to pay a $50,000 “performance” bond and shall remove any posting that the Media Development Authority(MDA) is disapproval of.

Ref:therealsingapore