Govt: The mood at Half-time

Yesterday ST published as their Saturday Special, "The mood at Half-time". It reflected quite well how I feel about the government performance. Of course it will not point out how mistakes with public transport should never have been made. Unlike housing, the problems with the transport system cannot be fixed quickly. People used to throw most of their bricks at Mah Bow Tan but the minister more deserving of brickbats was Raymond Lim. I have blogged about this before, so why am I repeating myself?

Another key takeaway is that people now trust the government much less and strongly believe that they have too much power and must be checked. I think the PAP only have itself to blame. What they inherited from the Old Guard they had failed to upkeep. Don't promise what you cannot deliver.

The missing link is quite simple. It is a government which is obsessed with the big picture but do not care for the people at the individual and family level. The politicians tolerated an admin service and promoted those who are policy wonks rather than those with empathy and sensible policy making for the people's benefit. Now that is changing but I am not sure they will succeed here. You might not called them selfish but they are certainly self seeking. It is not sexy or glorious to care for the hoi polloi. We have only one Dr. Tan Lai Yong but many Woffles Wu. Even George Yeo didn't missed MPS but not Tan Cheng Bock. It is our fate that we have many smart people but not enough who cares. This is not extraordinary, most societies are also like that. The CCP has perhaps the highest political and social ideals but they are rotten to the core stealing billions from the people.

Last Saturday Special was on the Mandarin Makeover. Now they will try to care as much as needed to be successful. We will just have to accept this. There will  never be enough leaders who really care. That's is a hard fact of life LKY wouldn't tell us.