PAP: Ignore Catherine Lim at your peril

As I was awake very early that morning, I must be among the first to have read Catherine Lim open letter to the PM. I told nobody except wifey about it because I was completely confident it would go viral. What I wasn't sure of was if ST and the other local papers will print it. Given once bitten, twice shy from her early 90s article on the unforgettable great affective divide, I think patience is the better part of valor. I had no idea how this will play out until SCMP wrote it up for the Hong Kong and foreign audience. Now ST has taken the baton and ran with it two days ago.

and today Catherine Lim rebuttal got printed (I had missed it until someone on Facebook said to go look) in the Forum.

Catherine chose PAP MPs speeches in parliament urging the rebuilding of trust as evidence of her thesis. My preferred example is the CPF. Money is the best object for testing trust. Clearly lots of people do not trust the government over their money locked in the CPF. I don't believe this government will steal it but there are other ways of legally taking more than your fair share especially when you have legislative powers. It is about government running the place by transferring as much risk as possible to us so that they are likely to come out successful. In lay terms, it is heads you win, tails I lose. WP Gerald Giam is very familiar with this PAP strategy. Sorry, but you can only have your cake and eat it for so long. Remember what Abe Lincoln said about fooling people? You got it.

Sure trust in government could be north of 75% if you are thinking about renewing your passports, fighting Aedes mozzies, keeping estates clean, water and electricity service availability, ambulance services, too many to enumerate. But remember regarding the promises of leaders, the trust is a convincing F grade. I had blogged about that using the same data source our CG in HK used to rebut Catherine Lim.

Don't play this idiotic game with us because you will lose since too many voters do not know that they are crazy when they get worked up and emotional. It's simple. The PAP is more afraid of getting voted out than we are because they know the consequences much better and too many voters don't. In the past they use the tactic of fright and it worked but if they try that expired tactic again, they are likely to face voters' anger instead. It is the basic law of life that what used to work must eventually stop working.

Half this government term has come and gone and they have not learned. Catherine Lim was a patriot and they returned her favor with utter insult.