Amid the tragedy of Russia’s aggression against its weaker neighbour and the charade that is Budget 2022, Singaporeans can get some comic relief from the idea put forward by PAP MP Ang Wei Neng, who floated the idea of an expiry date on local university degrees during the recent Parliamentary session. Mr Ang’s grey cells have obviously passed their expiry date long ago as a result of sitting like a store dummy in Parliament for the last eleven years with no other role than to rubber-stamp Emperor Lee Hsien Loong’s decrees.

I say Singaporeans could get some comic relief were it not for the fact that his idea encapsulates an important part of the PAP’s philosophy. It makes sense that those with vocational degrees, such as medicine, dentistry, architecture, engineering and accountancy should have to keep themselves up to speed with advances in knowledge in their professions. In fact, not being au fait with the latest advances could be a serious, even life threatening, matter in medicine. But normally you would expect this to be customer-and employer-driven since if a professional did not keep up to date with the latest advances and fell behind the curve they would not only be likely to lose out on new business but even get sued for negligence.

Conversely, there is an argument that older degrees are of a higher standard than contemporary ones because of a general lowering of standards to broaden access to higher education. When I attended my former Director of Studies in Economics at Queens’ College Cambridge in 2017, he told me that the current standard of the students was much lower than when I was there. Looking at the quality of Chan Chun Sing, who apparently got a First in Economics from Cambridge, I am not surprised.

Mr Ang’s thinking, though patently ludicrous, fits in with the PAP belief that Singaporeans are owed nothing and should get nothing. Thus the constant platitude that Singapore must “remain open” to the world, which is code for telling you that you will be passed over in the job market for “foreign talent” even if that foreign talent has a degree from a much inferior university or even fake qualifications. Furthermore male foreign talent is not burdened with doing NS, like Singaporean serfs, but is eligible to receive a generous scholarship and be fast tracked for PR status and eventual citizenship, meanwhile benefiting from low taxes, world class salaries, high quality accommodation and cheap domestic labour. The Government says their children have to do NS but frequently they escape by registering as foreign students and then return later to enjoy the same privileges without any of the obligations. The favouring of foreigners extends to Parliament where several PAP Ministers and MPs are foreign born and the males have of course not had to worry about doing NS like ordinary Singaporeans.

The same philosophy that everything is on loan from the PAP and can be taken away is evident in the fact that Singaporeans only lease their housing. Any accretion in value through redevelopment accrues to the Government. Though the evaporation of value may be less severe than Mr Ang’s idea for local degrees to have a five year expiry date your lease will still disappear in a puff of smoke at the end of the 99 year lease. Similarly your CPF is not yours since the Government can alter the minimum sum and the age of withdrawal at will and does so regularly, with the justification that you cannot be trusted to manage your own savings. The reserves, which run to trillions of dollars and have been accumulated through borrowing your CPF very cheaply and austerity policies and forced savings which have driven consumption below 40% of GDP, are also not yours and the Government is so contemptuous of Singaporeans that it tells you that the size of the reserves has to remain a secret and they have to be kept for a rainy day. Meanwhile their relatives and spouses earn inflated but undisclosed salaries from managing the reserves and running the state sector companies, starting with the PM’s wife whose compensation package remained a closely guarded secret. The PM even got his Ministers to refuse to answer Parliamentary questions, proposed by me, on the subject and the well-founded conjecture that she was getting at least $100 million a year was met with a POFMA.

You are not even allowed to choose your own representatives since the will of the people expressed through elections can be overturned by the PM’s control of the prosecutorial and judicial arms of the Government. This was done to my father, JBJ, whom a higher court found completely innocent of baseless and fake charges and whom the current PM’s father arrogantly refused to restore to Parliament or pay compensation. LHL continues to seek to overturn democratic elections which is almost certain to succeed given that he enjoys the same degree of control as his father. Similarly the criteria for the Elected Presidency are altered to ensure that the only candidate eligible is one selected by him and that you have no say in the matter.

By adding insecurity about your degree to the long list of things to which you are beholden to the Government for, the PAP no doubt hope to force you to use the notional money (which does not really exist except on paper but will be added to the amount of subsidies PAP claim you are getting) they have added to your SkillsFuture account and to spend many times that amount on worthless upgrading courses either run by Government- or PAP-linked institutions or by their cronies and supporters, just as the supermarket vouchers put more money into the pockets of the PAP through its NTUC FairPrice arm. Making Singaporeans go for unnecessary upgrading and re-skilling courses also keeps the unemployment rate lower than it would otherwise be, as those in full time education do not count as unemployed.

LHL has been in office for 18 years now and shows no sign of stepping down, presumably because he wants to secure the dynastic succession and see his wife enthroned as President. It is high time that you repaid LHL and the PAP’s contempt for you by telling him that his time in office has long passed its expiry date and so has that of his cabal of second-rate but unjustifiably arrogant and smug Ministers, MPs and relatives whose brain cells have long since expired like Ang Wei Neng’s

Published by kjeyaretnam

I'm a Singaporean economist who became an opposition activist. I blog to provide an alternative to the porkies that the Pinkies tell. It just so happens that my alternative is the truth. That's why I've never been sued in any civil or criminal court no matter how hard hitting my criticism. I'm quoted and interviewed and asked to speak across the world but largely censored in Singapore in an effort to silence my political opinions. The left hate me because they think I split their vote and because I eschew their outmoded economic models. Models that don't work. The Right and the Conservatives hate me because I'm a liberal. I'm not sure what the middle think of me. I don't think there are more than a handful of people in the middle, here in Singapore. I'm a Singaporean born and bred, dual heritage, my parents Singaporean established here before the State of Singapore was created. I'm not Eurasian. I read economics at Cambridge and could be broadly described as from the Keynesian school but I believe in interventions. I was formerly a successful hedge fund manager. After economics and politics my greatest interests are history, film and Makan. I run but I run so I can eat like a Singaporean. View all posts by kjeyaretnam