6	Singapore PAP, Reform Party

In a stunning turn of events, the PAP has adopted a policy which has earlier been articulated by the Reform Party. The Reform Party has always advocated an increase in productivity to raise living standards instead of just increasing the size of the economy by increasing factor inputs (in this case increased labour). Below are but two early instances in which the party's stand was pronounced:

"... despite Singapore’s high growth rates between 2003 and 2007 this boom largely passed ordinary Singaporeans by. Instead it was evidenced by the growing numbers of foreign workers (which put pressure on the incomes of lower-skilled Singaporeans and led to falling productivity)"

Kenneth Jeyaretnam, Reform party press release, May 18, 2009

"We all know the present economic model is not achieving prosperity for the majority of ordinary Singaporeans. Since 2008 Singapore has been in recession and GDP has been declining. Our productivity has also been declining for some time and without higher productivity we will not achieve higher living standards.”

Kenneth Jeyaretnam, Reform Party National Day Speech, August 9, 2009

Expect déjà vu right about... now :

'Our own population is growing slowly, and we cannot indefinitely expand our workforce by importing more and more workers from abroad. We have to extract maximum value from the resources that we have; every piece of land must be put to optimum use, activities which are no longer competitive or productive have to be gradually phased out.'

PM Lee, The Straits Times, Jan 26, 2010

'If we can achieve 2 percent growth in productivity, then with the slowdown in growth of the foreign workforce, we think we can grow by 3 per cent to 4 percent a year. So we've got to be prepared for slower growth. This is a trade-off... If you want to grow fast, it means a larger foreign workforce, which I don't think is advisable because already, we have too huge a presence (of such workers) and we're not emphasising productivity"

SM Goh, The Straits Times, Jan 25 2010

Well well. What do we have here? If you are paid that highly, perhaps you ought to come up with your own solutions instead of stealing them off some poor opposition party. Or the Straits Times should actually add that our ministers are not the only one who thought of the same policy; the illusion that one party can have all the ideas remain. However, the press statements by the two ministers did not quite capture fully the Reform Party's stand. Curiously enough, the ministers were able to delicately avoid the fact that a lax immigration policy has actually decreased productivity. According to Kenneth Jeyaretnam, productivity falls as businesses which have access to cheap sources of labour are content to employ more foreign workers instead of making sure existing workers are made more productive; and that is a stand the PAP is unwilling to admit, lest its record of infallibility be sullied.

This issue also raises two important implications; the first is encouraging, the second troubling.

The first implication is that the Reform Party's economic policies are indeed concrete and rational enough for the brains of the PAP to converge on, uncannily, the very same conclusion which Kenneth Jeyaretnam has reached. This marks the beginnings of an opposition party that can no longer be trivialised as worthless. The second implication is that it appears that the PAP is extremely adept at adopting the policies of opposition parties, robbing them of their Raison d'être... if the PAP is indeed able to moderate its own policies with feedback from opposition parties, it will appear as though the opposition's sole reason for living is to serve merely as an advisor for the PAP.

Maybe policies should come with copyright protections next time.