Voters of Punggol East, supporters and friends, good evening! Your support for the Workers’ Party is deeply appreciated. Thank you.
We have said this many times before that if you vote for the Workers’ Party, you will end up with 2 MPs serving you – an elected Workers’ Party MP and an appointed Grassroots Advisor who acts like an MP.
I read in the papers that Dr Koh Poh Koon, the PAP candidate, doesn’t think so. He said “It’s a fallacy to believe that you can have the best of both worlds – choose a person to make a statement, but hope that the other person who is voted out is going to have all the resources, all the authority to get the work done for you.”
Well, I got bad news for Dr Koh. This is not a fallacy. This is a fact. You will have 2 MPs serving you when you vote for the Workers’ Party because this has been the case in Hougang for the past 22 years!
The PAP has designed a system that will make its candidates look good no matter what the outcome of the election is. If they win, they become MPs and Grassroots Advisers. If they lose, they just become Grassroots Advisers.
If you go around Hougang today, you may think that the 2012 Hougang By-election was won by the PAP. You can see the defeated PAP candidate’s photograph everywhere on posters and banners greeting residents all year round simply because he is the Grassroots Adviser.
And Grassroots Advisers will have a fully-funded office, community centres and full-time staff at their disposal courtesy of the People’s Association. And how much taxpayer money did People’s Association spent in FY2010 – $409 million of which $189 million went into paying staff salaries.
Let me share with you what grassroots advisers do in opposition wards. They conduct ‘Meet-the-People’ sessions and write appeal letters on behalf of residents. They give out bursary awards and are invited as Guest-of-Honour for PA events. And who do you first approach if you want some money for community improvement projects – The grassroots advisers!
So you see Dr Koh Poh Koon is wrong. He will have all the resources and authority to serve Punggol East if you vote for Lee Li Lian. We can forgive him for his ignorance because he has just joined PAP less than a month ago.
If you go to the PAP website and search for Mr Desmond Choo, the Hougang Grassroots Adviser, right on top of his photograph says ‘MP Profile’. So there you have it, what more proof do we need that there will be 2 MPs to serve Punggol East if you vote for the Workers’ Party!
But the question on many people’s mind is why opposition MPs cannot be appointed Grassroots Advisers? The answer came in a letter to The Straits Times Forum in 2011, right after we won Aljunied GRC.
The People’s Association spokesperson said: “Besides connecting people to people, grassroots advisers are required to help the government connect with people and help promote government policies and programmes such as anti-dengue and active ageing.
Hence, the government has to appoint grassroots advisers who support its programmes and can play this role well. Opposition MPs cannot be expected to do this and thus cannot become advisers to GROs.”
This is not about role-playing. This is divisive politics.
I want to let the People’s Association, whose chairman is the Prime Minister, know that Workers’ Party MPs support anti-dengue and active ageing programmes wholeheartedly even when we are not grassroots advisers.
I receive email alerts on dengue cases in Hougang from NEA from time to time. I will then alert the town council to be vigilant and help NEA to look out for mosquito breeding spots. I will also visit some dengue cluster hotspots as well.
And when the National Council for Social Service wanted to build a senior activity centre in Hougang, we gave it the full support.
So you can see that Workers’ Party MPs are pro-Singapore and we have been that way since day ONE. We do not believe in divisive politics and we want to work towards the day when such practice will cease.
But the only way to end divisive politics is to have less PAP MPs and not more. The PAP is known to preach and practise divisive politics all the time with no shame. Residents of Hougang and Potong Pasir will know this very well. They had been threatened in so many ways you can imagine in almost every election.
Let me read to you this declaration by an ex-National Development Minister – “As far as the HDB is concerned, constituencies which elected PAP Members will receive priority on maintenance works over constituencies which elected Opposition Members. This is the HDB policy and also the Government policy.”
That audacious statement, made in Parliament in 1985, polarised the nation along political lines and angered a generation growing up in the eighties. Today, the PAP is still the government, the nation remains divided and the threats and intimidations have not disappeared.
When asked if he is not elected what will happen to his plans to set up a wellness centre for seniors within a soon-to-be-built Community Centre in Punggol East, the PAP candidate said the funding effort may be affected if he is not elected.
Voters of Punggol East, do you smell a threat here? If the PAP is not elected some programmes may be affected again. The people of Hougang rejected such threats for 22 years and rightly so because such divisive politics involving public funding cannot be allowed to take root in our country.
A lot of the issues we heard in our campaign can be solved, should be solved and will be solved by the authorities so let no one threaten you with delays and uncertainties if PAP is not elected in Punggol East.
The Minister of State for Transport already confirmed that the single-car LRT system in Sengkang and Punggol East will be converted into a two-car system by 2016. Another Minister of State has also confirmed the mess at Rivervale Plaza will be fixed by mid-2013. So let no one threaten you with any more delay if the votes do not go the PAP way.
Voters of Punggol East – who we vote on 26 January will determine the type of country we want our children to grow up in. Who we vote will tell the government we want more of the same or we want a change. And who we vote on 26 January will tell the government we love Singapore more than the PAP does and we want our country back!
So, vote Workers’ Party, vote Lee Li Lian!