What I feel about things currently

Now as I've been away from Singapore the last two months, I look back at the news back home, and majority of the time, I'm dismayed on what I have heard.

From the recent collapse of the stock market, to the ever rising costs from public transport, to food, and then the recent contamination of certain brands of milk back home, to the bubble burst in the property sector to the recent overhype of the F1 race, I have to say that the leadership that we have, as Singaporeans, have not been impressive nor inspiring in a long while.

Let's put it honestly: they have been pretending for a long time, and have shown to be lacking honesty more frequently than ever. And even as things began to collapse on their own shaky foundations around the world, the leadership has been trying to blatantly mislead fellow Singaporeans in saying that we will be, in effect, immune to the world economy breakdown.

Take for example, the property bubble burst. For the last 3 years, the government has 'liberalise' the rules so that more couples can borrow more money from the banks and from their CPF, without the need of showing some collateral, in order to prove they can pay for it. As a result of cheap credit, HDB flat demand began to soar, and young couples began to accumulate more debt in order to pay for a flat that is way out of their budget, overpriced at S$400k, and is only on a 99 year lease.

But like the one in the US, where cheap credit was extended to people who couldn't afford it, and then these credit programs were re-packaged as CDOs, and sold to other investment firms, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Let's face the facts: when was public housing ever part of the free market in the first place? As these flats are built on taxpayers money, it should be sold based not on market rates, but on the terms of affordability and reasonableness. Public housing, is essentially a service provided by the government, a public service, by a natural monopoly: the HDB.

And if the market was allowed to operate in such an environment, prices will only shoot through the roof, making purchases and rentals of flats unaffordable to more and more people annually.

That should not be the case. HDB flats, as public housing, is not the same as freehold properties like condos and landed property.

That's not the type of people leadership that anyone can believe in.

In the end, ladies and gentleman, my view is that when it comes to leadership in issues like this, we have to be clear on certain things:

1. We have to be honest more often than not and be prepared to tell the truth, in a polite, but firm, honest fashion.

2. We cannot use the market as an excuse to extend it to everything else, including in markets that are almost always going to be controlled by natural monopolies. Public housing, public transport and utilities are such examples.

The same applies vice versa for markets which should remain as markets, and not be controlled by monopolies for political gain. For example, telecommunications, and grocery shopping.

3. We have to understand that we should not politicise every single market for political gain and political protection. To politicise the HDB demand, and to gain extra cash, and to treat the demand for more flats as a excuse to make HDB into a corporation when it shouldn't be is wrong. The HDB organisation is not there to serve the government; its to serve its people and to service, they are to build flats and sell them for cheap rates.

4. Last of all, we, on good faith, shouldn't be recommending people to overuse their CPF funds to buy flats. After all, the CPF fund for each Singaporean is to better guarantee that they will have a basis of a retirement fund when one's old. But when young Singaporeans use too much of it as collateral, or as loans to buy a HDB flat, and leave little for retirement, they will be in a difficult position many years to come. Financial independence should be an attainable option to everyone, not just the well privileged.

And if the government allows that, and decides to restrict people in using their CPF funds to buy what's an overpriced flat, then they will make more people financially independent, and feeling more secure.

Lastly, when it comes to leadership, I always look to, not just God, and JC, but also to people in history who have inspired us to great levels of progress that one may not be attain before. People like Martin Luther King, Jr., to Mother Theresa, to Gandhi, to the head of Grameen Bank, to Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein to politicians like Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, and now present-day leaders like Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Obama, for directions on where one and we should go.

I hope Singapore will have such leadership in the future. It just saddens me when we have not.