Perhaps he is expecting Singaporeans to thank the Ministers, Politicians from the Ruling Party, and the Ruling Party itself for bringing Singapore to the present state of affairs.
What is the current state of affairs in Singapore ?
Unemployment remains at 3.3% despite the proud New Year announcement by PM LHL that the economy had expanded by 5.7% for the full year in 2005.
(See below Ref #1 )
He is proud of the big picture for Singapore, but was this achievement a result of the efforts from the Political Leadership ?
Unfortunately, this achievement is made possible by the efforts put in by the industrial leaders from the manufacturing sectors; and such achievements seem to be touted as a result of efforts by the Government aka the Ruling Party.
In the process, the Singapore Leadership seems to be unable to differentiate the trees from the jungle.
In the same report it was observed by most economists that the surprised robust growth figures "has been unbalanced with sluggish domestic demand" - which under most circumstances will be interpreted
as a loss of consumer confidence.
What could be the cause for such a loss in the Singaporean consumer confidence ?
Should Singaporeans thank the Political and Trade Union Leadership for putting added burden onto Singaporeans by offloading the housing financing scheme from HDB to the Commercial Banks ?
This scheme has resulted in exposing Singaporeans to an insecure future of losing roofs over their heads during future economic crisis.
To rub salt further into the wounds suffered by Singaporeans during the 2002 economic downturn, in which cuts were made to Pay and CPF, a further burden was added by the NTUC push towards short term employment contracts that allow flexibility for the Employers to "hire and fire".
This benefitted the Singapore Government Owned Companies, which is the biggest employer of Singaporeans.
Whatever happened to the "concept of RETRAINING" and "RETAINING loyal and experienced workers" that were loudly promoted and forced onto the employers during the late 1990s ?
We should perhaps also thank the Ruling Party and their ministers in Government and those from their ranks being"seconded" into the NTUC - for the current state of affairs that Singaporean is facing ?
Ref #1 - Singapore Growth Exceeds Expectations
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5c4b6142-7b80-11da-ab8e-0000779e2340.html