The press and media are under government licensing control, so what can people expect of any forum or dialogues ? Will such forums or dialogues be truthfully and objectively conducted to promote our society at this point of time. Or are they held to serve the agenda of the party in power at election time?
One of my previous letters to the ST was witheld from publication even after it was accepted by an administrative assistant. Someone more powerful has obviously overruled the earlier decision to accept it for publication. Others of my letters were rejected with reason given such as "space constraint".
So with press licensing and control, I do not see the forum letters will represent the views of the people or anything published will be fair. For the foregoing reason, I will not see any forum letters on people's reaction to the journalists as being rude or ungrateful to MM Lee in that dialogue session will be fair.
MM Lee has made it very clear that there is no fairness or level playing field in this world. So he would grant only HDB upgrading priority to wards which supported PAP. He insisted once again that he only cares for stability and order was unable to accept various views which support greater people's participation or creativity and entrepreneurship, and social and economic vibrancy aspired by the younger population.
But what these aspirations are precisely the new motivational forces in today's knowledge-intensive world. The new leaders must grasp these new motivational forces in order to lead in the faster-paced nation building today which are drastically different from those of the past. MM Lee comes across as unable to understand these fundamentals as pointed out by the younger people.
So the two sides are at odds with the press and media now playing the angle that the Younger people are being rude or ungrateful to MM Lee.
Yet the fact is that no matter how right and how brilliant MM Lee's past policies had been such policies were found ineffective during the recent recessions. There is no sign that Singapore has upgraded the economy to a more competitive value-adding or technology-driven model.
That much is clear from my reading of the younger people's dialogue with MM Lee. Sadly MM Lee was unable to and no longer holds sway with the population.
So whatever is being published of supposed reactions from people to journalists exchanges with MM Lee we can take them with a heavy pinch of salt. The press and media have been too controlled to serve the people and they exist now only to pander to one-man and his ideas about society or his conceptual foresight or leadership found ineffective in the crucial recent bad times. These policies could not help to produce a more competitive or vibrant economy nor solve our many problems e.g. elitism, lack of creativity and entrepreneurship, weakening of private sector of the economy, dropping wages and property values, high costs and lack of mass participation and knowledge application in larger spheress.
The young people therefore have every reason to believe in and have more faith in building a more democratic society where people can have more choices like in Finland or Switzerland equally small and resourceless countries. They rightly questioned why MM Lee must keep comparing with a few countries affected by chaos and not try to improve like democratic people in Finland or Switzerland.
The leaders did not seem to know that our economy and sociosphere have already stagnated for sometime and the reason why there was a shimmer of recovery recently is because the world finally recover strongly enough to pull up Singapore drifts from behind. Singapore cannot be governed by the past control mindset which was not open to mass participation and vibrancy, the new fundamental motivational forces and needed in the new age.
Until the government can now address these fundaments affecting our society they will never cater to the new spirations of these journalists who took part in that forum. With the newspapers and media selectively publishing views only to play to the agenda of the power that be, who can blame the journalists or the people for any negative views