SINGAPORE: Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong said the opposition will focus on policies which they think are not working for Singapore.
He was asked to comment on reports that opposition parties want
to contest in Tampines GRC with the plan to turn growing concerns over
the affordability of public housing into an election issue. National
Development Minister Mah Bow Tan is an MP there.
Mr Goh also noted that the opposition is trying to win one GRC or
one or two single seats. He added that the ruling People's Action Party
would have to convince the voters that the policies of the government
are right.
Mr Goh said: "Housing prices have gone up, but is this the work of the
minister or is it a wrong policy? Or is it the demand for housing is so
high? And the answer lies in liquidity. There is so much liquidity in
Singapore and the interest rate is so low.
"So anybody who can borrow money from the bank think they can just hop
to property and make a killing. But there is a danger. When the
interest rate goes up sometime in the future, are you able to service
your loan? Most people don't think that way.
"You can target on such policies, but the voters got to ask
themselves - are you just criticising without offering an alternative
solution? If they can criticise and offer a superior alternative which
the voters believe in, of course the opposition will be in a strong
position to win over votes.
"You criticise without an alternative solution and sometimes you
criticise without giving the full facts and the context. It is our job
to point out that you are just giving wrong information and giving
figures out of context. So this is the debate.
"One must expect the opposition to try and find fault with our
policies, but we will be able to defend our policies quite well. That
is the nature of this contest."
Turning to problems being faced by the Malay community in Singapore, Mr Goh emphasised that there were national problems.
Mr Goh explained: "Their performance in mathematics, in education,
dysfunctional families is not peculiar to the Malay community. But for
the Malay community, the sense of proportion of the whole community is
higher.
"It may be double what we see for the Chinese population or the Indian
population. We've got to attend to the problem in two ways - one on the
national basis, the national policies must be right and also resources
must be given to solve the national problems.
At the community level - that is, outreach and implementation - how do
you reach out to dysfunctional families? I still believe that using
Muslim leaders will be more effective than using a Christian leader to
reach out to the Muslim family on their problems."
Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zainul Abidin
Rasheed, added: "It is nothing like having the Malay-Muslim leaders
themselves being engaged in this, and Dr Yaacob and the Muslim leaders,
in fact, all the Malay-Muslim organisations are on hand.
"They are working through the community leadership forum to work out
programmes. We are approaching them squarely and being honest about it
and we want to tackle as much as we can. We have made much progress."
- CNA/vm