Sorry, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, for the housing and transport problems and the congestion caused by the influx of foreign workers. An apology like this was unprecedented, said the Straits Times, impressed by his “candour” and “humility”.
But his government and his People’s Action Party were more often right than wrong, said PM Lee, speaking to voters at a lunchtime rally at Boat Quay before the May 7 elections.
Videos showed he spoke disarmingly, smiling at the audience. I was moved when he spoke about his father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew. “Our style has changed,” he said. “We cannot do it – we don’t try to do it – MM’s style,” he said, mentioning the difference in generations. “But MM is MM.” Yes, he is.
Here are excerpts from the speech.
First, the apology. The excerpt begins from the second minute of this video of his speech.
Yes, we face some problems. Cost of living worries people. Prices of houses concern a lot of young couples. We are addressing them and we will continue to work at it. It will take us some time but these are problems which we can solve…
Five years ago the opportunities to have IRs in Singapore came up. We seized it. We started going and got them going before the financial crisis. If we hadn’t done that and missed the chance, missed the boat, you won’t have Marina Bay like this today.
Last year we got another gust of wind. Growth was strong, markets were good, we were ready. We went for it. We got 14 and a half per cent growth. Had we not done that and taken in a few more foreign workers and accepted the crowding in the trains and in the public places, you would not have had the budget surpluses. We would not have had the Grow and Share package this year.
So we can’t go exactly on a straight line from point A to point B and have everything just perfect – every spot. There would be detours, sidetracks, side-effects from our decisions.
So IRs are good. But, because of the IRs, more Singaporeans are at risk of problem gambling. More families are at risk.
High growth is good. But, because of growth, we have to take in somewhat more foreign workers. We have to be prepared to accept a little bit more congestion for the time being.
These are real problems. We will tackle them. But I hope you will understand that when these problems vex you or disturb you or upset your lives. Please bear with us. We are trying our best on your behalf. And if we didn’t quite get it right, I am sorry, but we will try to do our best the next time….
We need a good government to engage your energies, your ideas, your passion and enthusiasm to keep Singapore special for a long time to come…
Singapore has a good government
I think I can say that Singapore has a good government. It works well for Singaporeans. It enjoys your support, your confidence. It compares well with almost any other country in the world. In fact, people hold us up as a model of how governments should work. And it has high international standing. The Chinese come, study us. The Indians come, study us. The Arabs come, look at us. Even the Americans and the British come and look and say “We can’t do it, but this is something very interesting and impressive.”
But good as we are, we – and the PAP, in particular – must never become self-satisfied.The PAP, you may wear white. But that doesn’t give you an automatic right to become the government. Put on the white, but win the respect of voters every time, every election. And never forget that we are here to serve the voters, to serve Singaporeans, and not to lord it over people.
Mistakes: Mas Selamat, Orchard Road floods
No government is perfect. We can have the best intentions, make our best effort, but from time to time mistakes will happen. We will make mistakes. We made a mistake when we let Mas Selamat run away. We made a mistake when Orchard Road got flooded.
And there are other mistakes which we have made from time to time and (which), I am sure, will occasionally happen again — I hope not too often. But when it happens, we should acknowledge it. We should apologize, take responsibility, put things right. If we have to discipline somebody, we will do that. And we must learn from the lesson and never make the same mistake again.
But it is difficult to be perfect every time because the world is undergoing very rapid and massive changes. And very often we have to act with incomplete information or under uncertain conditions.You don’t know whether we will have growth next year 5 per cent or 2 per cent. You don’t know whether you can get another investment project next year when a good investment project comes along this year. You don’t know whether there will be some crisis in the world which can hit us like a tsunami.
Housing
So, therefore, we don’t always get things perfectly right. And I will give you two examples where things didn’t turn out like we hoped. HDB flats. We had a sharp recession just three years ago, in fact two years ago, in 2009. We had a surplus of flats. We didn’t expect that in the middle of 2009, after a sharp downturn, things would pick up suddenly, strongly, and the wind would catch us and everybody would want flats and suddenly the demand would press flat prices up. If we could have predicted this, I think we would have ramped up our building plan earlier, built more flats earlier. And I think we would have saved Singaporeans some angst.
Transport
Similarly with our public transport. We enjoyed high growth, higher than we expected. But with high growth we had more population increase than we expected because we had more foreign workers come in. And we had to accept them because we wanted them to fill the jobs which were being created to support the investments, the projects, which were coming in. So, as a result, we have more congestion, our public transport is more crowded… our MRT is, particularly during peak hours – it’s a jam. If we could have predicted this, if we had known that we were going to do so well, then even in the middle of the downturn in 2009, when things looked very, very gloomy, we should have moved aggressively and expanded our MRT network. Then today we will have more network, more capacity, and I think that Singaporeans will have a more comfortable ride.
So we didn’t get it perfect. And I appreciate, and I sympathize with, Singaporeans when they tell me — and they tell the government repeatedly — that “This is impacting us, affecting us. Do something about it.”
Government and PAP more often right than wrong
Well, we are sorry we didn’t get it exactly right, but I hope you will understand and bear with us because we are trying our best to fix the problem. Building 22,000 flats this year, opening one new MRT line or extension line every year for the next seven years, investing in our people and in our future. Coming back on course, continuing to make progress. I will say that overall the Singapore government has been right more often than wrong. And the PAP has been right more often than it has been wrong. Because otherwise we would not be here today. Singapore would not have be here today. We could have easily become like Ireland or Iceland or Greece in the financial crisis.
We have had a PAP government in Singapore now for more than 50 years, since 1959. Our ideals, our passion hasn’t changed.But our policies have been updated, our approach has shifted, our style has changed.
We do it our way, not like MM
You know MM’s style. He tells it like it is. When he tells, you know exactly what he is thinking and what he is talking about. Straight from the shoulder. No ifs, no buts, solid, hard talk.
You know, I think you have got used to, our style. We understand the hard truths, we understand what we need to do. But we don’t, we cannot do it — and we don’t try to do it — MM’s style. We do it our way.
We spend some time to talk, to explain, to persuade, to understand the difficulties and the hesitations to overcome some of these working problems so that we can go in the right strategic direction. And it’s a difference in generations — generations between MM’s team and my team, generations between your parents and you. And we discuss this often in Cabinet and MM says, “Why don’t you do things in a certain way? Proceed. It’s important, critical for Singapore.” And we say: “Yes, we understand. But please let us do it our way. Because we are different from you. And I think Singaporeans — it’s a different generation from the Singaporeans who worked with you and built this Singapore in the 1950s, in the 1960s and ’70s. So give us time. We… I think we know what we are doing. We will work with Singaporeans in our own way to deliver results.’’
So MM understands that. But MM is MM. And whether it is ordinary times, whether it is election time, you can be sure he’s still the same MM. But this is the PAP government — me, my team — and we are taking it forward — same strategic direction, but doing it our way. So I hope voters will understand and will support what we are doing.
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