To the People who complain about the PAP and the current state of SG

I am 30 years old and therefore do not have much experience going through many GEs - I find myself still on the fence at times and I defer to the experience of older men and women to recount their lives and how they have benefitted/suffered under the current regime, so that I may make an objective decision.

I have been following social media for the past few years, caught up with parliamentary proceedings and watched how locals comment about how they are disappointed and upset about how PAP has run our country for the past few years. I daresay that both the number of “angry” comments and comments by people who give constructive feedback to the PAP, heavily outweigh the number of comments made in favour of the ruling party.

I am just curious - is there a reason why the PAP, despite a change of hands of PM, still managed to win this GE with more % of seats? Am I missing something here. This is the first time I am following a GE and voted seriously, so do pardon my lack of experience.

My thought process goes like this (with reference to recent events):-

1. ⁠Cost of living (“COL”) problems affect the middle-lower to lower income people the most, which I believe consists of almost 80% of locals (people who live in HDB). This means that the people who suffer and complain have the most power in terms of vote share.

2. ⁠(following the point on COL) At the current course we are taking as a country, life will be more difficult for ourselves in the future as well as our children (if we do have any). COL and housing prices have gone nowhere but up. This is the course our ruling party has chosen (economic growth > lower COL) and they have been given the mandate to continue to do so. There is no chance that this course will be diverted now.

3. ⁠The almost equal treatment of foreigners to our locals. Self-explanatory and there’s no need to elaborate here. Just an interesting example I have:- there are Indian nationals whom I meet who mentioned to me that their end goal is to end up in the USA, and the preferred method is through Singapore. For example, they will get PR in Singapore and then apply for US citizenship. The end result:- they are still considered as locals in India (i don’t know how) and own property(ies) there, they are PR in Singapore without serving the army and enjoy the benefits, and they are citizens of the USA. Note that US citizens are given the same status as a Singaporean when buying properties - they don’t need to pay ABSD.

4. ⁠Recent events like the Ridout Road and all the well-known elitist remarks made by the ruling party such as “must be from a lousy school”, “you don’t need a lot of space to make a baby”, “why spend on $25 spaghetti when you should pay for $5 hawker”, “one-way business class ticket to support Palestine” have shown that our leaders live in a small elite circle and in a different world and are unable to empathise with us.

FYI, I am neutral about this as I see this happening almost everyday at my workplace and I just ignore it for my own benefit. But I understand why so many people are upset about this.

5. (more applicable to Gen Z) The increased difficulty of getting a job due to the volatile market and number of foreign talent welcomed into Singapore following SM Lee’s foreign talent programme announced 1-2 years ago.

My question is as follows:- why then do these people, who are clearly upset and want change, still continue to vote for the incumbent party?

A vote for the incumbent guarantees that this course of action will continue. After all, why would you bother working hard or working for change if you always get top KPIs at work every time without effort, anyway.

However, a vote otherwise would at least have a small chance towards change. So why do we “say one thing, but do something opposite”? If I am missing something here, appreciate if someone could voice it out to me.

Also, for the sake of discussion, I would like to hear reasonings other than “I don’t think the other party in my constituency can do better”, as I have already heard that many times and it doesn’t help scratch my itch of curiosity as to our behaviour when it truly counts, in the polling booth.

Thank you!