No, you did not read the headline wrongly. When WP MP Chen Show Mao proposed in Parliament that the 2012 Budget should do more for vulnerable groups, PAP MP Vikram Nair attacked Mr Chen’s proposals as being akin to a Nigerian money scam.
Let’s review Mr Chen’s Budget speech, and see if this attack is justified, if indeed Mr Chen had proposed ripping off the nation like a Nigerian scam artiste. My information comes from WP’s website: MP Chen Show Mao’s Budget 2012 Speech.
Firstly, Mr Chen said that WP was glad that the government had heeded the call of many Singaporeans for more inclusive growth, but noted that the elderly, the disabled and the poor in need of social security should not be seen as social problems as the Budget puts it.
Secondly, Mr Chen said that investing in our elderly, the disabled, the poor and other needy Singaporeans will reward society with the economic, social and cultural contributions they are able to make with assistance.
Thirdly, Mr Chen said that the government should also seek out such investment opportunities to realize social returns not just in the area of social security, but also in the areas of public housing, healthcare, education, and infrastructure and the environment.
Fourthly, Mr Chen said that this argues for investing in social safety nets that keep up with the costs of living, because when some Singaporeans trip and fall behind, we should help them get back up and stay in the game.
So let me summarize the basic idea behind Mr Chen Show Mao’s message: the government should invest in providing for the needy so that the needy can in turn make greater contributions to society than would have been possible had they received no help.
Apparently, according to Mr Vikram Nair, this is akin to scamming the whole country.
In Parliament, Mr Nair accused Chen and other opposition MPs of not acknowledging the government’s efforts in helping vulnerable groups. This is dishonest, to say the least, because both Chen as well as Aljunied MP Low Thia Khiang had both explicitly praised the government for devising a more inclusive Budget, and none had ever suggested that the government was neglecting the needy.
In fact, Mr Low Thia Khiang had described this year’s Budget as “special”, saying that the government had taken a big step towards a “first world social safety net”. Mr Low had also praised the Budget for its greater focus on helping the less well-off, such as low-wage workers and the elderly, even if it meant slower growth.
Mr Nair accused Mr Chen of not having a plan as to how to pay for the extra spending he desired. He also decried the vagueness in Chen’s assertion that investing in human capital would yield returns, saying that Chen should explain with more details “as to how this self-funding investment works”.
He then likening Chen’s proposals to a Nigerian scam e-mail where recipients are urged to transfer funds in return for a pay-off later. Mr Nair even went so far as to say that Chen had promised something “even better, because you don’t have to put in any money at all, and you get more than money in return”.
It is truly a sad day for Singapore when an MP can claim in Parliament that increased social spending is like scamming the nation, simply because the proposer had not explicitly mentioned from where the funds would be drawn, and exactly what returns could be expected.
My message to the ruling PAP is that when you invest in the needy and the under-privileged, you don’t quantify potential returns the same way as you grade students on a bell curve or rank civil servants using KPIs. You should know from the start that it is morally the right thing to do, regardless of what the potential returns are.
Human capital and the worth of each human being cannot be quantified. When we invest in our young, in continued education for the working population, in upgrading skills of blue collar workers, and in the poor and needy, we do not calculate what ROI we are getting. We expect our investment to first make moral sense, before they make political or economic sense.
The nation is scammed not when investments in the needy are increased. The nation is instead scammed when budget surpluses are channeled into some black box known as “external reserves” and invested in opaque instruments without accounting to the electorate, and where billion-dollar losses are not only poorly disclosed by also casually dismissed as market volatility.
Our human resource is the only natural resource we have. Investing in them is not a scam. It is in fact one of the highest moral callings of any government in power.
