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Young Singaporeans angry at Dr Tony Tan for depriving them opportunities at home
June 27th, 2011 | Author: Temasek Review | Edit
Though presidential hopeful Dr Tony Tan has won the ringing endorsement of senior PAP leaders in the last few days with PAP’s Secretary-General Lee Hsien Loong calling him a ‘unifying’ figure for all Singaporeans, it appears that he will not have the support of many young Singaporeans who are still angry at him for depriving them educational opportunities at home.
As a former PAP education minister in the 1990s, Dr Tony Tan was responsible for the PAP’s open-door policy to foreign students which had brought thousands of them from China, India and elsewhere to study in Singapore universities on government scholarships which paid for their tuition fees and monthly living allowances among other things.
“Singapore will not have enough graduates to service the economy in the year 2000, and steps will have to be taken to boost the intake at the universities here, while attracting more graduates from abroad as well,” Dr Tony Tan said way back in 1997.
When asked if measures would be put in to protect Singapore students from competition, Dr Tony Tan replied callously:
’There is no way in which you are going to be able to protect either Singaporeans or Singapore because we are a small country.’
(Source: Straits Times, 1998)
Due to Dr Tony Tan’s pro-foreigner education policies, many Singaporeans missed out on places in local universities and had to further their tertiary education overseas, a fact not lost on a NTU graduate who said:
“Tony Tan is responsible for one of the greatest policy errors that will cause great, untold harm to Singapore. His foreign students policies have caused an entire generation of Singaporeans to lose loyalty for Singapore.
Which citizens would not lose their feelings for the country if they are discriminated in the very country whom they have sacrificed 2.5 years of their lives under a humiliating military conscription service. Some of the so-called foreign scholars were really mediocre. Even I got better results(2nd-upper honours) than many of them. Go and get NTU to open up their records. Ask NTU School of EEE to reveal how many so-called foreign scholars got 2nd-lower honours and below. It is a simple matter to verify.”
梁琬婷 is disgusted at Dr Tony Tan’s refusal to do more to help Singaporeans:
“If pap cannot even manage and protect the citizens in a small country, what use are they then? Why still vote for them for so many decades? And why should we vote for TT to be the President since he is not even trying to protect the citizens? 爱国爱民视之如子乃z,但在他们身上却看不到!”
Chia CC wondered if Dr Tony Tan will be a president for Singaporeans or foreigners:
“Wow, looks like Tony was the traitor who formulated the PAP policy of “NS for Singaporeans, but free varsity places and jobs for foreigners”. If he gets to be President, perhaps he will end up looking after foreigners better than the citizens who voted him into office!!”
Katherine Ho asked why she should vote for somebody who cared for foreigners more than Singaporeans:
“This Tony Tan will never fight for us like what late Mr Ong did. so why do we need a president that feeds on us but betrays us. like a common saying goes: “ïf one keeps a dog, it will at least show gratefulness”. But for him, it will be like keeping a dog so that it can bark at you or even bite you anytime!”
With public opposition against the PAP regime at an all-time high, the PAP may not risk a contest which Dr Tony Tan may well lose based on its growing unpopularity. The two other contenders are likely to be disqualified as Dr Tan Cheng Bock is the non-executive chairman of a company while Mr Tan Kin Lian is the CEO of a cooperative, not a company and hence they do not meet the requirements posited by the Council of Presidential advisers technically.
Dr Tony Tan is likely to become Singapore’s next ‘elected’ president without fighting a contest like his predecessor S R Nathan who has earn millions of dollars from Singaporeans by keeping ‘quiet’ and doing ‘little’.
