Dr Goh Keng Swee and Mr Ong Teng Cheong, Singapore owes you our gratitude

Was surfing the net and reading on Dr Goh Keng Swee, our first Minister of finance, Minister of defence. There was an anecdote related by his wife, that while he was in hospital, he chided her as wasteful for using a whole piece of tissue, he would cut them into half, used one half, kept the other. He was the brain behind our economic success.

Another leader I would like to bring up is Mr Ong Teng Cheong, he was NTUC general secretary, he vigorously improved the lives of workers through empowerment of the trade unions, sanctioned strikes for the shipping industry, when he saw they were being exploited.

He ran for the first elected presidency, and he assured the people of Singapore that his loyalty was first and foremost to them and Singapore. After taking office, he went on to fulfil his duties as keeper of our national reserves, he clashed with his ex cabinet ministers..When his term expired, the govt decided not to endorse his run for the second term. When he passed away in 1999 he was only accorded a state assist funeral despite his numerous contributions to Singapore

Thoughts on Singapore's society

Is urban life a relentless pursuits of status and material gains without a care for values like equity and justice.

I live in Singapore, when since young our local TV channels would talk about how Singapore had overcome all odds to be economically successful, and the cult like figure of LKY post independence Singapore prime minister, how he led Singapore from third world to first world.

We had many other altruistic and great leaders like Dr Goh Keng Swee, Hoi Sui Sen, Lim Kim San, S Rajaratnam. But we only heard the name of LKY as founding prime minister.

As I grew up, I realised that the good living standards come at the cost of promoting business's interests over workers, where there are numerous legal but unjust and unfair practices.

I also read about the Marxist conspiracy where social and church workers were detained under ISA on the charges of trying to overthrow the govt with a Marxist govt. I feel that it is a miscarriage of Justice because these people were just trying to fight for the rights of workers being exploited by businesses.

I read about how the then attorney general Francis seow was detained under ISA for defending those involved in Marxist conspiracy.

He then ran for the general election, narrowly lost, was then investigated for tax evasion.

I believe this was political persecution.

Our current PM Lee Hsien Loong, the eldest son of LKY, in a bid to boost economic growth, has increased the population drastically, and lead to greater social inequality, where those with the financial means, benefit from his growth at all cost economic policies.

The wake up call was the 2011 general election where the ruling party saw their vote count dropped to historic lows of 60%, lost a GRC. The ruling party started to pay attention to improving social equity.

Even then they tried to control dissent, through the online media laws, and they are still reluctant to increase employment law protection for workers.

The recent 38 oxley road saga over the fate of LKY house, threw the spotlight on how our system is too tightly linked to the  PAP, from the selection of the PM former personal lawyer as attorney general and a former pap mp as deputy attorney general.