Singapore Democrats
 In Part 1, we talked about the dangers of the PAP's reckless plan to jack up our population to 6.5 million. This is, as National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan puts it, because the PAP is "concerned about the future of Singapore". Yes, and George Bush and Saddam Hussein were best friends.
Make no mistake, the PAP is doing this for its own sake, not Singapore's. Here's why. The party can cling to power only by ensuring that the GDP continues to grow. A decline in our economy would not allow the autocrats to continue peddling the propaganda that Singaporeans must sacrifice their political rights for economic grwoth.
Keeping the GDP number high was relatively easy to do in the first three decades of our independence. There were roads to build and buildings to erect. We made slippers and shirts that others wanted to buy. The economy was not complex.
By the time we reached the 1990s, however, the scene started to change. Our economy had come to a point where it started to wheeze and puff. No longer were we able to achieve the kinds of GDP gains of previous years because other developing economies were doing pretty much the same thing.
 More important, our growth had come from physical and social changes that could not be reproduced. Economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman summed it up best:
[The] numbers should make it obvious that Singapore's growth has been largely based on one-time changes in behavior that cannot be repeated. Over the past generation the percentage of people employed has almost doubled; it cannot double again...So one can assume that Singapore is unlikely to achieve future growth rates comparable to the past.
Another economist Alwyn Young pointed out that the growth in Singapore has been built on the Government taxing Singaporeans and using these public funds to build up the physical infrastructure. Compared to Hong Kong, very little of our growth came from increased efficiency and productivity:
While the Hong Kong government has emphasised a policy of laissez faire, the Singaporean government has, since the early 1960s, pursued the accumulation of physical capital via forced national savings and the solicitation of a veritable deluge of foreign investment…Singapore has one of the lowest returns to physical capital in the world. The days in which Singapore can continue to sustain accumulation driven growth are clearly numbered.
Indeed by the late 1990s, our economy was beginning to run out of steam. And it wasn't the usual cyclical recession that we were in. The basic structure of our economy did not allow us to continue to grow as we had in the past.
In addition, our population had become very unentrepreneurial as one would expect from years of authoritarian control by the PAP; creativity has been choked lifeless.
Add to this the fact that our talented and skilled have been emigrating to other countries by the thousands and you have the perfect recipe for economic decline.
Of course the PAP knew all this. It also knew that it had to open up society to allow innovation and creativity to floursh so that it we could graduate into a higher phase of our economic development.
But this would also mean that the party would lose its grip on politics and might even have to relinquish power at some future stage. The autocrats weren't about to let this happen, of course.
At the same time, however, it is clear that with the economy in stagnation, the PAP's dictatorial control of the country would not last very long.
So what do our rulers do? They hatched the plan to dramatically raise the number of people in Singapore. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The benefits would be, at least, three-fold:
One, the sudden and drastic increase in the population would by itself bring in revenue and raise the GDP.
Two, there is the added factor that we would have a bigger pool of consumers which would expand the market.
Three, there would be a healthy supply of cheap labour that would keep the MNCs happy and the GLCs afloat.
The problem is that this strategy is like injecting steroids into a dying man. The massive infusion of one-time human, and therefore financial, capital into the system would cause even a cadaver to rise.
And then what?
And the beneficiary is...
 It is clear that bringing in such massive numbers of foreigners serves the interests of the PAP who will no doubt claim that it can continue to deliver economically. But the Singapore Democrats have repeatedly warned that there is a heavy price to pay for this and it is Singaporeans who are paying it.
Apart from the obvious that forcing another 1.5 million people to our already overcrowded 5 million population is unsustainable, the social impact of the immigration policy will also be profound, if not catastrophic, for this country.
Also, the kind of jobs such a policy creates for Singaporeans and whether they pay decent wages that Singaporeans can live on is a matter that the PAP would rather not discuss.
Instead, Mr Mah Bow Tan soars: "If we look ahead, and start preparing now, we can create an exciting, dynamic, prosperous and livable first world city." Yes, but for whom, dear minister?
The fact that the new migrants, added to the electorate in massive numbers, would vote for the party that brought them in, is something that the PAP would have taken into consideration when implementing the policy.
We are already very near the edge of the cliff. Either we establish a system of checks and balance and reverse course or we plunge headlong into the abyss. Very soon Singaporeans will have the chance to decide.
In Part 3, we will lay out the SDP's alternative proposals on how we can approach the question of keeping our population at a sustainable level while meeting our economic needs.
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