"The Poor" are the new black

You can't imagine how tiresome it has been to read and hear the new candidates from the Papies repeat tirelessly their "interest in helping the poor".  It's been even more annoying having to read and hear the older stalwarts of the party extol each candidate's virtues, of which one is inevitably that he/she has a "humble background".

"Humble" and "poor" are the new black, people. It's the new name-tag that you find pinned to every statement the new candidates are making.

It is as if wearing these tags makes them somehow more appealing, more acceptable as representatives of the sizeable majority of the populace. The implied logic is two-fold: first, that these candidates are a testament to a successful meritocracy (their social and income mobility vis-a-vis their parents' is evidence of a system - education by and large - that works and should not be changed); second, that they are can appropriately understand the needs and "connect" with the general population they seek to represent.

I don't know about you, but I personally find these logix dubious.

First, how do the Papies define "the poor"? It's as if "the poor" is some inconvenient-but-large infestation problem that needs to be tended to every 4 or 5 years. You don't hear about "the poor" on a normal day when the stock market is being obsessed over, housing policies are being meticuloulsy disassembled and reassembled, and economic growth figures are screaming out of every headline and news segment. "The poor" has no face, they are some random figures that complain about inflation and cost of living and housing yet when the opposition party candidate gives a face to this "poor", he is accused of using anecdotal evidence and tugging on emotional heartstrings.

I don't know any "poor" person who isn't emotional about his or her poverty. Take the guy who gate-crashed a private birthday party 2 weeks ago and threw all the catered food on the floor because he couldn't stand that there was all this food lying there when all he had had that day was "a bowl of instant noodles." No, being poor is not something academic, or a theoretical concept of incomes to pooh-pooh minimum wage. It's being hungry, having kids who you know cannot  afford optimal nutrition or even the extra tutoring needed to pass the crazy Mathematics syllabus that their more well-off peers in the more well-off schools can.

Second, how do the Papies define "humble background"? When over 80% of the population resides in HDB (public) housing, it's a no-brainer to describe your candidates as having "grown up in a HDB flat". Hell, I grew up in a HDB flat but I wouldn't call myself having known poverty or having come from a humble background. Well, you say, their parents had relatively "humble" jobs and were not university graduates, goodness, some of them even had to WORK at their parents' "humble" businesses - one was a seamstress and another ran a food stall. So having started out like most Singaporeans at the average (or below average, I don't know, because this was never spelt out) income strata, these candidates can relate to the current strata of working class Singaporeans despite the fact that they are a clear tiny minority that got scholarships to ivy-league universities and then proceeded to enter the upper-middle class right after graduation.

I am puzzled. I make about the median income, my non-graduate parents lived in HDB until I was 15 and I now can afford to live in private housing and drive a Toyota. But I would NEVER claim to have had a "humble background" (since 90% of my parents' generation had similar backgrounds) and I would NEVER claim to know what it is like to be "poor". Truth is, I have NEVER been poor.

I define being "poor" as not having access to basic medical care, nutrition, education and most importantly, the ENVIRONMENT in which to get a quality education (one which the Papies constantly boast of) and opportunities so that I can replicate my parents' success. So I do not know poverty, I have never known poverty and I cannot claim to know who "the poor" are and the plight they face every day.

I do know that there are people who get basic medical care, food, a roof over their heads, education but lack the very environmental conditions to get a job to afford to purchase public housing, much less do better than their parents. These are the youth whose parents are mired in a poverty trap; they are the people above 40 and 60 who have either been laid-off or suffer wage stagnation because they have poorer education qualifications; they are the people who live on less than $1500 a month and have to stretch that to pay for food and utilities and a mortgage (or rent) to support a household of 5, 6 or more.

No, I don't know what poverty means even though I hear about them, read about them, and I sometimes deal with them in the course of my work. And if these Papie candidates grew up basically the same way that I did (with our "humble HDB-dweller-parents-who-didn't-make-a-lot-background"), what on earth qualifies them to be the best people to understand, serve and fight for "the poor"?

Knocking on doors and writing letters for "the poor" during Meet-The-People Sessions?
Oh, if the above were true, then PM Lee must retract his statement that there isn't enough "talent" to fill Singapore's leadership ranks, because many, many people can and have done just that.

Committment to volunteer work or your job (as in Puthucheary who defended his medical practice as a form of national service) is not committment to the welfare of "the poor". Start talking about "the poor" as real people, and start spelling out what you think is causing them to be "poor" and "poorer" and start saying what you believe can be done to alleviate the conditions of "the poor".