Singapore GE2020: Jamus tackles fiscal issues raised by WP's manifesto proposals

WP's Associate Professor Jamus Lim says where PAP and WP differ is their view of where trade-offs should occur.
WP's Associate Professor Jamus Lim says where PAP and WP differ is their view of where trade-offs should occur.

The Workers' Party (WP) has been called "PAP-lite" because of how similar its positions are to the ruling party's, but the opposition party's more left-wing stance raises the question of how it would pay for its programmes, said Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in a live television debate yesterday.

Key proposals in WP's manifesto for the 2020 General Election include scrapping the proposed goods and services tax hike, introducing a national minimum wage as well as a redundancy insurance scheme, and lowering the cost of intermediate and long-term care for those whose monthly household per capita income is below $3,200, among others.

The People's Action Party "could have written this manifesto", noted Dr Balakrishnan, 59, in the second half of the hour-long debate, a question-and-answer format that allowed candidates to put questions to him and vice versa.

That WP's Associate Professor Jamus Lim was seated to his left during the debate was not lost on viewers as Dr Balakrishnan added: "And that's why people have called the Workers' Party PAP-lite or PAP-like, it's almost a position where whatever line or stand the PAP has taken, you basically use that as your reference point and take a half step to the left." But that half step left raises fiscal questions, he noted, on the trade-off with costs and who would pay for them.

In response, Prof Lim, an economics professor who is contesting Sengkang GRC in his first election, pointed out that the WP has often emphasised it does "not necessarily object to policy for the sake of objection".

"Ultimately, what we want is the right policy... Now, you have then gone on to say that what we have done is move to the left, and the kind of underlying query is that well perhaps by moving to the left we are being irresponsible fiscally," he added. "I'd like to emphasise within the manifesto, we have actually done the maths behind it and everything is within our budget, it actually is budget neutral. What is true though, is that it does entail a set of trade-offs."

Where the two parties fundamentally differ is "where we think those trade-offs actually should occur", added the 44-year-old.

"The PAP would tend to side on the side of the capital. We think, in fact, that for every dollar of national income, Singaporean workers already receive an insufficient amount - 42 cents compared with 55 cents in Japan, and much higher in other high-income countries. And we think that a rebalance of that kind of share of labour income is ultimately necessary," he said.

In turn, Prof Lim asked if the PAP had evaluated the efficacy of its policies, and referred to Singapore Democratic Party's Dr Chee Soon Juan's comment earlier in the debate that the PAP has tried to raise productivity unsuccessfully since 1972.

Pointing out that the Government has put aside 20 per cent of its GDP fiscal stimulus, Dr Balakrishnan, who is running in Holland-Bukit Timah, said they are funding this not by "passing the burden to our children or grandchildren", but by dipping into Singapore's reserves.

"Our Pioneer and Merdeka generations always believed in spending less than they earn on a recurrent basis. That's why we have the reserves. And that's why we can deploy that for a rainy day. This is a rainy day."

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on July 02, 2020, with the headline Jamus tackles fiscal issues raised by WP's manifesto proposals. Subscribe