Jamus Lim disappoints with his economic policies

Jamus Jerome Lim

Dear Singapore Matters,

Since I moved to Sengkang only in July, I did not vote in Sengkang. Still, I was happy to keep an open mind and to give the elected WP MPs a chance. In particular, I had looked forward to hear some good alternatives from them as they had promised.

After the election, the economist Jamus Jerome Lim has become the face of the Workers’ Party, being the one to make various suggestions. It’s like when you think of the Workers’ Party, you think of Jamus Lim.

However, I am greatly disappointed by his performance. The things he suggested, the lack of research from him is making me wonder if he is just a career politician looking to earning $16k a month. It’s as if being an MP is just one job out of the many jobs from which he had chosen. He tried his luck and was lucky the first time. But to keep his career as a career politician, he has to appeal to enough voters with populist suggestions so that they will continue to vote for him and he can continue to earn $16k a month.

The suggestions he has made so far are disappointing and not in the interests of Singapore. This is worrying as he is in charge of economic policies in WP.

Jamus Lim first suggested a minimum wage at a time when so many SMEs were struggling to stay afloat. It was because of the huge financial support from the government that they did not shutter their business. This makes me wonder if he has any grasp of reality.

And if the minimum wage was not bad enough, he then suggested an environment tax on SIA and further said that SIA could pass the tax to passengers. The transport minister had to point out to him that there were no passengers to pass the tax on. Air travel has all but come to a standstill. My jaw dropped to the floor when I heard his suggestion.

I thought perhaps the next time he will do better.

But next, he called for an astronomical increase in the carbon tax from $5/tCO2e to between $58/tCO2e and $133/tCO2e. How much more will we households have to pay in electricity tariffs huh if his proposal is adopted? All the rebates will not be enough. Please think for us.

And the latest I heard from him is that he asked the government to consider eliminating permanently, criminal records of people who commit non-violent crimes. I was left speechless. It seems to me he has classified crimes as either violent and non-violent, and non-violent crimes are the non-serious crimes. But crimes can be non-violent but have a very severe impact. Like corruption. If you look at countries where the leaders are corrupted, the people suffer. Here again, Jamus Lim showed that he did not give much thought to his suggestion nor make any effort to do research on the local scene.

The promise of a First World Parliament from Workers’ Party did not materialize. I had high hopes that with Jamus Lim’ entrance, perhaps debates in Parliament will be taken to a higher level. But it was not to be. Instead of serious debates on plausible alternatives, what we see happening is lots of virtue-signalling from opposition members.
Letter contributed by Mr Andrew Sim
[irp posts=”7188″ name=”Jamus makes mistake as he clarifies his suggestion on criminal records”]

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