After States Times Review released two articles proving that the Singapore government has indeed issued “test balloons” prior to the GST increase announcement, 5 PAP Ministers – Law Minister K Shanmugam, Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat, Culture Minister Grace Fu, Minister Indranee Rajah and Minister Chee Hong Tat – have since kept silent and are no longer asking WP MP Sylvia to apologise.
In the first article by States Times Review, over 13 state media articles and reports proposed to increase GST prior to the actual announcement. Interestingly the Singapore government which often praised itself for fighting “fake news”, did not rebut any of the reports if they did not have the intention to raise GST as they claimed.
In the second article, a director with the government’s labour arm NTUC admitted he supervised a survey questioning respondents what they think of a GST increase and when would they prefer to have the GST increase.
All 5 PAP Ministers have since developed selective amnesia and stopped pursuing Workers’ Party MP Sylvia Lim for apologies. Minister Grace Fu had earlier threatened to take parliamentary actions against the opposition MP, which could see Sylvia Lim jailed up to 2 years until the end of the government’s term and fined up to S$50,000.
None of the PAP Ministers has retracted their statements or even apologise to MP Sylvia Lim, especially Law Minister K Shanmugam and Culture Minister Grace Fu who launched personal attacks calling her “dishonourable”, “dishonest” and “lacking in integrity”.