Basket.

Unsurprisingly, the local media continues to be filled with justifications of the recent ministerial pay hike. In addition, sycophantic entries have appeared on both the Young PAP blog and p65.sg. The ruling party is indeed, as declared by Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, ready and determined to make use of this "new media".

Not that the old is being neglected in any way. The press in Singapore, long subordinate to the PAP government, is playing its usual role to perfection.

Let us take as an example today's edition of The New Paper. An excerpt:

"The Government has already more or less won the battle of the mind. Few would begrudge the public servants their due recognition and respect.

But can ministers ever win hearts when it comes to how much to pay them? The heart, swayed by emotion, becomes illogical, envious, contentious."

Reading between the lines: pay hike is logical and fully justified, and anyone who does not believe so is being truculent and irrational.

How irrational is it, I ask, to believe that there ought to be some element of "service" in "public service"? Some element of self-sacrifice, of serving the nation out of a sense of prideful idealism? Being motivated not by piles of money but by a desire to genuinely bring the republic forward?

If thinking like that is being irrational, then I am proud to be irrational.

And what is so bad about being contentious? Democracy thrives on different competing ideas, perspectives and notions. A society without contentious issues is not a democratic society - and this place, allegedly, is a democracy. Yet "contentious" is consistently bandied about like a foul word?

So much for the Fourth Estate - but the government has expressed itself to that respect on more than one prior occasion.

More laughably, our media also enjoys using the phrase "the uncertainties of political office". Ooh, ministers' terms are not guaranteed - they have to face elections every five years! Oh please; what are they going to do, lose? Singapore hasn't had an election where the result was in any reasonable doubt for well over forty years. It does not look like having one any time in the near future, either, although I do foresee the opposition posing a much stiffer challenge next election on. It is reasonable to assume that the PAP is going to stay in power for a good long time from now. Uncertainties of political office? Certainly not here.

In addition, the entire slew of back-and-forthing is being trumpeted by the government as a triumph of transparency. Which it technically is, of course. Unfortunately, this transparency is of little value. There was always a sense of inevitability about the pay hike. As a matter of fact, whenever the government declares that something like this is going to happen, there is a sense of inevitability about the entire matter. Singaporeans pick up the paper, see the headlines about the "proposed" increase, throw it a few choice Hokkien expletives and then resign themselves to it happening. And of course, it duly does, every time. It is as if stiff public opposition (or as Young PAP ominously calls it, dissent) does not matter. MPs can speak passionately against it in Parliament, and that will not matter either. Look at transport fee hikes. They are always pushed through in the teeth of mounting public discontent. Can anyone blame Singaporeans for believing that their opinion is of little worth?

As a matter of fact, the transparency makes it worse. The government is basically saying, look, this is what we are going to do, this is how we are going to do it, and we will do it without giving a rat's ass for your opinion, bitches. It's like having a serial killer break into your house, tie up your entire family and describe to you in graphic, excruciating detail how he is going to eviscerate your parents, brutally rape your younger sister, dash out your younger brother's brains against the wall and then burn down the house with all of you still helpless inside. Knowing what is going to happen, how exactly it is going to happen and that it is going to happen no matter what only makes one feel insignificant and worthless. Transparency is no consolation at all.

What we need is accountability. In a democracy, which this place supposedly is, the leaders are accountable to the people. I have seen little sign of that. Part of leadership and accountability is sacrifice - and I have seen little of that from our leaders, as well.