Ministers and civil servants' pay to increase (part 2)

Back on the topic of government salary increases, I found a few interesting articles regarding this issue. Since the ruling government made it abundantly clear that political discourse should belong ONLY to political blogs, which I believe need to have a license(?) and I have NO wish to license this cos I HATE dislike (OK language called for reworking) people whom I dunno reading my blog, so I'll leave this as objective as humanly possible (faced with the amount of money we're talking here, of course.)


(Phew, run-on sentence. My GP tutor would have killed me for this.)


Anyway back to the topic. First I bring you, an extract of our MM's speech and views about raising government pay. He reasons that to keep top people in ministerial positions who are corruption-free, we require to dangle monetary carrots to attract talent and to retain existing ones. And he contends that ministers in Singapore are NOT ordinary people as they have to deal with Singapore's scarcity of natural resources as well as the fact that we have limited human resources. That, he says, makes managing Singapore all the more challenging. I guess MM Lee has good reasoning, and he has the wisdom of years behind him to base his views on. Kudos to him for being able to take unpopular decisions for the good of the country and succeeding. I'm not a big fan of his, but because of him, I believe that a limited democracy is the best system to go.

YoungPAP's elaina olivia chong bolsters this view. She says "money is the proverbial carrot" and that even ministers should not be expected to take the "moral high ground". I reserve my stand on this, however, I agree with some of her statements. But the first statement in her second paragraph puts me off. I feel that she, as well as many of the ministers and policymakers should respect the diaspora of views in the forums and on the ground and maybe use their elite brains to try to understand where the common people are coming from. Seek to persuade people to your side, not coerce people into your thinking. In this aspect, I believe that for all its successes, PAP (and by extension, YoungPAP) has one big failing - that in their duty to the public to properly educate the masses on their reasons for numerous policies, not just on this issue. Sooner or later, I predict that it will fall (if it continues on this way), not because it is not a good government, but because the-Singaporean-on-the-street is becoming increasingly disgruntled and perturbed with these "elite ministars" just making decisions on their own. (If you did a double take on "ministars", no, it's not a spelling mistake.)

And then there are of course the people on the ground who are just plain disturbed by the multimillion-dollar salaries that the ministers are taking home. It seems that somehow, some of them got their facts mixed up and some thought that it was a million-dollar monthly salary that the ministers were taking home. Haha. I mean seriously, you want to blog, get your facts right first. That's the annual figure for you, dudes (although it's still frigging huge.)

The opposing camp:
I am Singaporean XX - Singaporeans in Demand?
I am Singaporean XX, cont’d - An Answer. (apparently the same guy.)
And for good measure read the comments below the very first post (the post where MM Lee was quoted). I guess these views are simple enough to digest, and need not be elaborated on.

Then there are others who try to infuse their views with facts: http://samaryn.com/2007/03/05/linking-pay-with-performance-in-singapore-civil-service

For even more information out there, use Google.

Politics, politics, politics.

If there's one reason why we should support this obscene salary, it's because it will help the ministers stay "white" and free from corruption. After all, not many in the world can afford to bribe a million dollars. Corruption in the government is a very serious affair, because it is at the highest level and is very hard to check. Once corruption seeps into the highest levels, it can remain there for a very long time. I mean, look at the neighbouring countries, the ministers are paid lowly salaries, but turn out to be the richest people in their respective countries. Scratching your head? Look no further than Thaksin, or Mahathir. I guess most people here are familiar with them both. I'm not saying they're corrupt, but I just wonder how they got so rich. I bet you are too.

So far, paying out millions has worked fine. But then, when the casinos come rolling in together with the high-rollers and the vice that come along with it, ahhh, then I really wonder.


Edit: Oops after re-reading, I realized I wasn't being very objective (and the post is very messy). But heck, unless some higher powers orders the razing of this blog, nothing will be changed.