The Big C on 12/01/2012 at 9:47 pm "Thank you for your thoughtful article. I am still surprised that few people have mentioned how the system as it stands is thoroughly corrupt. We have a political system as designed by the ruling party that parachutes the captains of industry into top paying jobs while allowing them to maintain their links to industry, including paying directorships. I am not aware of any other democracy that allows this because there is clearly a conflict of interest. These ministers and MP’s then often end up back on the payrolls of industry after they have served their time as ministers or MPs. Industry will pay top dollar for these retired politicians because they bring with them inside knowledge and contacts from within government. It is impossible to construe this as anything other than being thoroughly corrupt. The only people that benefit from this is industry, and the politicians. When a country is run by moneyed interests, the wealthy always do better. It is no surprise then that the nations with the most corporate influence in politics have the highest income disparities. Namely, Singapore and USA. Moreover, there is, underlying this, an assumption that somehow the captains of industry (or for that matter of the armed forces and even eye surgeons) are somehow the best people to run government. Again this is rarely questioned, except somewhat implicitly in writings such as this blog. Yet, when you look at mature democracies around the world, you will find that the majority of them are career politicians or civil servants. The reason is that just because you are good at making money for businesses, does not mean that you will be good at everything. The debacle at SMRT is a good example of this. The same would go for good army leaders or eye surgeons. Public service is not the same as business, and mostly because there is big element of altruism in it. You may deride this as idealistic, but if you shoot for the stars, hopefully, you may at least get a good approximation of it. I disagree with DT about the assertion that there are not enough capable people to fill the ranks of elected government in Singapore. The growing strength of opposition parties in Singapore is testament to that because we are now seeing truly capable and high calibre individuals making enormous personal sacrifices in order to serve. If they can do it, I cannot see how PAP could fail at that."
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 00:50:02 +0000
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