Please do not attack the ministers salary.
In my opinion, it is a good thing, not a bad thing.
It is important to maintain an attractive and competitive
renumeration package, so that the top talents of a society can
easily move back and forth and permeate and have easy traffic,
between politics and other realms.
In this way, the political spots can attract the cream of the
society.
If not, only a certain type of people will be in politics.
Politics will be compartmentalized and segregated from the rest
of the other realms.
The people there will be slow, bureaucratic, class-B type of
people, easy to bribe, corrupt, and / or overly ideological in a
certain way.
In theory, there is nothing wrong with ministers high
salary.
As an example, I always say, we must look at the salary of
policemen and teachers.
Singapore's policemen and teachers are well paid by world's
standards. In Singapore, after you are in a traffic violation, you
will not dare to offer the policeman "coffee money".
But just a stone's throw away, in Malaysia and Indonesia, it is
a common practice.
University graduates also enter into teaching profession.
Teachers are relatively well paid and they can concentrate on their
jobs. In other countries, university graduates dont want to enter
the teaching profession and teaching is seen as dead-end
career.
Now, do you support the cutting of salary of policemen and
teachers?
Most people would say no.
But why do you propose the cutting of salary of ministers?
Same theory. Since they are supposed to be top visionary
leaders, and they sit at a higher peak in the organizational
pyramid chart, they need to be compensated with higher
renumeration.
They need to have attractive salary, just like what happen with
the policemen and teachers.
Please dont attack this policy.
In my opinion, it is barking up the wrong tree.
i think you are mixing things up here or you are confused. no
one is asking LHL and his lackeys to take home $4500/mth. however,
i think it will do LHL's public service credentials a whole lot of
good if he can halve his salary of $2m+. $1m/year is still hell
alot of money in my opinion.
also, it is presumptuous to say that all our current
and previous ministers will earn big bucks had they stayed in the
private sector. take our beloved wong kang seng for instance; he
was a hr manager @ an mnc b4 joining politics. i would wager my
meager 1mth salary to bet that he will not be earning close to what
he is now if he were to stay in the private sector. and also a
recent perm sec who tried to bring hip into the government by
rapping and breakdancing, probably triple his salary since joining
politics than during his private sector days. and not all
lawyers/doctors will earn $m salary. maybe $2-300k/year or slightly
more, which is still great in all accounts but not at the level the
government would want us to believe.
i agree that money politics played out in our friendly
neighbouring countries ain't a pretty sight, but neither is ours.
some would argue that legitimizing it is even worse.
