January 17, 2010
In a speech made yesterday to graduates of the
first batch of youth leaders from a leadership programme in Marine
Parade GRC, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong says it “is important to
have good leaders in four sectors of the country – political,
public service, business sector and the people sector.”
He quoted an ancient saying on the importance of leadership:
“(The ancient saying is) ‘an army of sheep led by a lion is
stronger than an army of lions led by a sheep’. In other words,
leadership is critical in battles; the leadership qualities, the
courage and the ability and getting the team to follow you is
crucial.”
SM Goh also said that leadership is important in generating
economic growth for the country:
“If you track the performance of a country in the last 30
years, you will come to the conclusion that there is a
co-relationship between the leadership of a country and economic
performance of the country. The better the leadership, the better
the government, more enlightened, more visionary. The more honest
the government, the better the economic performance,” he
added.
Singapore’s ruling party has the propensity of linking its
performance to economic indicators like GDP growth – a certain
percentage of their multi-million annual pay is pegged to the
nation’s growth rates.
However, economic performance does not necessarily translate
into a higher standard of living for its citizens. Many prominent
economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has spoken
out on the limitations of GDP which fails to take into
consideration the welfare of the people.
Singapore is the second richest nation in Asia after Japan, but
its people do not live the life befitting of a first world nation.
While Japan has the lowest income gap between the rich and the poor
among developed countries, Singapore has the highest.
A key reason is that we are a flock of hapless sheeps led by a
small group of greedy lions for far too long. Being predators by
nature, lions are perenially obsessed with keeping their stomachs
full all the time and the poor sheeps will have little choice but
to serve as fodder for them.
We need a people-orientated government – an army of sheep led by
leaders within its flocks instead of lions from elsewhere. Only
then will we be able to reclaim our rights as citizens of this
country we call home.
As for SM Goh, he should not forget the fact that he is not a
lion too, but a sheep like us being led around by the only real
lion in Singapore.
http://www.temasekreview.com/2010/01/17/sm-goh-an-army-of-sheep-led-by-a-lion-is-stronger-than-an-army-of-lions-led-by-a-sheep/
January 18, 2010
In a recent speech to youth leaders from a leadership programme
in his Marine Parade GRC, Senior Minister Goh Chok
Tong said there is a relationship between a country’s
leadership and how its economy performs.
“If you track the performance of a country in the last 30
years, you will come to the conclusion that there is a
co-relationship between the leadership of a country and economic
performance of the country…..The better the leadership, the better
the government, more enlightened, more visionary. The more honest
the government, the better the economic performance.” he
added.
Perhaps SM Goh is referring to the performance of his political
party – the PAP which has governed Singapore uninterrupted for the
past fifty years since 1959.
Inherent in his arguments are three fallacies:
1. Economic performance is dependent solely on the quality of a
country’s leadership.
2. The ultimate aim of a nation is to perform well
economically.
3. The more honest the government, the better the economic
performance.
While there is a co-relation between the quality of a country’s
leadership and economic performance, it is more important to have a
political system which not only sustain the economy over time, but
distribute the fruits of the nation’s growth equally and fairly to
all its people to enjoy.
Good leaders are found in all forms of political systems ranging
from democracies, totalitarian states, dictatorships and feudal
dynasties, but only good systems will be able to nurture good
leaders and toss out bad ones from time to time.
The Nazi regime which ruled Germany during the Third Reich can
be considered an excellent leadership by SM Goh’s definition for
Germany’s economy grew the fastest between the years 1933 – 1938,
propelling it to become an economic powerhouse from the ruins of
World War I in less than a decade, but it was a fascist
totalitarian state which brooked no dissent and did not have any
mechanism in place to remove megalomaniac leaders like Hitler who
soon led Germany into disaster.
Similarly, there were plenty of good leaders during 5000 years
of China’s history. Emperors Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong were
widely considered as the most capable emperors of the Qing dynasty
and indeed, China’s economy grew by leaps and bound during their
combined 120-year reign. However, the feudal system of the Qing
government placed too much power and responsibility in the hands of
a few and the empire soon went into decline when a series of weak
emperors assumed the throne after Qianlong.
Like many other PAP leaders, SM Goh’s continued emphasis on
economic performance as measured by GDP growth figures is both
inappropriate and inaccurate.
Singapore’s ministers are so obsessed with GDP growth that a
significant proportion of their multi-million annual wages are
pegged to it which is hardly heard of in the developed world.
In Singapore’s National Pledge which is recited by every
Singapore student since 7 years of age, we pledge “to build a
democratic society based on justice and equality so as to achieve
happiness, prosperity and progress for our people.” Nowhere was
economic performance or GDP growth mentioned.
GDP is a simply a measurement of the total market value of all
final goods and services produced within a country’s economic
borders during a period of time.
It can be artificially increased like what the PAP is doing now,
by mass importing cheap foreign labor from other countries to
keep business costs down and to increase demand for goods and
services, but for long can this sustain us?
Furthermore, the influx of foreign workers have depressed the
wages of ordinary Singaporeans and only the employers benefit in
the end, but not the common man in the streets.
The gains made by the nation’s stellar economic performance over
the past decade are not distributed equally to all citizens as
demonstrated by our widening income-gap between the rich and the
poor, measured by the Gini coefficient, the highest among the
thirty most developed countries in the world and ranked alongside
that of third world countries like Kenya, Russia and Burundi.
The interpretation and use of GDP as a proxy of social
welfare has received much criticism, which has come from some of
the most well-known economists, including Nobel laureates (e.g.
Simon Kuznets, Daniel Kahneman, Robert Solow, Joseph Stiglitz,
Amartya Sen and Muhammad Yunus).
It is severely limited as an indicator for the social welfare of
a nation’s people as it does not include a number of factors that
determine the well-being of people, such as the value of non-market
goods and services (e.g. natural resources), informal and unpaid
activities and leisure.
Besides, GDP emphasises average income and in fact puts unequal
emphasis on the expenditures of the wealthy rather than on similar
income development of the poor.
Though Singapore has a developed economy as defined by GDP
per capita, Singaporeans are not living a life befitting of their
status as citizens of a first world nation.
The worldwide study conducted and released by UBS last year,
titled “Price and Earnings 2009″ has some unflattering results for
Singapore. (read report
here)
Singapore has a GDP (PPP) per capita higher than Switzerland,
but our wages are way below the Swiss. Zurich and Geneva have wage
indices (gross) of 119.8 and 107.5 respectively. In contrast,
Singapore has a wage index of only 31.3, comparable with Moscow
(30.9), Tallinn (28.7) and Johannesburg (26.7).
Singaporeans also have low domestic purchasing power compared to
other developed countries with a purchasing power of only
39.9, comparable to Kuala Lumpur (39.5), Warsaw (34.0) and Bogota
(33.7).
The latest release by Ireland-based magazine “International
Living” ranked Singapore as the 70th most liveable place in the
world below the likes of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia. Though
Singapore scores highly in areas of healthcare, infrastructure and
safety, it performs miserably in non-economic indicators like
environment and freedom. (read report
here)
Lastly, a honest government will not necessarily lead directly
to better economic performance if its leaders lack ability,
foresight and vision.
At the end of the day, it is the people who determine the
overall economic performance of the nation and not the government
which only plays a supervisory role to facilitate economic
development and progress.
Though it is critical to have a honest government in place to
lead the nation, it is more important to have a nation of
“lions” and not “sheeps” to take charge of its collective
destiny.
Take for example the United States which has seen a fair
share of dishonest, incompetent and corrupted Presidents and
lawmakers, but the nation is able to survive and prosper despite
frequent changes of government because the Americans are a nation
of “lions” and they can always find willing, capable and honest
people to lead them.
Unfortunately, Singapore has turned into a nation of “sheeps”
under fifty years of uninterrupted PAP rule which has seen its
“lions” being incarcerated for long periods of time, exiled to
other countries and bankrupted to live a life of poverty.
SM Goh must understand that Singapore is larger than the PAP
which is merely a political party elected by the people to lead the
nation.
In order for Singapore to continue growing and developing, we
need to have a nation of “lions” led by themselves instead of a
flock of hapless sheep following a frail, aging and blind lion
which may drop dead anytime.
http://www.temasekreview.com/2010/01/18/debunking-the-three-fallacies-inherent-in-sm-gohs-argument-that-good-leadership-is-linked-to-economic-performance/
