CEO is normally paid more than the figurehead chairman or
president some of whom are quite free and not doing much. I agree
with you that this is a mistake and I believe it is a deliberate
mistake to pay president higher salaries to justify PM and
ministers getting their millions.
In the same way, Comfort GM who was previously paid much less was
suddenly paid millions one year when ministers were trying to
promote their own salaries structure.
Why so generous when a cab company boss in other companies were
paid much less than the millions paid to Comfort GM.
The answer is simple. Since ministers are benchmarking their pays
to million-dollar private sector CEOs but due to scarcity of such
million-dollar CEOs in the private sector the ministers would have
to encourage GLC to increase GMs' salaries to millions in order to
justify millions to be paid to ministers.
Even banker Wee Chaw Yao has said once he does not believe in
paying millions to his bank's CEO for well explained rationale like
such CEOs are not likely to stay around long enough to serve well
and in any case there is no such a thing as millions equate to best
candidates or better performance.
Many civil servants received windfalls because of such tweaking
of their salaries to justify the ministers' own jumps in
salaries.