an interesting article in littlespeck.com. yes it is high time
pap change its style:
PAP
Is it the start of a decline?
Unless ruling party changes the way it governs it could lose power
over time, and that would be a shame, says retired news editor. By
Yeo Toon Joo. Comment follows.
May 4, 2007
Article and open letter to our government by an ex-journalist
Yeo Toon Joo, Peter, 61
Ex-news editor Straits Times
Ex-assistant editor New Nation
Ex-secretary general Singapore National Union of Journalists
Ex-owner of a public relations company and broadcast PR firm
Hon. Fellow, Institute of Public Relations of Singapore
If the Peoples Action Party were to call a general election now,
chances are it would lose a good number of seats to the opposition,
that is, if you could find able candidates to join the
opposition.
If certain changes do not take place in the ruling partys style of
government, in time to come the PAP could lose power. That would be
a shame, a tragedy for Singapore.
But so strong has been the political backlash, and so great the
peoples outrage, over the governments widely unpopular decision
and persistence to reward its cabinet ministers such handsome pay
increases.
Dissenting and disapproving views over the latest round of
ministerial pay hike have been eloquently articulated, often
sneeringly so, but confined mainly to mass emailing and internet
postings.
The latest salary revision will by next year nearly double each
ministers current remuneration, and bring it on average to nearly
three times that of US President George Bushs, five times in the
case of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loongs.
Minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew had introduced in 1994 his formula of
pegging ministerial salaries to 80 per cent of that of the top
earners in six professions and businesses in Singapore.
It gives Singapore the unique status of having the worlds highest
paid political leaders. Their individual salaries surpass by far
those of leaders of the worlds largest and most successful
economies.
MM Lees reasons were that unless he paid top dollar for the best
brains he would not be able to attract good and talented people to
serve as leaders of the country, retain their services, or keep
them above corruption.
Problem is: he had been, for a long time now, looking for leaders
in the wrong places, and following a policy that discourages
emergence of potential ones.
Some who entered the political fray had come a cropper. Not a few
have served long terms of incarceration for their political beliefs
or activities, others have had to flee the country to live (or die)
in exile abroad.
Someone had not so many years back said that the best way to
corrupt a person is to feed him so well you enslave him (did MM Lee
say that?).
Ironically then, in his effort to ensure that his leaders remain
above corruption, he might have bought their souls.
From the relatively brief and muted parliament debate over this
burning issue, there seems to be some cracks within the ruling
partys own ranks.
However mildly aired, there is, for sure, disquiet and differences
of opinion among some PAP members of parliament.
Still, what man of sound mind in Singapore would argue against
being given a personal pay rise that first jacks up his annual
salary to around $1 million and soon to nearly $2 million?
Feed them so well, they will never rebel.
I love my Singapore, and am thankful for the remarkable progress
and prosperity it has achieved through the efforts of a stable and
good government.
I am immensely grateful, too, to the group of people who gave their
all for the country in the pre-independence 1950s and our early
days of nationhood.
I remain a loyal Singaporean who once had aspirations to serve our
country, and did it initially (1960s and early 1970s) as a
newspaper journalist, and through the Singapore National Union of
Journalists and the National Trades Union Congress, of which SNUJ
was affiliate.
I will carry to my grave, with great personal satisfaction, the
memory of having been part of the team that pulled off the first
successful workers strike against a penny-pinching, ill-managed,
callous Straits Times Group of Newspapers.
That industrial action, over the Christmas period of 1971, resulted
in a fairer deal for several thousands of its employees in Malaysia
and Singapore. It was a time of baptism under fire for my SNUJ
colleagues and me. Some of us could have lost our jobs with no
prospect of working for another English language newspaper in
Singapore as there was none other.
The late Mr C V Devan Nair, leader of the National Trades Union
Congress and later President of Singapore, was one of my role
models and idols then. He had encouraged me as a union leader by
helping to open up and broaden my mind.
In one of our several intimate conversations he challenged me to
join the PAP.
Later, someone suggested I joined an opposition party. But partisan
politics was not my cup of tea, more so as I was mindful of the
dangerous waters I would be plunging into. I also had little desire
for such public prominence.
Also, and alas, any zeal for committing further to community or
national leadership was quickly doused by a series of factors: one
was my loss of faith in the Straits Times Group as an honest news
organization.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew helped put paid to it by his public parading and
glorification of people who were steeped in scholarship, and
humiliation of those who were not.
MM Lee, in searching for a second and then third generation of
leaders, started looking for them first in academia (we know how it
failed) and then to those who were government scholars.
At the same time we saw the hasty and, perhaps, premature
retirement of our earlier PAP political leaders who had fire in
their bellies but no multiple mortar boards on their head.
The harsh treatment of those with dissenting views, and slapping
down of those brazen enough to join battle with the PAP and MM Lee
at the hustings, quickly scared off those who thought they had
something to offer to the country, but not necessarily as part of
the PAP political apparatus.
Those with divergent, though not necessarily subversive, views were
unmercifully smacked down.
Others, seduced by the comforts and affluence their talents and
training earned them in a prospering society (feed them so well
they will never rebel), soon lost their idealism and passion for
political sacrifice.
It made political engagement not only a perilous pursuit but a
wanton risk of losing all they had amassed materially, plus their
personal freedom.
A PAP apologist recently condemned me for criticizing the
incredible pay hikes for our cabinet leaders that has no precedent
or matching model anywhere in the world.
You can only criticise, but whats your solution?
I believe I have something by way of solution, or at least an
alternative view to what Mr Lee Kuan Yew insists is the only way to
attract and nurture the right political leaders:
Look for our future leaders not just among our scholastically
successful Singaporeans; academic excellence does not equate with
effective leadership. This quality might even disqualify a person
from leadership.
Look for people with a good and stout heart, undying love for
Singapore and his/her fellowmen, and a burning desire to serve even
at huge personal sacrifice people with compassion, fire in their
belly, grit in their gut, and steel in their back.
Look for those who possess and exhibit the many other qualities of
leadership.
A yen for scholarship (at governments expense) alone is a poor
prerequisite of leadership.
Encouraging scholarship of our bright students through the lure of
career and financial success could produce either more scholarship
bond breakers or those who will work only for lucre (for those are
the values you promote).
If you encourage our government scholars to cherish high income, in
a society exhorted to worship financial success, you will have to
pay big bucks to get them to join your PAP ministerial ranks
definitely not the people you need or want to lead our country and
inspire our countrymen.
Rethink government policy, enunciated by MM Lee Kuan Yew, of
encouraging potential leaders to chart their paths through the
Armed Forces (with an SAF scholarship), then a stint in the civil
service, a short spell in the private sector, and then to the PAP
cabinet.
You produce less open minded people who might possess a
one-dimensional perspective of the world, a common mind set.
Such a policy deprives you the services and creativity swimming so
abundantly in the vast reservoir of talents out there in the real
world. The military promotes obedience, viz. Charge of the Light
Brigade.
You could end up with people paid well enough and sufficiently
smart either to not charge with you or charge blindly even when
good sense tells them they should not.
By all means encourage elitism but do not ridicule those who have
interests and talents that are not skewed towards pursuit of a
PhD.
I cite one example of how MM Lee a few elections ago disparagingly
compared the not as impressive academic achievements of our loyal
opposition member, Mr Chiam See Tong, to those of his bright young
submissive scholars.
Do not intimidate or beat down all dissenters or those with
alternative views, but judge them on their integrity, and do not
swamp and swallow up those with potential for leadership into the
PAP and high ministerial salaries.
You end up with many yes men.
Open up the minds of Singaporeans by not controlling so rigidly the
flow of information about their own country, whatever its flaws and
foibles.
Put in place committed, honest, mature and trained journalists over
your mass media organisations, people with a feel for the ground
and popular feeling, people trained in journalism (not just in
academia) and bold enough to launch investigative journalistic
enquiry that aid thinking and intelligent decision making by
Singapores people.
If you find them do not stifle them.
NOTE: such control of the press deprives you of an essential source
of accurate feedback, and surrounds you with sycophantic counsel
akin to that of the king with no clothes.
The current mass media situation has encouraged a flourishing of
emailing and postings on cyber space; they contain useful
information as well as misinformation and disinformation, including
ranting by irresponsible people.
Let MM Lees quest for self-renewal verily proceed. He should let
the people he personally chose or vetted, take over fully.
Let them err, let them rule (when is the appropriate time for this
to happen?).
MM Lee did not have a mentor to minister to him and his colleagues
in the tumultuous days of pre- and early post-independence and
did not flounder.
I am no political scientist, nor your scholastic type. But I have
not been disabled from seeing another view to tackling our problem:
there is no lack of leaders, only a lack of desire. Perhaps, there
is a hesitation prompted by what is called fear.
We, in our immensely successful Singapore, owe much to MM Lee and
his colleagues. There are many Singaporeans who want to cherish his
legacy.
If the current controversy fuels more of the dangerous and
divergent views and anti-government sentiments (even hatred) that
have surfaced among our Singapore population, our remarkable
success as a country could prove ephemeral.
Singapore, especially with the Governments now liberal approach to
matters of morality, could be another sad story of the decline and
fall of a fledgling civilization.
If that happens, we would, as the late Mr G G Thompson, director of
the Singapore Political Study Centre once said, cause merely a
small yawn in the world. We need not let that happen.
Yeo Toon Joo
