Although MM Lee has been instrumental in fighting for Singapore
independence and industrialised the island state initially, he has
not really succeeded in building up the country's entrepreneurship
or economic competitiveness for Singapore since the 1970s.
A great leader should selflessly work to fulfill the wellbeing of
his people as his duty, and facilitate and sustain their
enterepreneurship and competitiveness in the modern world to lead
them to compete in knowledge-based environment.
Unfortunately since the 1970s, he has worked towards rewarding the
leaders and elites of public servants and has been practising a
system of voraciously taxing and recovering all costs of government
creating hardship to the people.
He practised the non-welfare system of government which is not a
bad policy but he allowed it to be auto-piloted to excess charging
people for housing and everything to full market value and
privatising or farming out traditional government services to
stinge on government services.
An average household now pays $500,000 - $800,000 over the 35-year
working life and ageing citizens are consequently deprived of their
retirements struggling in their advanced years when senior citizens
in other countries are enjoying their fruits of life.
Despite all the presumptuous claims about leadership and talents
there was hardly any objective and accountable good corporate
governance to date as witnessed in the NKF case.
Had he presented his case and arguments with plain logical
rationale to his people, he would not have made so many enemies or
created so much hates.
Zhuge incidentally was a brilliant strategist who was able to
employ limited resources against all odds to achieve great military
and management success.
Zhuge used the strengths of his people to great advantages and turn
adversities into opportunity to achieve much for his legendary
pursuit. No matter how difficult were the circumstances and the
odds, he sought to win over the support of his people based on good
rationale and strategies, planning and logics and won the respect
and admiration of his subordinates with great success.
In our case, all leaders sought to use their legalistic power to
the fullest to tax and raise fees to create surpluses claiming
success for such surpluses and voting their own handsome rewards
and highest bonuses as typified by the NKF way of governance
although majority of ordinary people are experiencing much
hardship.
Anti-welare and meritocracy policies were auto-piloted to excess
resulting in loss of practical entrepreneurship and economic
competitiveness. Many unpopular education and language policies
were rammed down on the people despite hurting the people
wellbeing, unpopularity and hardships.
Our leaders did not exercise rationale judgment but only use their
legalistic controls and regulations. This form of harsh autocratic
governance has stifled entrepreneurship and creativity not only in
education, but job creations and economic development.
The result is: today Singapore is losing its past economic
competitiveness in term of per capita earning from 8th to 22nd. Yet
despite all these problems, there is hardly any improvements until
NKF raised the genuine issues.
Do you call this kind of legalistic controls and regulations or
taxing and recovering costs successful government? You can choose
to worship such autocratic leadership irrespective of feedbacks on
people's struggles and problems. But the fact remains that such
autocratic top-down management is now unsuitable for running a
knowledge-based society and it is old-fashion and unimaginative
management.
Please refer to the past postings to read the 20 major policy
errors and problems with such top-down autocracy.
If only MM Lee was less conceptual and more down to earth to
understand what is good and people-centred management, or was
willing to learn from Zhuge he could have saved the economy and
avoided so many problems with his oppositions. He needs not have
created so many problems by being more proactive and taking timely
actions before economy drifted and entrepreneurs migrated in large
numbers.
He could have achieved real success by employing Zhuge great
rationality, objectivity and good corporate governance.
Singapore despite all the claims made by our leaders through clever
creative accounting and statistics is badly short of strategies and
the economy is entirely at the mercy of external cirucmstance
without any true strategies at work since the 1970s.
Modern examples or historical exampls, Robert and
Pikamaster, is that in politics and governance, if you are good in
governance you'd probably steady yourself in politics.
If one wonders if those arrogant ever got started when such (mostly
blind or layman) people perceive them so, that's over-worrying. In
fact, the only problem is whether you are or seem arrogant or not
to others:
1. Many people don't have the ability to draw fair or/and quality
judgment;
2. People should be worrying on other things than arrogance, but so
said, (1) is a problem.
Do you really think arrogance is a problem? It'd always be a
problem just as jealousy and such, as long as the people's quality
remains... lousy.
Besides, what averages see will never be in tune most of the time
with what the worst or the best sees. Should we let averages lead
the best or vice versa. Please take some time to think over before
replying.
Thanks.
If MM Lee indeed has realised the 20 problems and proactively
taken actions, he could have created much better value-adding
economy by the 1980s. Singapore has lost out too much due to wrong
elitist top-heavey education and economic planning. The economy has
retrograded so much in terms of our domestic SME performance which
today is at the worse shape.
What Singapore really needs badly are great strategist who could
see more creative ways of running the economy motivating the people
and implement the right mix of policies to put right the moribund
economy again.
