Are our leaders solving the 20 major problems ?

robertteh SG

Every country has its own problems and must govern its own business based on its own social and cultural perspective.

However through clever media presentatin, for years the people have been brainwashed into believing that they were the lucky ones who are well off by comparing as always with the worse countries without mentioning that those other countries like Malaysians and Thailand at least can live more comfortably without earning the same so-called higher salaries due to paying much higher costs for all the basic services. This problem was unveiled in the way NKF has charged for its fees to Kidney patients which is a few times higher than corresponding treatment costs in Malaysia.

Frankly would leaders in more mature and progressive countries like Japan, Finland, Switzerland be found in the habit of constantly telling their people to compare with Indonesia or Sri Lanka when their people give negative feedbacks to its leaders.

Only our self-centred narrow-minded look-good leaders would want to continue to make such comparison.

Those who possess real visions and abilities would not need to make such comparison or claims of leadership abilities.

During the prolonged recessions in the period 1997-2001, the leaders were seen to be fumbling in their economic management and were totally hopeless and without solutions to the many major past problems.

Despite paying themselves the million-dollar salaries in a lopsided self-worth and self-adulating salary review of ministers they totally pushed away problems when it came to a crisis and put all the blame for their failure to upgrade the economy or mass job losses and retrenchments on some unheard-of phenomenon called structural unemployment which they said are world-wide trend and not their faults.

They could not solve many problems caused solely by their own past high-wage high-value doctrine which lead to high costs of living, and anti-business environments, and domestic investments climate was in a slump due to such failed policies.

They were hopeless and unable to come up with new solutions to meet competitions whether from China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan , Korea or even Vietnam.

More and more Singapore's SMEs and domestic sector companies have closed shops and many continue to go under due to short-sighted high-wage policy called Goh Keng Swee Doctrine.

Autocratic narrow-minded pro-foreign policies did not help to create jobs for Singaporeans. The old economic strategy adopted from the early days since 1970s and the relentless tax-and-recover governance continue to run aground the economy.

Citizens have to pay double on lands and triple on vehicle transportations up to some $500,000 - $800,000 per household life-cycle to build the country high reserves which like the NKF only benefitted the leaders' or CEO salaries and self-worth but crushed their spirit and wellbeing of the people.

As to be expected the moment the world economy turned the first corner the leaders would be abuzs with theories and concept about leadership and talents and would claim credit again for their building up the country better than any poorer ones around the region forgetting that they are paid much higher salaries and each country should be governed to solve its own problems.

Despite all their claims of abilities, today sadly they have failed to come up with entrepreneurial solutions to solve the following 20 major problems:-

(1) Bureaucracy in civil service.
(2) High costs of essential government services e.g. medical, utilities, housing, transportation, education, etc, etc
(3) Failure of the publicised Growth Triangles
(4) Affective divide or estrangement of the people in political participation.
(5) Work site safety problems (Hotel New World Collapse's blue paper was not effectively implemented) evidenced by more major accidents e.g. Nicol Highway collapse.
(6) Failure to Deliver the Swiss standard of living
(7) Asset enhancement scheme fiasco
(8 ) Unit trust investment fiasco
(9) Foreign relation fiascos
(10) Non-formulation of a value-adding investment strategy
(11) Double-charging on lands (paid by taxpayers yet charged back to them at full market prices) and triple charges on vehicles.
(12) Meritocratic education policy that backfired - brain drains of thousands
(13) Mother tongue - CL1 admission fiasco
(14) Reaching World Cup soccer league by 2010 - no sign of getting near.
(15) Investment losses by thousands of citizens from CPF funds.
(16) Spiraling of government ministers' and civil servants' salaries.
(17) Failure to implement accountability and transparency in respect of investments of citizens' monies in overseas investments.
(18 ) Loss of economic competitiveness due to high costs.
(19) Neglect in promoting entrepreneurship
(20) Neglect in nurturing the domestic sector of economy.

SnowFlag SG

They are solving problems. Some are as follows Mr. Green

1. Reduce unemployment rate - Just by changing the way they do the statistics, the unemployment rate is reduced greatly. Even the professor from NTU is speechless. Wink

2. Allows singaporeans to own shares, namely Sing*** shares - at a price we come to know later Laughing

3. Enable Singaporans to own HDB flats from the government's subsidies which we know it isn't that subsidised after all......But then, the purpose of high ownership is achieved, rt? Wink

4. Using the Robin Hood way of charging medical bills. but no rich ppl being robbed this time Embarassed

5. ERP. Other countries are learning from us already Cool

6. Stability. We have party whips to avoid errant MP like those in other countries and questions asked need to be approved beforehand Twisted Evil

7. Least Corrupted. Surely no one will be tempted more than the million dollar that they get per year, right? For some, is til the rest of their lifetime. It shows that our goverment cares ........ for themselves ..........to perform better to serve the ppl Laughing

8. Know how important..... pianist, footballers, and ex-ambassador are Razz
And that white horses are a rare breed. Mr. Green

9. Ability to get the best ppl to join their lightning party....leaving only chinese chauvinist, postal stamp cheats for the opposition parties.

10. The coming goodies that we will received in the next few months is an indication of how well we have done, and we can use them for any upcoming price increase....in the same month? Very Happy

Lastly, I want to say that I prefer to choose honest ppl who are willingly and not afraid of serving ppl...but then......

mistyblue SG

Solve the biggest problem …can liao…

SnowFlag SG

robertteh,

just to say that I dun agree with some of ur points Mr. Green
but that is just my personal opinion Cool

SnowFlag SG

what is the biggest problem? Embarassed

SnowFlag SG

too tired, i better go to sleep n wake up being positive n productive tmr Mr. Green

Calvin86 SG

Yah i get pissed when they starting comparing to places like Indonesia and Vietnam. Why not use Africa in future? Then Singaporeans will always be happy.

If they are as capable as what they claim, they should compare with places like Hong Kong, Taiwan or Korea not Africa or Indonesia.

Atobe SG

The sad part of this Singapore Experience is that the Ruling Political Party's Grand Design in putting the apolitical Singaporean to sleep by draconian ways of preventing political participation through Police enforcement, the Internal Security Act, and the mobilization of the Government Machinery to block and prevent the effective rise of any organised public dissent by Singaporeans.

The most deceitful part is playing on the fears of Singaporeans towards instability and insecurity threatening economic growth.

To be more accurate, this is a reflection of the instability and insecurity of the Ruling Political Party in allowing any relaxation that allow OPEN Political Participation by Singaporeans in the Civil Political Life of Singapore.

Can the list of 20 Problems highlight be resolved WITHOUT the FULL and ENTHUSIASTIC POLITICAL PARTICIPATION of Singaporeans ?

The word 'SINGAPOREANS' should include not only those in support of the Ruling Political Party, but should also include the larger population who supports the Opposition Parties or remaining DISINTERESTED in Politics.

robertteh SG

If mass participation is to take place people must put up their diverse views for the common good. It is not possible for establishment points of view to be the only or the best views. It is inevitable too that your views will not be the same as my views which make no difference any way to any one since I am not a minister or the government. However I must support your diversity of views as a good thing to happen in our present system without which there will be more hardship and draconian policies which have crushed people's spirits and progress for quite some time now. We as people must approach the over all problems from such diversity perspective to get government to pursue better all-round solutions.

I welcome your points but for your different views to be effective you too need to elucidate them for the benefits of all but just point out your disagreement with a terse disagreement without further comments. In this way we will know that we can make sense to one another in giving our views and at the end decide en-masse what is good, substantiated and creative.

robertteh SG

(As posted to Feedback Unit in reply to Mansonm on 15.3.2006)

Mansonm,

By what you have just stated after the many posts repeatedly praising of the govenrnment and their leaders, it is noted that you have finally agreed that there exist problems which were not yet solved.

If that is the case, then our government leaders should own up to these problems and learn to be more humble, more responsible, accountable and transparent in solving these problems and not try to paint good pictures all the time as seen happening in their constant media utterences.

Then people will be motivated by honesty of integrity of leaders and will play their part. Self-centredness and justifications and look-good presentation cannot hoodwink people as the saying goes "you can fool some people some time but cannot fool people all the time". Self-centredness will be no good in any society and anti-progress.