During all these years government has been cultivating elites to
run the public sector administration, has it achieved
anything?
e.g. During 1987,1993, 1998, 2001 recessions, when citizens are
losing their jobs due to business failures, what have the elites
done?
I remember the elites e.g. ministers, MPs, etc were telling the
people they cannot do anything about the external conditions
putting all the blames on workers for their presumably high wages
and choosiness.
While other Asian countries recovered from recessions Singapore was
often the laggards unable to recover for a number of years. Yet the
leaders have been promoting and paid themselves the highest
salaries unequalled by even the most advanced countries' ministers
or presidents.
Have the leaders proven their abilities to upgrade Singapore's
economy to match the advances in technology applications like
Finland, Switzerland or Korea. Have the saved jobs or succeeded in
upgrading the economy?
I feel that since our elites have not proven their abilities as
shown during all these recessions they should reexamine our system
of governing the country.
It is time to promote practical talents based on strictly work
performance. Under such practical performance system, elites can be
treated as executives or officers or automatically at the head or
senior or principal levels. At most they can be given a higher
entry point but promoted only upon successful performance and
showing of results like in the private sector.
As long as the government continues to over-emphasise on elites,
they will miss out on developing practical managment excellence and
result-oriented assessment of talents. Alternative practical
management excellence should be introduced to tamper the hype on
elitss so that every one will benefit.