Yes. Though speaking in defense of the shifting paradigm in
change, I musty agree with Atobe that the time that has lapsed
since the initiation of such change requests to their respective
action phase is probably a lot longer than what the definition of
timely actions would have been held by a significant segment of
the population.
However, it is my personal opinion that perhaps the delay wasnt
originated by the mentality that The Leaders know best. Rather I
would have preferred to attribute the fault of such delays to 3
factors, namely:
1)The difficulty of forecasting and prediction of contingencies
scenarios and disaster stimulations response and reactions.
2)The inherently passive and externally derived sources behind
motivations for changes.
3)A reactive and self limiting cognitive that often responds only
to immediate and visible phenomena and threats/opportunities.
Notably, the above factors can be noted from certain events, which
have taken placed previously on the domestic soil.
If we were to look back, we would probably come to realize upon the
above cultural phenomena from the following more memory provoking
examples:
Initiation of Self Governing Awareness and
early related movements.
Came only after WW2 when SG has unfortunately fell into the
Japanese hands after the British Colonial Government has failed to
defend the land properly and seriously. The ugly truth behind the
importance of self-governance dawned upon everyone only after
majority of the local population has experienced the pain of having
their family members or friends being massacred by the enemy
invaders. 
The awakening to the serious and urgent need
of a stronger and better prepared National Civil Defense
Force.
Despite the existence of the early Civil Defense Force back during
the time of the collapse, the manpower and expertise of the force
was certainly inadequate to meet the scale of disaster of the New
World Hotel collapse which had unfortunately took place in the
early/mid 1980s.
Perhaps at that time of the forces formation, the primary concern
of the force was targeted around the notion of how to better fight
fires more effectively and efficiently with a speedier frame of
time.
Notably for this tragedy, apart from the thousands of personnel
called in from the SCDF, army, and police, thousands of civilian
volunteers also marched up forth to contribute their
assistance.
The lack of appreciation for Quality
Corporate Governance and systematic periodic changes and upgrading
to better management practices and trends.
The problem of stubborn mentality revolving around the early days
business mentality of Why do I need to change? undeniably, is a
guilty culprit which has played a significant role in the economic
crisis of 1984. While macro environmental factors apparently led
the domino effect, the lack of creative disaster recovery
stimulations and contingencies measures had played a bigger and
covert role in the bringing on of the many collapses.
Subsequently after the 1984 crisis, the remedial actions that had
been taken involved many, which even I am unable to recall at the
moment.
But a significant aspect which I will be using as example in the
following contents below to highlight on the existence of our
reactive and externally-driven mentality and attitude, would be the
NWCs advocate for changes to the traditional seniority based wages
structure to a more flexible and skill recognizing system.
When gloom subsequently struck us again unfortunately during the
1997-1998 regional Asian Economic Financial Crisis, we saw similar
faults causes at work one again. While the blow came not from
declines in physical export demands this time, the bubble was
however burst from the within in the financial markets exchanges,
which was made possible thru a lack of early symptoms warning
protocols in place.
Despite the difference in the originating appearance of the two
calamity sources, the core and fundamental problem cause remained
the same.
While the antidote to the first plague was given, everybody only
took in the medicine rigidly. Nobody bothered to exam further for
any other undetected loopholes in our systems, nor to re-examined
upon the damages that had already been done and to stimulate upon
an even more drastic disaster scenario where further assessment and
conclusions may be derived to alert us of how lucky we have been to
be able to have avoided even further pitfalls that were potentially
there in existence, but merely did not occur.
Apart from a handful of vigilantes who saw beyond the problem and
effectively developed and took early pre-emptive environmental
detection and contingency system measure coupled with the
reconfiguration their organizational structure and various internal
systems to enable higher survivability thru the next storm, others
stubbornly continued to rely primarily on blind faith and luck to
hope that theyll survive and pull thru the next incoming storm
which they have no idea when it will arrive.
Relating back to the Flexi-wage example, a significant number of
privatized corporations and SMEs were still in large, reluctant to
unwilling to push for the change on their wage structure. Many
continued to gamble on luck.
Into the new millennium we came, and while still painfully
threading on forward towards the path of recovery, hell struck
again with not just one, but from a few sources.
While what has happened in the recent months is clear to most and
us and needs no further elaboration, I have to highlight out that
with regards to a certain particular spin-off of the layoff and
wage cutting problem in existence, a majority of such occurrences
could have been avoided if the corporations and businesses have
heeded the early warnings and continuous advise of the NWC
counsel.
No doubt a mere change to the flexi-wage scheme would neither be
omnipotent or sufficient enough to save all the jobs that have been
or are inevitably to be lost, nor be capable of effectively
preventing the decline in business activities revenue. In the least
however, it could have better structured both businesses and
corporations, as well as the ordinary common wage taker for better
bracing against the storm.
Hence as seen form the above flow, perhaps the major obstacles
towards speedy reactions or response to a better suggestion or
concept is not entirely always the fault of the Government.
On contrary, by appearance, it seemed that the population has more
of a hand in the much and many of the delaying process. And unless
we rid ourselves of the current passiveness and empower ourselves
with strong inner locus controls, pre-emptive and less
risk-aversive mentalities, well only continued to roll and carry
on forward in this blame shifting game and becoming sitting ducks
again when the next calamity hits us again.
