Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Why the PAP needs to continue paying obscene salaries to attract unwilling politicians

Why the PAP needs to continue paying obscene salaries to attract unwilling politicians

In mature and modern democracies like Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, citizens who wish to serve their fellow brethen and contribute to the nation are willing to step forward to present themselves as candidates in the general elections either as a member of a political party or as an independent.

Some have to accept pay cuts in order to enter politics and they do so willingly out of their own free will. The present South Korea President Lee Myung Bak was the Chairman of conglomerate Hyundai for 27 years before entering politics. His annual salary as President is only a fraction of his pay in the private sector and even then he donated it entirely to the poor during his 5 year tenure.

In Singapore, where politics is tightly controlled and dominated by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) since independence, very few Singaporeans are willing to risk their livelihoods to contest in an election.

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew has publicly said on repeated occasions that he has “engineered” the system in such a way that his PAP are assured of victory in elections.

The zero sum game in Singapore politics means that you are either with or against the PAP. Given the climate of fear fostered by ISA arrests and defamation lawsuits on opposition leaders, it is little wonder that Singaporeans are generally averse to politics.

With the opposition weak and fragmented, an aspiring politician in Singapore has few choices to choose from. Unless one is invited by the PAP to their ‘tea parties’, it is highly unlikely he or she is able to get elected into Parliament at the first attempt on the ticket of an opposition party. The late opposition icon Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam won a seat in Parliament in 1981 only after five fruitless attempts.

The pervasive political apathy in the populace has led to a perculiar situation in which there is a dearth of talented Singaporeans joining politics. The PAP has to go out of its way to coax Singaporeans to join its ranks.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong acknowledged the difficulties he is facing to recruit talents into politics in a recent media interview:

“The plethora of opportunities in the private sector has also made it harder to gather the talents together to coax them to join politics.” (read article here)

Now if the PAP has to expend considerable time and efforts on these talents, it is probable they do not have the aptitude or passion for politics in the first place.

Good politicians are natural leaders who have the unique ability and charisma to inspire others to band together and follow them. They are able to chart out a direction for the country and envision a common future shared by all citizens.

The PAP ministers and MPs are mostly bureaucrats and technocrats. They are good administrators, but lousy politicians. But that’s the reason why they are chosen to be in the government because they will not challenge the status quo.

First class talented politicians in the mould of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew will not join the PAP now because there is no place for them to display their capabilities which leaves us with talents who excels in their respective professions, but are not necessarily leaders in their own right.

According to PM Lee, his party is currently scouring for talents in their late 30s and early 40s. As they are in the prime of the careers, it is an uphill task to convince them to forsake what they have achieved so far in their fields of interest to join politics full-time.

Since these talents are unwilling politicians to begin with, the PAP needs to entice them with high salaries in order to persuade them to stand for elections. This explains why the ministers’ salaries have been increased by more than 80% during the last few years in order to peg it to the private sector.

The crux of the problem lies in the flawed PAP system of governance which is meant to perpetuate their hegemony at the expense of curtailing the growth of a real democracy in Singapore and it is the taxpayers who end up having to pay for its selfish partisan interest.

Without offering higher salaries and lucrative perks, few Singaporeans are willing to leave their comfort zones and get their hands soiled in politics. What about the first rate politicians? The PAP will not risk ‘rearing a tiger’ within the party to threaten their hold on power.

Both the party and the system are in urgent need of reforms. In order for Singapore to produce another MM Lee, there must be a level playing field in politics for all parties.

The PAP started out as an opposition party. If the legislative elections in pre-independence Singapore are as “engineered” as our elections now, will MM Lee even stand half a chance to become the Prime Minister of Singapore?

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