What is wrong with our Charities?

What is wrong with our Charities?

In Singapore, there are three ways for leaders to make a lot of money. One way is the government (or government linked corporation like CapitaLand). Another way is to use religion like the New Creation Church. The third way is through charities like the old NKF.

This recent scandal is a combination of the last two where you have Buddhist monk Shi Ming Yi being arrested for financial irregularities. (Why would a monk need $20,000 a month?!) Well this is not the only thing the monk lied about. It seems that he also lied about his academic qualifications too! For a man who claims to follow a religion that denies the material world, he seems to follow it really well (money and ego). Skeptic finds this contradiction unfathomable, just like he doesn't understand pedophillic Catholic priests who renounced sexual pleasures.

So don't be fooled by external appearance. Just because some people wear robes (while others wear all white during elections) doesn't mean they can be trusted.

But this post is not about deception, this single incident is just a symptom of a bigger problem that plagues our society. There is little transparency and an entitlement mentality from our Government and it is this attitude that seems to filter down to the masses.

"However, when the core leadership is clean, corruption can be gradually diminished. Both must be prepared to take on the big ones in the highest echelons of the government. This is most painful to do, as I know from experience.Corruption has to be eradicated at all levels of government. But if there is corruption at the highest levels of a government, the problem can become intractable." Lee Kuan Yew (see link for full full speech)

Lee Kuan Yew hit the nail on the head when he said that bad habits become intractable when the people at the top practice them. If we see little transparency at the top, we'll see people hiding their accounting books at the bottom. If we see an entitlement mentality by our ministers at the top, we'll see a similar mentality by the directors of our charitable organisations. It is strange that Lee cannot see that this situation is also applicable to the current generation of PAP leaders.

Ren Ci Hospital wasn't the first charity scandal in Singapore and Skeptic predicts it won't be the last. The CAD is only a reactive tool that can be used to treat the symptoms when they flare up from time to time. The only way to remove the root cause of this problem is to tackle it at the top.

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