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The PM on Paying For Talent !
Excessive Ministerial pay is not there to secure talent. If the government were interested in talent it would want to promote competition and encourage a market place of ideas.
This is what I said when interviewed by Today in 2010, http://sonofadud.com/about-ricebowl/about/interview-for-today-newspaper-in-2010-which-explains-a-little-bit-about-me/
“The PAP may be against the two-party system but it’s inevitable, as we have seen in Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. The problem with the one-party system is not corruption – at least not in Singapore because the Government is not corrupt – but it leads to a society closed to new ideas, with too many “yes men”.
Nothing much has changed since that interview except maybe that women are proving to be the best “Yes Men” amongst the Ministerial ranks and we are realising that the key word in discussion of Ministerial pay is not “corrupt” but “obscene”. The PAP still takes steps to ensure that only the official point of view is heard. Betraying its Communist roots, the PAP is organised as an old-fashioned monopolist where high pay levels reflect the lack of competition. Like the cadre system or the nomenklatura system for the Stalinist and Brezhnev-era elite, the payment of economic rent is there to ensure loyalty and a cabinet of yes-men.
Yesterday the PM gave his rationale for our excessive Ministerial salaries. He asked several important questions,
- Can a future PM continue to get the best and most committed people to serve as his ministers?
- In fact, can we get the best possible future PM for Singapore?
- How can our pay system support this important goal?
So far so good but of course for our dear PM these were just rhetorical questions. In fact he failed to answer them and instead side-stepped and answered some easier questions. That’s disappointing. For me one of the most interesting aspects of the Pay review commission has been the questions asked.GerardEestarted his presentation with the question,
- What is Singapore?
Gerard answered his question by saying that Singapore is a rock and then used that as justification for the pay levels but the question is one that requires further discussion. Many Singaporeans would say that Singapore is a Nation of convenience for whoever wants to take advantage of our tax haven and secret banking facilities. A Nation built on a rock by the sweat of our brow for the convenience of others, who now reap our just rewards.
The Prime Minister answers his own rhetorical questions by going on to say that it was only by paying people well (obscenely well by the standards of what ordinary Singaporeans earn and by the pay of politicians in other countries with similar or higher living standards) that Singapore could get these people to come forward. There may be public-spirited people among us, PM Lee asked, “But will there be enough of them to produce a whole team of ministers, a whole Cabinet equal to the task and with the standards which we have come to expect?” (ST, 18th January).
The problem is not the pay structure as a barrier or an enticement. Part of the obstacle to developing talent as I have said elsewhere is the cadre system.
I have also already written elsewhere (http://sonofadud.com/2012/01/05/a-committee-that-cannot-calculate-the-median-of-the-top-1000-is-either-deliberately-misleading-the-public-or-incompetent/) about how absurd it is to benchmark the pay of politicians against the median income (including stock options!) of the top 1,000 earners. Many of these people will be genuine wealth creators who have founded innovative companies or created new products or even whole new technologies. Imagine if President Obama was to say that his pay should be pegged to what Steve Jobs,Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Page earned in any year. I cannot say for certain what reception he would receive but I suspect that it would be universal derision.
A question I would like to see the PM answer is,
“How many of the top 1,000 earners are CEOs or top management of government-or NTUC-linked companies or civil servants?”
Since the government sets the salaries of those in the public sector we seem to have an inbuilt mechanism for rampant pay inflation of public-sector managers. The latter are already overpaid compared to their counterparts in the private sector (particularly when job security and pensions are taken into account).
In any case this government should not pretend that it wants talented people to step forward and enter politics. For fifty years they have taken the harshest steps to raise the barriers to entry to politics for Singaporeans and to ensure that those who dared to have different ideas paid an enormous financial and personal cost. In the past they detained people, often for longer than a murderer would receive. When this became difficult after the fall of Communism, they switched to using defamation suits to bankrupt their opponents. Whether justified or not, there is still a perception in most Singaporean’s minds, reinforced by the government’s stifling control over the domestic economy, that standing for an Opposition party or even being a member of one is the kiss of death to one’s career prospects.
In the realm of ideas, the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act and total control of the media ensure that views which do not accord with the ruling party or even the approved Opposition do not get aired. The same restrictions apply to debates and forums. Requirements that political parties register their websites and apply for annual newspaper licences reinforce this. Even in the new social media, the state-run media, aided by their monopoly profits elsewhere, have established a dominant presence and a well-funded and staffed clandestine internet brigade ensures that those who have dissenting views are subjected to the internet equivalent of being shouted down. While this would be fine if there was genuine freedom of expression the fact is that the right of reply is not established anywhere.
The government has never believed that competition is the best way to ensure that we do get the top talent. Even in the narrow field of electoral competition the government behaves like the convoy system in WWII. In order to cross open seas the smaller weaker vessels were put in the centre and surrounded by battleships and destroyers on the outside. The GRC system allows unelectable newbies, speaking with the voices of entitlement and privilege (Tin Pei Ling, Janil Puthucheary) to shelter beneath the big guns of Ministers and Ministers of State and pass untested into Parliament. Until the last election more than 50% of them could expect to do this without even the formality of an electoral contest. No wonder Grace protested.
I believe the PM is substituting the question of “How do I get the best people to come forward” which is difficult to answer with the easier question of,
“How do I get people to come forward who will be loyal yes-men (or women) and not have any views of their own?”
Perhaps the PM is not totally cynical and actually believes he is answering the first question when in fact he is answering the second. He is himself a victim of brainwashing and cannot see that he is confusingSingapore’s interests with those of the PAP. Knowing that loyalty rather than talent is the real objective of the pay system also helps to explain some of the puzzling remarks that have been made by people like Grace Fu. In business people generally want to be compensated for towing the company line and stifling their own creativity and originality. Giving Grace Fu the benefit of the doubt perhaps that is what she meant when she said that cutting the pay of ministers any further might induce her to rethink her commitment to politics. Or her comments may be indicative of cracks within the PAP. Was this a warning shot across the bows? A warning that she didn’t get into this for the good of the country and that if she is not even to be compensated adequately for her loss of privacy, (and the 1,400 negative Facebook comments) then don’t be too confident on her continued support in the future.
We must ask, would it be so bad if all the Chan Chun Sings and Tin Pei Lings of Singapore were forced to contest in a free and fair election, one candidate per ward, and the majority of them lost their seats. Well normally in a democracy that wouldn’t be a tragedy or a national disaster because equally talented people would be sitting across the hall in team B waiting to serve. It is the PAP’s 50 years of squashing alternative views that has brought us to the current situation.
So PM please drop the sanctimonious humbug about (obscenely) high pay being necessary to induce good people to come forward. If you are genuinely interested in the widest possible talent pool and the best people (whether in the PAP or an alternative government) then you would adopt the following steps (these are just a few of the many suggestions) before paying your ministers top salaries:
- Abolish restrictions on freedom of expression
- Dismantle the Newspaper and Printing presses Act
- Abolish the ISA
- Abolish the GRC system
- Reform the defamation laws
- Remove race from our IC cards
- Raise the status and profile of the Opposition by creating the title of Leader of the Opposition and paying that person like a minister (as is the practice in the UK and other countries) Give Opposition parties working budgets and office space.
- Broaden access and funding for scholarships but restrict the monetary component to students from lower-income groups while eliminating the requirement to be bonded. This would reduce “groupthink” while promoting equality of opportunity and hopefully lessening income inequality as well.
- Support open debate and free thinking. Encourage and support a culture of diversity of views.
Only after that can we start to examine how our pay structure can support talent once it has been identified and nurtured. Then we can start looking at the big questions such as, What is Singapore? What do we want it to be?
Like this:
Dear Santa, I don’t like the cadre and secret cabal I got last year. Next year I’d like some openness, competition and democracy instead.
Recently the PAP held their first Party convention post election allowing us to scrutinise the cadre system and the iron grip on power that it provides for. AlexAuwrote about it in his blog (http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/four-barriers-to-remaking-the-pap/) where he highlighted his opinion that the cadre system is one of four main reasons why the PAP would fail to learn any lessons from their setback in GE 2011. The rest of his reasons would be worthy of discussion in a separate article in their own right. However as we look back at 2011 I will concern myself with a closer look at the cadre system and how it affects your ricebowl.
It is of course not only the PAP who employs the cadre system. For the benefit of those who may be unfamiliar with the term, a cadre system is one in which the leadership of the Party selects certain members to be cadres. The cadres are then the only members who have voting rights and they elect the leadership. It is of course a completely closed system in which the leadership ensures its position by only selecting as cadres people who will be loyal to them. The cadre vote the leaders who select the cadre who vote the leaders who select ………………..and so on.
In her 1971 political science thesis, “Singapore’s People’s Action Party: Its History, Organisation and Leadership (Oxford University Press)”, Ms Pang Cheng Lian, who sits on the board of Temasek Cares, describes elections to the CEC by the cadres as a “closed system”, in which “the cardinals appoint the pope and the pope appoints the cardinals”. Most of us Singaporeans know this system is employed by the men in white. Sadly, as far as I am aware, every other political party in Singapore employs a variant of the cadre system. This includes the Workers Party, the SDP, the NSP and the SPP. I have no information about the other new parties, the Justice Party the USD (does anyone remember them? ) and the new parties still to come in 2012 but I believe it is safe to assume they all employ or will employ the same system.
Just as Alex believes the cadre system may explain why the PAP is incapable of learning new lessons so I believe that adherence to the cadre system may be partly responsible for the agonisingly slow progress of the Opposition parties and the dearth of new ideas or renewal. It is certainly the culprit behind the endemic Party hopping which discredits all Opposition equally and has nothing to do with renewal of ideas. Party hopping is the same old faces, with the same old ideas but with new titles. It would take a visionary to develop a party with a radically different structure. Or maybe a democracy veteran with no time left to lose who, looking back on his life’s work, realised that closed organisations can’t give birth to Open Societies. Yes, The Reform Party is the only political party in Singapore which is a democracy since it alone does not have a cadre system to protect the leadership and all members have voting rights.
The cadre system has its origins in the Marxist concept of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and the “vanguard”. This meant that only a small elite group of individuals were fit to lead the Communist Party and the nation. The masses were not ready for democracy and it was better that they be led by those who knew best. The Communist ideal was one of eventual full democracy once the masses had been educated enough. Leninargued (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism) the ideal vanguard party would be one where membership was completely open and its workings transparent, the “entire political arena is as open to the public view as is a theatre stage to the audience” (from What is to be Done?). He seems to be acknowledging the benefits of competition though cannot speak its name when he goes on to say that a party that supposedly implemented democracy to such an extent that “the general control (in the literal sense of the term) exercised over every act of a party man in the political field brings into existence an automatically operating mechanism which produces what in biology is called the “survival of the fittest”.” This party would be completely open to the public eye as it conducted its business which would mainly consist of educating the proletariat to remove the false consciousness that had been instilled in them.
The cadre system went on to be adopted by both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party and by many other Maoist revolutionary parties throughout the world. Lenin originally intended it to deal with the problems of controlling and maintaining the secrecy of the Bolshevik party which was seeking to overthrow the Czarist regime in Russia, in the face of infiltration by the Okhrana, the Czar’s secret police. Ironically the goal of preventing infiltration, this time by Communist agents, is the oft-cited justification given by the PAP leadership as to why the cadre system was introduced. If so it does not justify its retention today when there is no longer a Communist threat. Even if there were the ideal way of combating it would surely be through more democracy not less.
Of course the Communist roots of the PAP are not a secret. This is why the arbitrary arrest and detention of certain individuals on the grounds that they were Marxists and that they represented a secretive organisation is particularly ironic.
The fact that the PAP continue to maintain a cadre system shows how out-of-step they are with modern democratic parties and how little understanding they have of the benefits of competition and transparency and accountability. While they maintain a closed system which ensures that only people, who hold the leadership’s views, whether out of principle or self-interest, get to vote, it is difficult to see how any renewal can take place. Perhaps it is too much to expect the ordinary people of Singapore to understand the need for multi-million dollar salaries for ministers. They are afflicted with the false consciousness of a belief in democratic values and the equality of individuals. You need elite (the cadres) who are sufficiently intelligent not to fall prey to false consciousness to understand why servant leaders need millions of dollars as remuneration. Hopefully the review board will be able to explain it to us shortly.
However the other parties inSingaporeclearly feel the same way as the PAP that democracy is a dangerous idea and power should not be entrusted to the ordinary members. Or they merely aspire to be the PAP and adhere slavishly to their ideas and methods-PAP LITE, if you will. Whatever the motivation, all of them maintain some sort of cadre system. The argument often given for the necessity of this is that it leads to “stability”. This is just another facet of the argument that democracy leads to gridlock and that the people are too short-sighted or stupid to exercise power responsibly. Even if a so-called extreme faction managed to be elected to the leadership, like the AWARE situation, ultimately democracy ensures competition. If the new leadership fails to reflect the will of its members or is unsuccessful at winning electoral office then it can be replaced.
It is genuinely worrying that so much of the Opposition shares the same mindset as the PAP. This begs the question as to whether their leadership are genuinely interested in change or representation or whether it is merely power that they seek.
To recap on what I said earlier, the only party that does not have a cadre system is the Reform Party. The RP is thus the only genuinely democratic party. Instead of a closed system, the RP CEC is elected by the Party Conference which is made up of delegates. Everyone, provided they fulfil basic criterion, gets a vote. As a result the Party is the purest expression of the will of its members. The Party Conference promotes a free market in ideas as any member can put forward a motion. As it forces anyone running for office to be responsive to the views of the members, it represents the implementation at the Party level of the principles we are fighting for at the national level. We refer to this as Conference being Sovereign. It is clear that when JBJ set up the RP he wanted to have nothing to do with secretive cabals and backroom deals and start a party that would exemplify the virtues of democracy. He learnt from bitter experience, when he was ousted as SG of the WP, how dangerous an unrepresentative clique is. In a way a genuinely democratic party was his legacy to the nation and serves as a model of what we need to see at the national level.
Many are scared away from joining the RP because of the lack of a cadre system which they feel makes it inherently unstable. Certainly its first three years have not been an easy ride. But if democracy itself is something we seek and value then a truly democratic Party is a necessity. As the RP is not a good long term bet for ironclad power, it is less attractive as an option to those who are power hungry or egotists. Why go to all that trouble to infiltrate a party to make it less radical, less viable as an agent of change, when you may be voted out in 2 years time and the Party may simply revert to its former state? This is what we saw happen with Aware. A group of women cleverly saw that getting like minded members in the organisation in sufficient numbers was key to changing its identity. But ultimately Aware was strong enough and its original ideology and had been in existence long enough to shake off that challenge.
No doubt many initially joined RP in error not clearly realising the ramifications of the democratic nature of the constitution. What a shock it must have been to them to realise that Conference is Sovereign and yes, they would actually need to get a majority vote from ordinary members to change the constitution and bring in a cadre system. How much easier it was to simply do a deal for power and leadership elsewhere in exchange for sabotage. And how much more effective to do it in collaboration with the State media, ever hungry as they are for dirt.
But here is the surprising thing. RP as an organisation , as Aware did before them, similarly survived with its democratic nature intact and went on to field 11 candidates in GE 2011. So maybe democracy is not the greatest weakness of a political party but its greatest strength in the long term. Certainly many commentators like Alex are now seeing the cadre system as responsible for hampering progress within the PAP and its greatest obstacle going forward.
What next in 2012? Well the PAP cadres have concluded their convention and business goes on as usual within their closed circles. There has been a lot of talk of Opposition parties joining forces in a grand coalition as well as of new parties being set up. However the important question for voters should be whether any of the parties are genuinely democratic. I would not wish the RP to merge with another party for example, unless that party were also to adopt a democratic constitution and abandon the cadre system. My fervent wish for 2012 is that any new party set up will be Democratic and that through openness and with competition fostering progress we will go forwards as a Nation and not backwards. We need to change the old Singapore/PAP influenced Model so that we can have a better future. As always I am daring to imagine a new rice bowl for an advanced Asian nation.
Like this:
National Day Message
National Day 2011 Message from the Reform Party
Published: 9th August 2011
My Fellow Singaporeans,
Today we Singaporeans meet to celebrate our Nation’s 46th National Day. Today we can look back with excitement to a general election recently fought on a new political landscape. But today we must also look ahead with trepidation to challenging economic times on the horizon.
This election was exciting in many ways with the historic toppling of a GRC. But it also marked the introduction of a fresh political landscape for Singapore with the first new Political Party to enter the arena and contest an election in decades. With new and credible opposition figures coming forward as a result and with (almost) every single seat contested.
On National day it is common to look back at the journey we have taken and where we came from in order to measure how far we have progressed. Some of us were born and starting to grow up in the region before Singapore became a Nation. Others will have come here only recently. But most of us will be benefiting in one form or another from the hard work of the generation that founded Singapore through the sweat of their labour. Founding fathers like J.B. Jeyaretnam. JBJ, founder of The Reform Party, was the man who in 1981 first broke through a 16 year monopoly to give our Nation its first elected opposition Member of Parliament. He and the Singaporeans who voted for him put our Nation on the first rung of the ladder leading to true and fair democracy. A democracy and a way of government decreed in the National Pledge that will be recited today. A democracy still not realised.
JBJ often said that it was necessary to dismantle the GRC system, if we were ever going to break the stranglehold of the authoritarian (virtual) one Party state that is Singapore under PAP rule. In 1997 JBJ came close to doing it at Cheng San polling 45 % in a constituency where the Prime Minister felt it necessary to stand inside the Polling Station. That percentage of 45% was not bested until this year, 2011, with the historic victory at Aljunied. The length of time it has taken to topple that first GRC is a measure of how firm the PAP’s stranglehold still is and how far we still have to go before we have true and open debate in Parliament.
It is right to be proud of our success as a Nation but that hubris must be balanced with humility and we need to be ever mindful that not all of our fathers’ generation are able to retire in wealth and health. For every comfortably retired PAP minister with a lavish pension there are 100 ordinary, elderly Singaporeans facing daily financial hardship and a health care crisis.
When JBJ set up the Reform Party he broadcast in his inaugural speech the following message , “I appeal to all Singaporeans to cast off the slumber into which you have been led over the last 50 years, to wake up to your rights as human beings to your proper role as citizens of your country.” After his untimely death The Reform Party did not collapse but regenerated and to his appeal to Singaporeans to Wake Up! the Party added the appeal to Stand Up! By coming forward myself and standing I stated that my aim was to normalise democracy. I hoped to show by example that you did not have to worry that you would lose everything and be ruined for exercising your political rights. That ordinary and credible men and women could and should stand for public office if real change was to come about. That ordinary people needed to face down the climate of fear which has gripped Singapore since the PAP came to power.
And you did stand up. The 2011 election was the most exciting one for decades. It brought many new faces forward. Nearly 90,000 of you voted for The Reform Party, a new Party in its debut election, with a pioneering and sometimes difficult message. We were overwhelmed by your response and by the gratitude of an electorate who had been denied the opportunity of voting for so long.
However to this government it seems like business as usual. Despite 40% of you voting for change this translated under our rigged and gerrymandered electoral system into only six seats in Parliament for the Opposition out of 87. Before we get too excited about our new Parliament let us question why they do not feel the need to sit till October despite having gained the mandate in May. We are in the midst of a global economic crisis and our leaders are demonstrating breathtaking arrogance. No better proof could be given that Parliament is just regarded as a rubber stamp for the executive arm. The Reform Party wants to change this so that the actions of the government are held up to scrutiny by Parliament and the government is made accountable.
During the election campaign our leaders presented a report card to show how well they had done to justify their re-election. They spoke of a rosy economic future and the tremendous opportunities that lay ahead for Singaporeans. What really took the biscuit though was how they handed over a small proportion of the government’s surplus that year as a pre-election goody bag while paying Ministers and senior civil servants big bonuses. Despite the PM’s historic apology, and a few sacrificial victims who were due for retirement anyway, it appears that there is to be no real change in this government’s policies. And while the electoral system continues to deprive you of any real voice you will continue to get economic policies that are not in your interest.
Today we stand on the brink of a double-dip recession that I pointed out was likely some time ago. Singapore’s GDP fell last quarter and will almost certainly fall again in the current quarter which would constitute a technical recession. Today the government will continue to claim that the boom years are the result of the PAP’s wise economic stewardship and that the recessions to come are the result of global economic forces beyond their control. I have no doubt you will be reminded of the need to have a toughened hide in the future to take the risks of life with no safety net and to be grateful for the policies of ministers who may dance and sing on stage.
Minister Lim Hng Kiang said in May that the Reform Party was out of step even with the other Opposition Parties. And yet we have seen even the PAP now start to talk of Reform with a committee set up to review Ministerial salaries. Some opposition parties are now paying homage (belatedly) to JBJ with others picking up and subscribing to our pioneering message for pluralism, competition, accountability and transparency.
This National Day, do not be discouraged. The Reform Party was not out of step. We are just ahead of the times, living up to our name at the forefront of proposing better policies and now everyone is falling in with us. You have already shown the government that you are losing your fear and that you want things to change. JBJ told us that we have “rights as human beings” But he also reminded us that you have,” your proper role as citizens of this country.”
On this our 46th National Day we would like to extend our gratitude to all Singaporeans who have supported us over the last 3 years. You cannot shirk this role now and let things go back to how they were. Like long dormant shareholders in a company where an arrogant management has for too long had its way, it is time for you to wake up, speak up and even stand up. We are finally looking forward to emancipation 46 years after throwing off the Colonial Yoke.
Kenneth Jeyaretnam
Secretary-General
