Category: Current Affairs,Personal Thoughts,Singapore Affairs,Social Issues
Wow. What a great read from The Online Citizen TOC
I too agree that it’s bullshit to say unless we pay our miniters millions, we won’t have talented ministers that will stay away from corruption. Even with their previous pay package, we have many incompetent ministers and corruption exists at all levels in both the public and private sectors. For a greedy person, no money is too much money.
Instead of cultivating future politicians that goes “Some day I want to be a politician so I can earn lots of money. It’s my ticket to becoming a millionaire”, why can’t we spend more effort in instilling national pride and interest in politics in schools so that our children will one day grow up and say “I want to serve my country because I love my country and I want it to become a better place.” I don’t even think our current primary and secondary curriculum have any politics or much unbiased history of Singapore’s politics. We are given the ‘clean’ version of our history, then what difference is there between Singapore and China and North Korea? The problems of our politics in the past should be something that is taught to our children, so that they understand how Singapore came about. We aren’t here today because everyone was nice and smiling and shaking hands with everyone. I want my children to know what’s at stake, what was sacrificed for us to get to this beautiful garden city, I want them to feel proud of Singapore – mistakes and achievements.
It would appear that in the committee’s deliberations, one of the important factors has been on how much to pay the ministers well so that people would not be deterred from taking on the job.
Have we come to this pathetic state? Is there such a paucity of people with a sense of mission in politics that we need to scrape the bottom of the barrel with the dollar sign to entice people to come forward? From the large number of people offering themselves to opposition parties in the last general election, where financial gain for them is less likely than financial liabilities, this cannot be so.
A good political leader should be one with a strong moral conviction to do what he believes in without regard for his life, liberty or monetary reward. If a person is deterred to serve his country and his people because the money is not right, how can such a person be a good political leader?
People who do not recognise their special obligation and duty to society, which has invested so much in them and helped them attain a high status and position and need to be enticed by humongous salaries to serve are really no extraordinary people and could be dispense with.
We should not gloss such people with labels like “talented people” and “good people” when the word “mercenary” would be a more appropriate term. It would really be a service to the country to deter such people from political office. We would be much better out off without leaders who are more interested in their pay cheques than in serving the country.
Related posts:
- Diablo 3 Launch Singapore
- We are Singapore, Singaporeans – Are we?
- Not Enough Foreign Workers in Singapore?
- Presidential Qualities To Look Out For [Singapore Presidential Election 2011]
- Happy 46th Birthday Singapore
