Saturday, April 04, 2009

Public Service

I respect the political leaders in the democratic countries, especially those of Europe and North America. 
They entered politics as a public service. They desire to make life better for the people. They have strong  values and beliefs (whether leaning to the left, right or center) and wish to influence the future of their nation. 

They are happy to receive a remuneration of 3 to 10 times of the average wage of their ordinary people. They do not expect a remuneration that is 100 times or more (i.e. the salary paid in the private center for top exectives). 

By accepting the modest remuneration of the public service, they are able to exercise some moral control over the excessive and unjustified salaries paid in the private center.

Tan Kin Lian

7 comments:

David said...

The PAP considers a person's income as a measure of his talent and worth. Hence top earners in the private sector is the preferred pool of people they want to recruit from, besides those from the civil service. Remember LKY has immense respect for those Wall street investment bankers!

So the PAP may not even want to recruit people earning 3 to 10 times average salary because there may be too many of them and so maybe not as talented as those top earners.

Anyway these people may also not like to be involved in politics, whether PAP or opposition, except maybe on the internet. They are already much better off and comfortable in their lives than most people and will not risk it to be in politics. For the top earners, they will be even more reluctant and PAP has a herculean task to persuade them.

As a result, most of the people in the PAP are either top civil servants, from GLCs or the SAF and police.

As a result, you have 50% walkovers at every election and very little change in the opposition quality and quantity.

This situation will persist in the future.

ArtBoon said...

It is up to us to decide our future. We can do nothing and say the future will be the same, or we can do something about it.

pukermon said...

I think you forgot to mention the money that these leaders receive that are off the 'books'.

American ex-presidents receive more money from their lecture tours than when they are in office.

And what about the kick-backs they get from the lobbists...

Do you think admire their civics?

lle said...

In a materialistic world like this one, money is very important and one's success is measured depending on one's wealth. Many become very greedy. We need to change this mindset as afterall, money is not everything. Serving the people, working in the public sector helping the poor and the less fortunate and contributing to the society is a major part to play too.

Koh said...

All these years I have not been convinced by the argument that our Political Leaders' pay need to be bench-marked against the top earners in the pte. sector. The duties, responsibilities, risk, etc.in the pte sphere & public sector are not identical - in the pte sector performance & profits & more profits really matter most. If the pte co fails, bankrupts, etc. the CEO of the Co gets an immediate hit whereas this does happens/rarely happens in the public sector.

AHTAN said...

Yes, the risk of working in public and private is totally different and the goverment should not use private paid package as a benchmark. Retrenchment is happening everywhere in the private sector but will it happen to public now?

I wonder what is the salary package for whole Singapore cabinet divided by 4.5million nation compared to whole cabinet in USA divided by 295 million of american? Is it because this top "heavy load" that "forced" the singaporean to work till his/her last breath....

Zhong said...

Our PAP leaders forget the prestige and honours they received as being state leaders, such as 21 gun salute, driving S1 no. plate car, prestigious office, state funeral, special graveyard etc. They should convert all these benefits into $$ and then compare their compensation packages aganist the private sector CEOs.

Blog Archive