Thursday, May 19, 2011

My views on the new cabinet lineup

The new cabinet line-up signals clearly that there will be significant changes in the political landscape in Singapore. Will it be for the better or for the worse? Here are some observations:
  • In spite of being unhappy over many government policies, 60% of the voters voted for PAP and stability. The sweeping changes in the cabinet line-up cannot be seen as representing stability. Are these voters being given what they were expecting?
  • The underlying problem is that, in the past, the government made its decisions behind closed doors using inputs by a small group of elites. This system needs to be changed for new policies and approaches to be produced. 
 We need a new system of governance based on the following:
  • Inputs from a broad group of knowledgeable people (outside of the elites and scholars)
  • Active discussion in Parliament - and MPs have to spend more time in this duty
  • An active media to bring up the issues.
I will be writing more on this topic later.

Tan Kin Lian

2 comments:

  1. Looks good on the surface, with a different set of Ministers taking over posts that are plagued with hot button issues.
    But can't help noticing the many Ministerial posts are staffed with newbies, that are eager to please their boss and thus are the usual yes men and yes women kind, so is it business as usual?
    Also very significantly, with the son taking over the GIC Chairman post, and together with the wife, Ms Ho Ching still helming Temasek Holdings, together with MM as advisor to GIC, the Lee family is still holding the country's purse
    strings.
    Scratch the surface, the style never change, only some manpower
    realignment, and the Lees playing
    musical chairs game within their members for managing our public funds.
    Nevertheless, we still hope the new Cabinet line-up would really effect change for the sake of Singaporeans.

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  2. Even if there are active discussion in Parliament, if the people discussing it is still stuck in a false paradigm nothing will be solved. For example, the asset enhancement paradigm is a mistaken economic policies that will bring long term ruin to singapore. If they continue on their inflationary policies by encouraging asset bubble formation in property and stock markets( some of it are influences from the inflationary policies and effective negative interest rates by US and China) , the one suffering is still the middle and lower income people whereby their savings are continuously eroded.And all asset bubbles eventually collapse like US whereby their most important asset their house are wiped out.

    I hope that the worker party can abandon this false paradigm and encourage the PAP to steer the path away from this but i am just afraid things might have been too late. I am not sure Khaw Boon Wan can do much to prevent any property correction and i hope if it slide too much, they do not try to prop it up through artificial stimulus.

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