Many times, some pro PAP voters would feel sorry if PAP ministers are voted out of office. They think that they would lose their talent and would not have a chance to serve the public.
In 2006, I joined a consultancy firm. The firm was headed by an Ex-EDB General Manager who had many links with Ministers.
There was one time an Israeli company wanted to seek some partnerships with Singapore biotech firms. My boss had some links with a certain Minister.
One of them was Dr OXX.
I was quite surprised that Dr O should have anything to do with biotech since he majored in History and had a PhD in History.
Therefore, when I attended the meeting with that life sciences company called DXXXXXXXX in Biopolis, I had a surprise that Dr O knew nuts about life sciences research.
Inside his office, we sat in the meeting table. His office was very big, the size of a 2 room flat but his other subordinates were squashed outside with barely any space.
His door name tag wrote "President" and his other subordinates, the CEO and Vice CEO were the ones doing the talking to our Israeli counterparts.
Dr O only mentioned briefly his company and the only time he did the talking was when he mentioned "tocopherols, tocotrienols" in his opening statement. He even had trouble pronouncing "tocopherols" because these are scientific terms. If one doesn't use them often, one would trip over these words easily.
During the meeting, I took a brief look at his office and his office was stacked full of history books. Not even one book on life sciences research. The meeting lasted about 30 minutes but into the 20 minutes, Dr O fell asleep and I could see him dozing off.
About 30 minutes, Dr O excused himself and said that he needed to go attend a meeting for the upcoming Elections (there was a GE 2006).
I had a rude shock when he even asked his petite female secretary to carry his very heavy briefcase down to his car.
His briefcase probably contained rally speeches and debates so it was very heavy.
After the meeting, my Israeli counterparts told us that it was rather strange that Dr O, being the President of the company didn't even utter much.
As you can see, most of the PAP ministers are holding so many office appointments that even if they are voted out of Office, you need not worry so much.
We definitely need more full time Ministers to commit more to Singapore.
But after learning that the one of the shareholder of the company was Temasek Holdings, it was no surprise that Dr O was the President.
I learned later that Temasek Holdings also has many vested interested in some local enterprises and many businessmen loved to clamour up to Temasek Holdings, hoping that they would invest in their business and then venture abroad in China or India or Vietnam.
CJ
TRS Contributor