For decades, the PAP has been uttering to us : “Ours is a system of meritocracy” and “Ours is a clean and honest system that pays top dollars to the best”.
The ministers keep repeating these statements in public and with the unabated broadcasting of selective stories and information by their media to support these claims, in no time most Singaporeans joined in to parrot the same.
People do not take a pause to think how much water these statements hold, whether these are political propaganda designed to remain in power, or marketing strategies formulated to brand the ruling party to the world and international organisations.
Not long ago, we saw Lim Boon Heng (a minister without specific responsibility and a former labour union chief) bidding a teary farewell in public when announcing his retirement from politics. He had good words for his party and even warned Singaporeans of the need to live a painful outcome, should there be a freak election result. I thought, then, he would subsequently be given a stress-free job to keep him occupied throughout his nice retirement.
However, as it turned out, it was a shock to hear that he was offered the Chairmanship of Temasek Holdings, one of our two SWFs that invest the nation’s reserve around the world. Whether it is in terms of training, experience or responsibilities, the former labour union chief does not seem to be a likely candidate for such a position that required extensive knowledge and experience in finance or investment.
On what relevant merits were Lim Boon Heng considered as the best person to take over the Chairmanship of Temasek? Surely there are many talented people in the financial or investment world who are much more competent than him?
Incidentally, why his predecessor still remains in Temasek as an advisor? To coach the new and inexperienced Chairman? Or to show Singaporeans what it means by ‘work till drop dead’?
I took a pencil, I took a paper and I drew out a chart of special people holding special positions in our system. I saw a power network. I saw a cobweb of controls!
On the point of honesty, I recalled a series of recent high profile criminal cases that glued the nation’s attention :
• two top civil servants were charged for “sex-for-favours” corruption,
• law professor of the nation’s top university and who was also a former district judge, being convicted of corruption relating to “sex-for-grades” and receiving gifts from law students,
• senior police officer whose duty was to uphold the law and protect lives is now facing charges for robbing and murdering two persons,
• and now, we learnt that a senior officer from the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau is charged for misappropriating $1.76 million from his office – an office that exists to combat corruption!
These cases made a mockery on our system!
In response to these serious and high profile criminal cases committed by senior civil officers, the Deputy Prime Minister and his state’s controlled media swung to action, confiding to the public that only “1 out of 5 corruption probes involved public officers” and “study over the last 5 years concluded that such cases remained low and quite stable”.
Yes, you can bet that the state’s media will publish some strange surveys over the next couple of months, suggesting high public confidence is still on the system run by the PAP!
How much more can we tolerate this government’s propaganda?
We should ask : are there cases that have not been detected so far? Why did these happen? Has the government been too complacent, on auto-pilot mode for too long, or focusing too much on GDP growth and importing “foreign talents”? Or perhaps the ministers have been too engrossed in fixing their political opponents?
Celia Lim