Reflections: The Sessions @ Parliament

Political Science is an area which I find interesting and would love to explore. Unfortunately I have issues with expressing myself in public, and that I would not want to ridicule a public policy without ridiculing myself.

I started liking Political Sciences after I took up the module ‘Government and Politics of Singapore’.

‘What the F**k is there to study about?’

There’s no government in any country that is not sly, Singapore included. And no matter how transparent, honest and truthful a government is, the dominant party will do anything to ensure its supremacy retention in the parliament. This is, of course, in an Asian/South-East Asian perspective.

I went down to the Parliament this morning after being informed by my lecturer that there will be a sitting in the afternoon. During this sitting, the public is allowed to be spectators from atop, but not allowed to participate in the discussion. The objective of opening up the sitting to the public was to allow transparency in the parliament, and to ‘show how incompetent the opposition can be’, as rephrased and quoted by Lee Kuan Yew when such allowance was introduced in the late 1980s.

Developing nations, including Malaysia will never open up its cabinet sittings anytime soon as the members of parliament (MP) are not ready and mature enough to allow the public to view the process of passing legislations and making decisions for the nations. Hence, I must admire the decision by the Singapore government to be so open about such delicate decisions.

That aside, I wanted to watch this particular sitting as the government was going to debate and propose a controversial issue that existed since the early 1990s: the increase of ministers’ salaries. Proposed in 1994 by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, he claimed that the civil service required a salary increment that is pegged/benchmarked to the private sector as then only can the civil service attract top talent to produce top services. He further claimed that if ministers are not paid well, the government will be corrupt and inefficient (direct target to a country I call home LOL). Even though some may argue that it is the national interest that what brings people to the civil services, however patriotic a person can be money is the ultimate attraction. This means to say, the government would have to pay this lawyer who earns 2 million a year in an international law firm 2 million as well to work in the government sector. Opposition retaliated saying money should be better spent else where instead of rewarding ministers who are ‘already earning a stable income for the next 5 years’. The people were skeptical about such a decision and hence gave the opposition some sort of support.

Anyway, they did increase during that term, now after subsequent increases, they want to increase the salaries again. This time, they want to increase the civil servants as well, especially management executives, management supports, and home teams (police, prisons etc).

The salary increment is benchmarked with the top eight (or is it six?) professionals in the country. And thru some formula they created, will determine how much far off is the civil servants underpaid as compared to the private sectors.

The proposal was put forward by the Minister for Defense. He proposed how much percentage should the civil servants salaries be increased, including the ministers and their parliamentary counterparts. As informative and substance as he can be, he was utterly boring the S**t out of me. But I did manage to catch a few stuffs here and there like how much increment should go to where etc.

Further responses came from the members. Most argued that there should be a better way to benchmark the increase in civil servants’ salaries, especially the ministers’, as it is a matter of national controversy. One MP argued that it wasn’t the right timing of such a proposal, as the government just imposed a 7% GST Tax this coming June/July. The People might take it that the hike in tax will be used to fund the ministers’ pocket.

I was actually waiting for the Opposition to say something as they have been against the idea of paying civil talents as much as private talents. Low Thia Khiang, argued that ‘even if you upgrade from giving peanuts to bananas, you might still hire monkeys!’

In fact, that was the only thing I remembered from his speech.

I am MOST DISAPPOINTED with today’s sitting. The opposition was not ready to attack the government with their beliefs. Or rather, they have switched their stand to ‘supporting the government’ and ‘believing that there should be other ways to justify the increase in ministers’ salaries’ (which has been covered by other PAP members). His report and findings were not concrete enough, giving the super-power Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew an advantage to counter his argument.

‘Which country is the only one who transformed a third-world into first world within one generation? If we don’t do this (increase salary), we’ll downgrade into another south-east Asian’ (somehow I feel that he was Zha-ing Malaysia)

Besides that, his command for English was weak. I just have something against such people (even though I’m not that proficient). The Parliament allows the members to speak in four types of languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. I

Perhaps the party didn’t have enough time and energy to research. Perhaps he should not have cited other countries as an example. Perhaps because he was opposition. Perhaps, there just isn’t anything to go against in this issue.

‘I support the increase in salaries, but I feel that there should be other ways to come up with
how much you should increase it by’ that’s my notion.

I agree that by paying top salaries, you can get top talents to run the country. No Ali, Ah Seng or Muthu will work for the government just because of patriotism and nationalism. If you don’t want to give them monetary benefits, you should give them non-monetary ones. But then again, minister cars and holiday houses at Malibu beaches are more controversial than salary increment don’t you think? The other alternative is to give them an attractive retirement ‘after-life’ scheme – something beyond the pension. I’m not really dear with the way they come up with the formula/equation for the increase in the salaries, but if the People have been against this way since 1994, they should realize by now that it is now the right way to do it.

‘The People get the idea that you need to pay a high sum to get top talent, but prove it in another way’

All in all, my visit to the Parliament wasn’t an enjoyable one, coupled with the embarrassment I had getting lost in the building. I felt that the Opposition wasn’t strong enough, or rather competent enough. It is true that you need an opposition in the government for transparency, but if he/she is just not capable/experienced enough, I suggest that he/she just sit down there and follow the pragmatism concept that what makes PAP so successful and sly for the past 4 decades. Perhaps I should give them allowance considering that their presence in the parliament hasn’t been that long. But how long do they need before they can overtake the current government? We never know.