WP’s proposal vs Committee

In spite of the hostility of the People’s Action Party’s [PAP] backbenchers towards the Workers’ Party [WP] Members of Parliament [MP], I had not really bothered with the debate on ministerial salaries and the comments made by the ministers or MPs on the matter. Even when Grace Fu was flamed on my Twitter / Facebook feeds had solicited very little response from me. As far as I am concerned, it was a foregone conclusion that the motion to accept the recommendations of the Ministerial Salary Review Committee would pass in Parliament. As I have mentioned in my previous post, even if the cuts are substantial it would only be a cosmetic change. What clearly needs to change is the way the ruling party govern our country. It should be aware that we are people and more than just statistics and its performance in the past few years has been anything but stellar.

I am quite sure those would have expected a “good show” from the WP would be utterly disappointed. Chen Show Mao has done well but other than differing in the principles which determined the figures behind the pay, the figures proposed by the WP are not very different from those of the committee (see chart on right). Regardless of which proposal, our political leaders will still be the most well paid in the world. I have no doubt the rabidly anti-PAP voters would be howling for blood over this perceived “betrayal” and the PAP will be fanning that fire by accusing the WP of flip-flopping and manipulating voters sentiments on the issue in the recent elections. Still, there will be hell of a political debt for the WP to pay, as it seems to have abandoned part of its manifesto.

Having said that, I would still have accepted the WP’s proposal anytime. The reason is that I am convinced that the WP’s method would have been more equitable in the long run and not because I oppose the PAP blindly. Even though the WP did not know how the salary levels of MX9 is derived, I still feel that the WP has intelligently presented the figures in a way that would find more acceptance from a new generation of thinking voters. The PAP may have scored some political points against the WP but it continue to argue on the point of paying for talents and the sacrifices a person has to make to serve our nation will only further stoke public anger against what is already considered an exorbitant pay. Whether it is a ‘clean wage’ with no hidden perks does not change the fact that a large part of the electorate (even when they may not be the majority) is already sick of these arguments – especially the ‘talent argument’ which smacks of elitism. This group has already rejected these perceivably elitist and hypocritical arguments since the last political pay debate in 2007 and the results of the 2011 General Elections is nothing more than a formality.

First of all, there is no doubt that the ministers are high achievers before they join politics. But as some netizens pointed out, no one in his sane mind would have paid even 50% of Lionel Messi’s pay to have Sebastian Vettel play soccer even when the latter has been a talented Formula 1 driver. Simply put, it would be hard to convince us that the ministers’ previous talents or skill sets is of any relevance to some of the positions the ministers are holding. For e.g., what does a surgeon know about defense or a central banker know about education? It doesn’t matter whether the minister has a double first class honors in economics from Cambridge or that he has been a President Scholar!

However, a friend of mine pointed out that having only people who has the relevant experience in charge of the ministry may become a problem in itself because he / she might not be able to see a perspective beyond their field. Good point, since it is really not necessary for a soldier to be the Defense Minister because a minister would have a pool of civil servants in the respective ministry serving under and advising him – provided that these people would not just defer to the minister, but would argue for their points intelligently and passionately. I would hope for the latter even though my gut feel is that it would be more difficult for civil servants to do so when the head of their respective ministry has been portrayed as some intellectual superman. In time, fewer and fewer would do so as a result – either due to staff attrition or for fear of offending their boss. Then there’s the matter of complacent underlings where the minister might not have noticed, and the escape of Mas Selamat from the ISD’s detention center would be a fine example.

But more ominously and alarming would be whatever happened at SMRT. Even though it is not a government ministry or department, it may already have happened within the government when one consider the performance of ex-ministers like Raymond Lim and Mah Bow Tan. It is not hard to imagine why many reject the “elitist pay for talents argument”. The utter chaos as a result of the multiple recent breakdowns of the MRT system and the fact that Singaporeans have to take up ever larger loans over longer periods for public housing with diminishing floor areas would have given the impression that they have respectively run our public housing and transportation policies into the ground (much like how Saw Phiak Hwa has run the SMRT which Singaporeans were once proud of). Top that with never ending faux pas of the ministers in past two years – from Chan Chun Sing’s ‘chye tow kway’ comparison, Vivian Balakrishnan’s ‘How much do you want?’ question and Yaacoob Ibrahim’s “once in 50 years freak floods” to Grace Fu’s “misunderstood” comments. These bungling ministers have completely shattered their aura of invincibility in the eyes of the people.

As for sacrifice, none of the purported talents that the PAP boasts of have managed to put a proper picture of it to the electorate until Tan Chuan Jin came along. Let me quote the Minister of State:

Some would have argued that this would be the same kind of burden that anyone would bear in the position of a CEO or whatever earning an equivalent pay. True, and it would be a good reply had Tan Chuan Jin used that to justify his pay. But that’s not my point.

Let me explain further. It is my considered opinion that sacrifice means giving up something dear to keep another thing which is dearer. For e.g. the mountain climber who cut off the arm trapped under a boulder to save his own life, or a pregnant woman pleading with a doctor to save her baby during delivery even if that means she dies. As far as I am concerned, Tan Chuan Jin has set things back into the right perspective. In the context of his speech, he has shown us what he has given to serve the nation and no amount of money could quantify that sacrifice. It was clearly way superior than that failed attempt at layman terminology by Chan Chun Sing.

Other than Tan Chuan Jin, the rest of the PAP failed to realise just how entirely hypocritical they sounded, and how they have turned the entire argument on its head. They failed to understand the first impression the people have gotten would be: “How on earth do you justify giving up a better paid job previously for one that still pays handsomely as a “sacrifice” considering the prestige and honor that also comes with that service?!” I do not need explain why the people would be angry when they are called to bite the bullet.

The perceived elitism and hypocrisy in the PAP’s argument is further reinforced by when some PAP backbenchers say things which is further perceived as a clear insult to our collective intelligence. For e.g. Gan Thaim Poh, MP of Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC claimed that using the number of Singaporeans (3.5 million) as a baseline, the PM’s pay of 3.5 million before the review is equal to $1 per Singaporean per year. He further mentioned that it is only out of generosity that the PM took a pay cut and take only $2.2-million.

It might simply have been a ill-thought attempt at humor by an MP from a party where humor has traditionally been ill-received. Netizens are quick to ridicule him over the absurdity of his arguments. Most of it surrounds the fact that many other countries – in specific China and India – have bigger populations than Singapore and by that argument, the leaders of those countries would be laughing all the way to the bank. I have joined in the fun with my own picture. Mr Gan should realise that the Internet is rather unforgiving. It also have very long memories and his idiotic argument will go down into eternity along with those of Lim Wee Kiat and Choo Wee Khiang. My suggestion to both Mr Gan and Dr Lim, would be to gag themselves with a sanitary pad to prevent further idiotic utterances.

Addendum: In my haste to get this post done I failed to mentioned the fact that the MX9 salary grade is only top 5% of Singapore’s working population. Some might wonder how I could justify using that as a basis would be more equitable system. Let me point out the WP intend to propose a whole-of-government, people-up approach that benchmarks ministerial salary to MP allowance, which is in turn pegged to the pay of the civil service bench-marked to general wage levels. I liked that, and I suspect the WP then shot itself in the foot using MX9 as a basis for their proposal. Had they done a little more research they would have used a different pay scale which is more in line with what they have in mind and allowed them to come up with a lower figure than $55,000 for ministerial salaries. I hope this clarification helps.

The hottest news in the past few days has to be the ministerial pay revision. I had personally expected a cut between 10% ~ 25% which means that the cuts proposed are above my expectations. If anyone were to ask whether I am pleased or happy, it would be the wrong question to ask. I will only talk about what I think about it.

First of all, the ministers will still be the highest paid in the world compared to their foreign peers based on the figures alone. The fanatically and rabidly anti-People’s Action Party [anti-PAP] netizens were quick to point out that PM Lee still earns S$2.2 million (approximately US$1.7 million at current exchange rate) compared to President Obama’s US$400,000.

That said, when President Obama and his family went on vacation to Hawaii recently, it cost the US taxpayers almost US$4 million dollars. So while Obama nominally earns less, he certainly has a lot more perks. I wondered whether the government paid for Prime Minister Lee’s recent vacation (which was cut short as a result of the MRT breakdowns) or did he pay for it out of his own pocket. If our country only paid for the expenses of the PM’s security detail while he paid for the rest of his own expenses from his salary, then how is the comparison with President Obama’s salary fair? Wouldn’t our political leaders actually not be getting much more than the other leaders because the perks are not considered a part of their salaries?

Many would be outraged with what I have just written. I imagined there would be screams of anger and outrage at my words and I shivered. Regardless, I simply had to voice this out because I am ignorant about the matter itself! I want to be absolutely sure when I still lash out at them over the matter of their exorbitant pay, no one could try and argue their way out of it.

Next, the Ministerial Pay Review Committee has almost wiped out the pay increments of 2007 because I estimated that ministerial pay is now almost back to pre-2007 levels. I had originally wanted to show figures but I am confident with my estimations. Here’s the math – If I earn $2000 in 2007 and I get a pay increment of 60%, my new pay would be $3200. And if I get a pay cut of 35% at 2011, my new pay would be $2080. That’s not much of a change from what I was getting before the increment and I have to say it’s quite a substantial cut. (It doesn’t matter whether that pay is $2000 or $1.5 million. The results will give the same conclusions.)

On top of that they are doing away with the pension scheme and from May 21, 2011 onwards, the previous pension scheme is abolished. Even the method of calculating their bonus has been changed. Given that the method would not be tied solely to the economic performance, I wouldn’t really comment on it until they announce their bonus based on this new scheme. What exactly is the point of speculating on how they will make use of this variable to pay themselves handsomely when they haven’t already done it? While it is too late by then… I prefer to stick with what has been done or already occurred.

So that pretty much summarises what I think of the committee’s proposal. I have glanced through some of the political parties’ reaction but I have yet to see the one from the Workers’ Party [WP]. It reminds me why I have liked WP since 2006. This is a party that doesn’t jump the gun and shoot from the hip. They tend to think it over and say the things that makes the most sense. WP appears to be the only party which seems to understand that it is the swing voters and not the rabidly anti-PAP that needs convincing. Consider this, a lot of PAP mistakes aren’t apparent until many years after the decisions are made – from the 2-child policy to opening the floodgates to foreigners. But can anyone actually expect the sentiments in 2016 to be the same as 8 months ago? When a political party is always saying the same things as those who have completely rejected the PAP and disregard whatever the PAP is saying / doing, fat hope in winning a seat in Parliament! They are simply gambling that the PAP will continue to falter and not do anything. Granted, the PAP has become arrogant, elitist and even out of touch. But from 75.2% in 2001 to 60.1% in 2011, does anyone really think the PAP hasn’t felt the danger of losing power already?

Anyway, on the matter of arrogance and elitism (as a result of Grace Fu’s so-called misunderstood comments), I had a discussion with some friends on Whatsapp and one of my friends said this (I paraphrase):

” No one disagrees in paying the ministers an appropriate wage to do the job. The question is, how much is appropriate pay? “

We subsequently agreed that appropriate pay is simply a sum of money which leaves enough to save up for old age (so we have money when we can’t work as hard and earn as much), and also to cover our liabilities (housing loans for e.g.) and expenses (food & utilities etc). Based on that, if Grace Fu still expect the people to believe that even S$1 million is not an appropriate pay, and that it will not be enough to attract talents, then she ought to tell us why. Justifying that they can earn more working elsewhere isn’t going to work for us when we are really earning peanuts and are constantly told to curb our expectation for better wages. In fact, another friend had pointed out that he doubt any of those former navy Rear Admirals or army Generals had commanded a higher pay before becoming a minister. Though certain Permanent Secretaries might actually earn more than the minister himself which makes it hard for the PAP to bring them into politics, that in itself still cannot justify that a minister would earn more outside the government. After all, the PAP has so far very little to show in terms of talents from the private sector.

So, what exactly is the point I am trying to make here then while I seem to conditionally accept the pay they are getting, and yet say their justification of that pay to attract talents is bollocks? The point is that I choose the middle ground – i.e. while I won’t accept the PAP’s argument for the pay level, I also do not think the cuts are too little. I also want to point out that there are those who really don’t want to get involve in this argument but simply expect the ministers to get the job done and deal with those matters which most of us considered to be problems. In particular, those of housing, transport, the influx of foreigners, the widening incoming gap, the rise of elitism, health care costs etc. Most of us simply don’t want to listen to bullshit like “once in 50 years occurrences”, or “stealing from the reserves”.

On top of which, I must say that appearing to be doing something is also not enough. One of my ex-supervisors once said this: “You can be doing a lot of things related to an issue and is even very efficient in doing them, but are all those things you do… effective?” I believe everyone knows what (or who) I am driving at and I do not need to draw the innards in stick figures.

Simply put, pay revision (or reduction) is simply cosmetic. What Singaporeans really want is effective measures and not quick fixes (such as raising the ground level at the Orchard / Patterson Road Junction in reaction to the flash floods) which are not entirely effective. Perhaps having the ministers take responsibility for screw ups would be too much to ask for, but at the very least we expect accountability. In Ling How Doong’s words – Don’t Talk Cock, especially when everyone is already pointing out what the problem is.

Before I end, I would like to share a joke. “Now that the annual salary of the Minister of Transportation is lower than Saw Phiak Hwa’s, it may pose some problems when he discuss policies with her as she earn millions of dollars because she need not listen to the minister’s ideas and proposals. Perhaps he would need to tell her to go to maintain a bit of dignity.”

Oh, I know the person who said something similarly stupid has apologised for it. But he doesn’t need to be upset over this. After all, he can still retain his dignity when he compares his pay with mine.