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.