Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Accountabiliy, transparency and social justice

Mr. Goh Chok Tong gave the keynote address at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center's annual dinner. He listed four main attributes of a political system to enable a country to flourish:

1. accountability and transparency
2. long term planning and execution
3. social justice and harmony
4. a culture of identifying and glooming talent for public service.

Accountability and transparency
I wish to reflect on whether MAS has acted with accountability and transparency in the handling of the credit linked notes. I submitted three petitions to MAS signed by 2,300 people. I request for a meeting to discuss these petitions. They were declined.

MAS said that they cannot meet with representative groups. But I suspect that they must have met with the representatives of the financial institutions.

I do not know how MAS can find a solution without listening to the views of the many thousand of people who have lost their hard earned savings.

Social justice
10,000 people have lost their hard earned or lifetime savings. A small percentage of people identified as "vulnerable" are being compensated. The remainder are left to deal on their own, on a case by case basis, against the large financial institutions. These institutions have the moral support of our leaders who labelled the investors as "greedy" and invested "with their eyes open".

I wonder if this can be called social justice?

Your views
What are your views?