Thursday, May 5, 2011

Don't rock Singapore's foundations

I received this e-mail for posting in my blog

Having read this, I feel that there is a lot of truth in what “feedmetothefish “ is saying, so I feel I should share it. It is just not true that the success of Singapore is due to just one man, LKY. There were others like Goh Keng Swee, Rajaratnam, Lim Kim San, Toh Chin Chye, Hon Sui Sen etc. whose contribution to the success of Singapore is significant. Most important of all, the success of Singapore is due to the hardworking people of Singapore. It should be common sense to all that all the citizens of Singapore contributed to the success of Singapore – the workers, the teachers, the taxi drivers, the small stall holders, the civil service, doctors, lawyers, office workers, managers, etc. all have contributed to the success of Singapore.

I tend to agree that even without LKY, Singapore could have succeeded anyway. I agree that the thing that irritated Singaporeans the most is the obscene pay rise of the ministers whose pay were already sky high. Couple this at a time when the poorer segments of the population were having a hard time struggling with high inflation (increase food prices, electricity, transport, rental etc) without any pay rise to adjust for inflation. The average Singaporeans have effectively become poorer.  I agree that our ministers should be highly paid. I think that 300,000 to 500,000 should be enough. 2 million or 3 million is ridiculous and immoral. Our leaders should take pride in public service and not just for the lure of money.  Read on and let me know what you think.