See Leong Kit /
( Writer’s letter to TODAY Voices was rejected for publication )
The letter ”Clearing the air on pensions” ( TODAY May 14) from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is just a first step on transparency and accountability expected by our taxpayers and voters.
Thinking Singaporeans do not expect our politicians and senior bureaucrats to live on “fresh air and love of the people”. They will readily support reasonable and adequate remunerations for such public servants.
However, since 1994, there has been never-ending public consternation over the million-dollar remunerations of our political office holders.
As such remunerations are paid out of public funds, our taxpayers certainly have the right to know the true facts. Lack of transparency on this rightful public concern will only aggravate the voter disenchantment that is so evident in the recent general elections.
In the private sector, to promote good corporate governance, the Singapore Stock Exchange requires public-listed companies to disclose the Total Annual Pay packages within salary bands for their CEOs and other senior staff.
Our public sector should also follow suit as an act of good political governance.
For 2010, the reported Total Annual Pay packages of the CEOs of Temasek-linked companies such as DBS, CapitaLand, Semcorp Marine and Keppel Corp ranged from $6.7m to $11.5m.
In 2007, CapitaLand CEO Liew Mun Leong, a former civil servant, received a whopping Total Annual Pay of $20.5m, which led to a public outcry.
For our political office holders, their disclosed Basic Annual Pay are currently $2m for Minister, $3m for Deputy Prime Minister and $3.4m each for the former Minister Mentor and the Senior Minister. The PM himself receives S$3.76m*. However, their undisclosed Total Annual Pay packages which allegedly comprise such items as basic pay, mid-year bonus, year-end bonus, GDP bonus, Performance bonus have been an endless source of speculation on the Internet.
Taking the cue from the CEO pay packages of Temasek-linked companies, some netizens deduced that the Total Annual Pay packages of Temasek Holdings CEO Ho Ching and our Cabinet ministers would likely be in the two-digit millions and upwards of $15m. But this could mean anything between $15m and $99m.
Thus, the onus is now on the PMO to issue a credible public statement to dispel once and for all the widespread Internet rumours and misinformation surrounding ministers’ Pay. Additionally, will the postponed third round of their salary increases proceed as planned or be permanently scrapped?
* 3:17pm: Earlier today the sentence read “The PM himself receives S$3.4m.” We have just corrected the error, as the PM actually receives S$3.76m.
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India now is suffering under the weight of heavy corruption by officeholders in the Government. They should come down here and see how the Government here get the judges, Courts, Parliament, Political Police (ISD) and all State Institutions to focus on the needs of the Ruling Party.So when the bill for the tremendous increase in Salaries was mooted in Parliament in 1994 no one dared make a stand against it for there was indeed no one with a differnt brain. This is legal corruption of the highest order. Indian politicians should quickly learn from the Singapore experience, how to be corrupt without being corrupt.
First order of business is to get the Ministerial salaries scaled down several orders of magnitude to levels like any other country.Otherwise we would have to account to future generations of Singaporeans as to how we have been fooled so badly: to believe that the Singapore Cabinet is so special that they have to be paid several fold more than their counterparts in other countries,even in superpowers.The PM reasoned that because they wont be offered lucrative speaking appointments or book royalties, we must compensate them. Should we compensate them for their mediocrity on the World stage? The other oft repeated argument by the Ruling Party’s spokesperson for paying them over the moon is that it would prevent them from corruption. I think this must be the real reason, an innate greedy predisposition, unstable unless immediately satiated with money.If a man or woman is paid a fair wage, even at the Ministerial level, s/he will be normal. If overpaid, and overpaid so grossly, madness will overtake her/him. The things that happened to us especially the last five years is a phantasmagoria of a mad screwing of the populace to get more and more money, at all costs, by any means.If we miss this window of opportunity when the PAP seems ashamed of their moneymadness, when the PM says he wants to change his party’s outlook on governance, we will have to fight them like in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya five years down the road.
Five years down the road would see the bloated salaries of Ministers legitimised by priest Ee and his review committee, hundreds of thousands more foreign talent would be brought in for the Ministers’ salary calibration of the GNP, the secret political police would be breathing down every neck to check his/her talk, judges would openly do whatever is required of them by the Ruling Party to oppress alternative voices, more and more decent people who open their mouths to mouth injustices will be bankrupted and each and every PAP will suckle contentedly at the honeypots of the country with a sense of righteous confidence that corruption is only spoken of if you break the Law but not when the Rule of Law is your god.