Originally posted by robertteh:
The reason given by the government to pay its own ministers salaries equivalent to the highest earners in ten professions is full of cock and bull without any rationale as they were entirely put up by the ministers for self-reward without any merits supported by proper objective debates or support of the people.
MM Lee had said that by paying the ministers high salaries it will prevent or avoid corruption. There was an underlying assumption in such a statement that the elected representatives were corruptible which obviously cast a big doubt on the ministers. Therefore the ministers being corruptible should not be trusted with putting up such self-reward motion. Moreover any forms of self-approved rewards unless they are properly tendered in pre-approved contracts of service or sanctioned by an organization through open and accountable remuneration system may be regarded as gratuities or corruptions liable to prosecution under the Corruption Act.
In other words the motion to pay the ministers the highest salaries equated to the highest earners in the private sector without sanction by independent pre-approved contracts of service or independent panels was tainted with bad and questionable motives. There was no study by independent panels of integrity or independence.
There was no explanation how to safeguard the interests of taxpayers after paying such salaries with holding the ministers of accountability and responsibilities in the event of failures or negligence in performance as practised in the private sector.
Most of the elected MPs had merely acquisced without saying a word to ask for open or public debates. The few who has said something were quickly shot down by authoritarian dares rather than convinced through objective debates or rationale. There was no rationale in equating the ministers' salaries to the highest earners in private sector like bankers or practising lawyers. Very simplistic comparison were given without the slightest semblance of giving objective apple-to-apple comparison as most or many of the highest earners in private sector were business owners themselves or bosses who could easily inflate or pay their own highest wages as a means to avoid paying profits of their own firms to the taxes. So obviously the ministers were wrong in paying themselves the highest salaries equated to this group of business owners or bosses.
In any even if the ministers were to apply for any of those jobs said to be paid that kind of salaries they might not be qualified being lacking in relevant practical experiences for those jobs.
By that kind of reasoning argued in parliament it is very clear that the whole argument to pay ministers the highest salaries was without basis but was completely fallacious. Comparison was highly argumentative and irrational and the whole parliament was merely hookwinked.
So MM Lee thinks that he could use the same authoritarian argument to convince Malaysia to lend support to such apparently fallacious self-reward of ministers by paying Malaysian ministers also higher salaries to avoid corruption. His rationale was easily dismissed by the Malaysian PM who said that he believed in integrity and paying the highest salaries was not the correct way.
Up to now MM Lee has been tongue-tied and unable to reply to Malaysia's PM rebuttal suggesting that paying his own ministers and his own salaries in such manner is morally untenable and is totally baseless and without justification. It has been easily debunked by Malaysian PM on the ground that ministers or government should be people with integrity not out to screw up people with paying themselve the highest self-reward using the public fund even though the ministers can succeed legally in pushing the vote with their own party majority. What is wrong will at the end still be wrong no matter how one tries to sugar-coat it with fallacious justification and arguments. No good arguments about self-rewards will ever make them less wrong. It smells rat !!!
When a government cannot see self-rewards as wrong and insists on using public monies to do so, how is it going to preach to the people about rights or wrongs. For example when citizens vandalize public buildings after the NKF incident, government leaders openly advise people that two wrongs do not make a right. How is it going to determine what is wrong and right and who can decide what is right and what is wrong. Apparently without moral authority leader cannot govern the country and there is no meaning to such terms.
Malaysia' Pm is the right person to be entrusted as the country's keyman!
A person that who is genuinely love his country would do his utmost best of his best to serve the country and do not regard monetary as a reward or a gauge with the private sectors' income.
A man of upright regardless of the amount of his income whether he is paid with peanut will still be respected for his contribution to the country.
Of course, the country or its' people should not neglected his salaries.
Let's look at annual salary of S$600k to S$800k and exemption in income tax and as the standard practices of all over world; the basic requirement of transportation, security, accomodation and etc..etc..for a minister.
Even with the above salaries, its still the highest of all...!
What do you guys think....not enough meh....?
LKY has always said ...paying the ministers high salaries will avoid corruptions.
Does this means that most of the ministers all over the world are corrupted accept singapore's ministers. If this is the case, I should suspect Japan, USA, Switzerland, Canada and etc that all their ministers are mostly corrupted. Simple as that, their salaries are far behind than our sg ministers.
