MM in politics, bad for Singapore
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Tell me if you guys agree with me.
There's this story from OCBC a long time ago about a reknown Singapore tyre manufacturer. Accordingly, the company was started by his father and he had a great relationship with banks and partners. Everyone respect and trust his father.
When his father passed away suddenly due to a stroke, he had to return from UK to assume the company. The bank suddenly decides to pull out all financing and the partners refuse to trade with him because he is unknown and they don't trust him. He nearly went bankrupt when the bank force him to repay all the mortgages. Lucky for him, OCBC saved him.
Relating this story to Singapore. Remember LKY says during the TV forum that only certain things can be done by him "..the PM knows it, the SM knows it.."
If he had step of politics after handing the baton to GCT, he could have given the new government leadership enough time to prove it's worth and that would happen smoothly because foreign investors, countries etc.. knows that he is still around.
Imagine today LKY gets a stroke and passes on (not impossible considering his age and that all his peers have all pass on also), what will to Singapore?
I think he is doing a disservice to all Singaporeans by staying on. How long can he live? Everybody dies. How long can be 'protect' Singapore? I hope he is not thinking of becoming the next Qin Emperor.
I have great respect for the old man and I agree 100% that Singapore is what it is today mainly because of him. Hell! I'm almost willingly to accept some cronism and corruption to have this stability...
But, every year he holds on to power, my respect for him lessen.
If I were on the set with the young journalist, I would have answered "Yes, MM Lee, I would like to see you retire from politics completely. For the sake of the nation, the government and the security of our future generations" -
I think what MM Lee contributes most to Singapore now is his immense prestige, the aura of authority and respect which accompanies him, which gives Singapore an edge in its relations with other countries. Such intangibles take very long to build up. You can see SM Goh trying to do it, and he's not there yet. It'll take the present PM Lee even longer. So, in my humble opinion MM Lee still has something to contribute to the country, and I don't see why he should step down as yet.
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But as long as he is still in politics, others will not be given a chance to build their own aura of authority and respect. Eveybody wants to talk only to the big boss.Originally posted by dakkon_blackblade:I think what MM Lee contributes most to Singapore now is his immense prestige, the aura of authority and respect which accompanies him, which gives Singapore an edge in its relations with other countries. Such intangibles take very long to build up. You can see SM Goh trying to do it, and he's not there yet. It'll take the present PM Lee even longer. So, in my humble opinion MM Lee still has something to contribute to the country, and I don't see why he should step down as yet.
My question is what will happen to Singaore if MM passes on? If he had merely step down, foreign powers will still be willingly to deal with Singapore as per normal because they know that MM will sprang back to set things right when things go wrong. If he passes on, do you really believe he can "jump out from his grave to help Singapore"?
MM should give the SM and PM a chance to build their reputation while staying totally behind the scene as a formidable reserve force. -
Are you saying no one wants to talk to SM Goh and PM Lee?? And that with MM Lee still in active politics, SM Goh and PM Lee cannot build on their reputation and influence? I don't really see the case for that.Originally posted by anonymouscoward:But as long as he is still in politics, others will not be given a chance to build their own aura of authority and respect. Eveybody wants to talk only to the big boss.
My question is what will happen to Singaore if MM passes on? If he had merely step down, foreign powers will still be willingly to deal with Singapore as per normal because they know that MM will sprang back to set things right when things go wrong. If he passes on, do you really believe he can "jump out from his grave to help Singapore"?
MM should give the SM and PM a chance to build their reputation while staying totally behind the scene as a formidable reserve force. -
Years ago, nobody wanted him to go.
It's different now.
Our lives are becoming highly stressed
and over-worked,
and things are not working out for us
as PAP had promised in the past.
Many people want him to retire for good!
I didnt make this up, this is a popular wish
In fact it was even put forward to MM Lee in the recent forum he
had with reporters. -
this is the part disagwee. if MM had been born in Philippines. do you think he could have lifted up the Philippines? do you think his self proclaimed "first world" govt could have resulted in a "first world" Philippines? i doubt so and i think we are where we are today, primarily because of who we are as a people, just like hongkies and taiwanese are without any PAP equivalent.Originally posted by anonymouscoward:I have great respect for the old man and I agree 100% that Singapore is what it is today mainly because of him. Hell! I'm almost willingly to accept some cronism and corruption to have this stability... -
Originally posted by dakkon_blackblade:I think what MM Lee contributes most to Singapore now is his immense prestige, the aura of authority and respect which accompanies him, which gives Singapore an edge in its relations with other countries. Such intangibles take very long to build up. You can see SM Goh trying to do it, and he's not there yet. It'll take the present PM Lee even longer. So, in my humble opinion MM Lee still has something to contribute to the country, and I don't see why he should step down as yet.
This is what many naive believe.
Singapore was Already a thriving port town since Raffles time.
It would have continue to thrive.
Moreoever, any Chinese-majority nation is poised for success.
Eg HK and Taiwan.
Chinese are culturally money-minded
And you cannot even compare Singapore with Taiwan.
Taiwan's global influence is tremendous, affecting US, China, Japan economically.
And all these, with little influence by the goverenment or GLCs.
(Thats the comparison you can see, GLCs are bad for a nation)
Spore is just a small mole. Taiwan is a real mountain.
(The press here want you to believe otherwise, today's ST,
enough of brainwashing. Ask around your more knowledgable frens
who know the real taiwan.) -
Taiwan is now a stinking hell...
come on, i see cable TV on taiwan's channel and know their politics, corruption and mess they have.
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but their economic sphere of influence is strategic in nature.Originally posted by nightzip:Taiwan is now a stinking hell...
come on, i see cable TV on taiwan's channel and know their politics, corruption and mess they have.
ours, merely reactionary.
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He wants to ensure that LHL is able to sail thru his first election as PM smoothly. Well, he's only human and while he had done much during his time, we should be more accomodating to him. In all due respect, he's 82 and perhaps his last few GEs.
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It is 'especially so' because they are now facing a critical period,Originally posted by nightzip:Taiwan is now a stinking hell...
come on, i see cable TV on taiwan's channel and know their politics, corruption and mess they have.
with China trying to woo them back.
Just like when Spore was trying to be independent in the past.
The point is, Taiwan's economic prowess is Spore multiply by tens over times.
And all these are driven by strong private sectors which
had flourish with little intervention by the government.
(ok, they did help esp in the 1970s or so i know of,
long before Spore government realise the importance of private sectors)
Tawian's private companies are ones with real "Substance".
A large majority (cant rem exact numbers) of the worlds PC, notebooks
and even chips are manufactured and Designed by Taiwanese companies.
Think Acer, BenQ, Asus, MSI, TSMC, Via etc
Even many US and Japan-brands electronics companies have to rely on
taiwanese companies.
A large majority of the profitable manufacturing-factories/silicon fabs in china
are actually owned and run by taiwanese companies.
If Spore disappear, only SEA is affected perhaps.
If Taiwan disappear, China, Japan, US, Europe, infact, the whole world will be affected.
That is the difference.
GLCs and over-reliance on MNCs is infact quite bad to some extend
for S'pore economy, which are results of flawed vision and decisions in the past.
May write more later. -
strangely in straits times about a week ago, they had an article about taiwan as well, about how dynamic and full of promise the country is because of its uncertainties and democratic freedom. in any case, we know taiwan is certainly no 'third world' country by our 'first world' standards and certainly not with our brand of 'first world' govt.
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yeah man...exactly. media brain-washing.Originally posted by snow leopard:strangely in straits times about a week ago, they had an article about taiwan as well, about how dynamic and full of promise the country is because of its uncertainties and democratic freedom. in any case, we know taiwan is certainly no 'third world' country by our 'first world' standards and certainly not with our brand of 'first world' govt. -
How can you say that to MM Lee, my most respected MM Lee. Without him, what is Singapore today!!! He was the one that planted the tree for the next generation to sit under the tree for shade..Yet disgraceful to talk bad about him.
Till today, he is still working for us..day and night, night and day..What else you asked for from a 80+ hero. Be complacent with what he had provided you during his stay in Power. I have quality life so do my family and many of you. Don't you agree?
Till date, he could have lead a relaxed life, but stayed knowing he still can contribute to singapore. This is a character of great man and history will remember him.
Without him, singapore cannot survive. Only him, singapore can survive further. No one else.
Don't accuse MM Lee further..I feel sad for you. -
oh please grow up.. while we can admit that he has been doing a good job in bringing us out of that backwater society in the 1960s..we cannot simply ignore the fact that he is old and probably going to pass away in a few years if not a decade's time.. once he is gone, what will happen then?
Look at the vey nature of PAP politics.. look at Lee Hsien Loong, he is in his 50s would you think he would have been the postition he is now without his father's influence? look to his peers and party, there are people who are as qualified as he is, or even better? so what he got a wrangler in his Uni days.. there are others who are better than him when he stepped into politics..eg. DR Tony Tan while others had to climb up from party ranks, he came into the PAP and straight away became 2nd minister. if this isnt nepotism then i dunno wad is...
furthermore, the security of the nation is still unknown. remember while the dear PAP government claims we have emergency reserves that can help tide off crisises for a while.. how much do we have? is the money there? to be frank..no one knows.. for the PAP holds the key...even if the president holds the key so what...he cannot open it up for audit...we would not even know if the funds are there... in this case we can only trust that the PAP government is what they claimed to be back then when MM first set it up.. a clean and fair government they said... PROVE IT I SAY!! let us have an independant commission to investigate the NKF saga... open up the national coffers for an independant audit.... then we will know if the GOVT is wad it claims to be..
given all these i would say that it is time for MM to let go and let the younger generation take charge...stop being a meddling influence in the government..he should realise his mortality by now...and he has a good enough legacy to leave on.... all he is doing now is juz being a extra in the government..and tax payer's money is used to pay for the position he is having...i really wonder if he passes on...would there be a MM position? i doubt so.. in this case.. i would say..MM pls retire full frm politics...ur proteges are doin well enough without you.. think its time you let go and enjoy ur golden years -
I share your sentiments, acknoo123.
He should have retired while his picture is still nice and pretty,
and admired.
His once revered potrait now looks quite smeared,
by common people pelting it with rotten eggs.
But how to retire?
He is in control
of almost our entire country's fortune.
Imagine this for a moment,
one man and his family controls an entire
nation's wealth and reserves.
How did we ever get to this stage, still amazes me.
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I hate to say it ... but yeah ... it's time for him to fade away gracefully ... he's saying and doing things that are harming his own side ....
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If his major policies e.g. meritocracy and pro-foreign investments and pro-foreign employment system and tax-and-recover high-cost policies have worked, Singaporeans would not have suffered such severe drops of wages over the period when other Asian tigers are surging ahead. There is a total despair among the ministers during the whole period of recessions 1997-2002.Originally posted by miongisback:I share your sentiments, acknoo123.
He should have retired while his picture is still nice and pretty,
and admired.
His once revered potrait now looks quite smeared,
by common people pelting it with rotten eggs.
But how to retire?
He is in control
of almost our entire country's fortune.
Imagine this for a monent,
one man and his family controls an entire
nation's wealth and reserves.
How did we ever get to this stage, still amazes me.
There is no sign of any economic restructuring master plan to overcome the so-called structural unemployments even as there are so much talks and economic review committees looking into the issues and problems.
So, policies cannot be said to be effective unless they have worked in reality not in the castle-in-the-air assumption about his leadership and his cabinet being full with good wines.
The only policy of his that seems to have worked is the persistent taxing and recovering all costs from citizens averagely $500,000.00 - $800,000.00 per family to be kept as surpluses lately being splashed around in souzhous and bangalores in projects citizens do not benefit from.
It is time for leaders to tell us in greater details with examples to show which of their past assumptions and policies have really worked which they expected to be auto-piloted by his new ministers for another 20 years.
Talking about real big issues has our PM Lee has urged. These are the real big pictures and big issues - will the old policies still work for another 20 years and will the population be motivated once again because they could participate and do what they are best at without all the character challenging and threats as we are seeing every day. -
Robert
The big plan, I think is
80% of Singaporeans must not be allowed to be financially over-independent.
And because many will never get out of the 'desperate-for-money' trap even as the Government continues to pile up their money,
we become highly dependent and beholden to the Government.
All this talk about entrepreunership is just a camouflage.
I mean how do you compete with the PAP Government who
has a hand in all kinds of business....
supermarkers, public transportation, security, utilities, hospitals, schools, insurances, banks, IT, internet service provider .... its a long list.
They are making tons of money from
its citizens.
The top people in our government don't
potray themselves as compassionate people.
They dont cry when heartlanders run out of money options.
Remember, this is what they hope for.
Because the poorer people get, the easier for those despots to influence and control...
This formula seems to work with Singaporeans - judgeing by the past election
results.
I compare it to the status of women in the olden days.
They are mostly obedient to their husbands because the husband is the sole provider. Divorces were rare.
Our Government is only interested in buying and selling companies and piling up their moneys in the treasure box.
When asked about the obscenely huge reserves, they will also say "cant use the reserves, we need them in case .." In case of what?
And amazingly people actually believe in that excuse about not using a part of the reserves to help Singaporeans.
We have more than enough rerserves to take care of any emergency.
It will not dent the reserves even if Government uses a small percentage of the earnings made from our reserves.
Even if they wont do it, Government companies should at least stop making such huge margins from Singaporeans.
But then, doing that would be against their original big plan for majority Singaporeans ........ -
That's one of the reasons why the culture of rental is discouraged.Behind the facade of "universal home ownership", is the reality of high-value consumption that will secure the people to a 20-30 year debt to the CPF and the stat boards.
If more people rent their houses, this link will be broken, and citizens would be financially much more mobile.It is not in their interests to see citizens who are free of any property debt other than rolling rental spending month on month.
Entreprenuership is utter bollocks, and I agree with you totally.The GLCs are getting involved in all segments, under the pretense of offering lower prices at economies of scale.
Rent a flat, stop supporting NTUC.Spend only when needed, and don't live beyond your means, do not get sucked into the debt trap. -
Interesting article
http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Corruption/singcorruption.html -
Overall correctly said i'll tend to agree.
I do NOT consider this Lee Kuan Yew as any 'extraordinary' superman
as if Singapore would not be what it's today without this character !
As far as i'm concerned, Singapore would 'essentially' be what it is
today, not necessary worse but possibly even better !, even if
LKY did NOT exist ! I view LKY as just happening to be there when
things developed the way they did all these years instead !
I do NOT take it all in blindly all the 'good' writeups splashed over the
popular media here to glorify this character !Originally posted by NuLife:
This is what many naive believe.
Singapore was Already a thriving port town since Raffles time.
It would have continue to thrive.
Moreoever, any Chinese-majority nation is poised for success.
Eg HK and Taiwan.
Chinese are culturally money-minded
And you cannot even compare Singapore with Taiwan.
Taiwan's global influence is tremendous, affecting US, China, Japan economically.
And all these, with little influence by the goverenment or GLCs.
(Thats the comparison you can see, GLCs are bad for a nation)
Spore is just a small mole. Taiwan is a real mountain.
(The press here want you to believe otherwise, today's ST,
enough of brainwashing. Ask around your more knowledgable frens
who know the real taiwan.) -
There was an article about how our so called reserves arent really all being saves. Something about how they move money through the GLC's. Since the GLC incomes arent technically part of the government's money. Hence they arent subjected to the same rules.
hey we're all living in a bloody dictatorship. Very much like Marcos. -
Constitutional amendment was carried out, no objections from Parliament.Now you know why we need checks and balances there.Originally posted by |-|05|:There was an article about how our so called reserves arent really all being saves. Something about how they move money through the GLC's. Since the GLC incomes arent technically part of the government's money. Hence they arent subjected to the same rules.
hey we're all living in a bloody dictatorship. Very much like Marcos. -
MM Lee has once likened the people as fishes in the ocean - the big fish will eat the smaller fishes and the smaller fishes will eat the shrimps.Originally posted by miongisback:Robert
The big plan, I think is
80% of Singaporeans must not be allowed to be financially over-independent.
And because many will never get out of the 'desperate-for-money' trap even as the Government continues to pile up their money,
we become highly dependent and beholden to the Government.
All this talk about entrepreunership is just a camouflage.
I mean how do you compete with the PAP Government who
has a hand in all kinds of business....
supermarkers, public transportation, security, utilities, hospitals, schools, insurances, banks, IT, internet service provider .... its a long list.
They are making tons of money from
its citizens.
The top people in our government don't
potray themselves as compassionate people.
They dont cry when heartlanders run out of money options.
Remember, this is what they hope for.
Because the poorer people get, the easier for those despots to influence and control...
This formula seems to work with Singaporeans - judgeing by the past election
results.
I compare it to the status of women in the olden days.
They are mostly obedient to their husbands because the husband is the sole provider. Divorces were rare.
Our Government is only interested in buying and selling companies and piling up their moneys in the treasure box.
When asked about the obscenely huge reserves, they will also say "cant use the reserves, we need them in case .." In case of what?
And amazingly people actually believe in that excuse about not using a part of the reserves to help Singaporeans.
We have more than enough rerserves to take care of any emergency.
It will not dent the reserves even if Government uses a small percentage of the earnings made from our reserves.
Even if they wont do it, Government companies should at least stop making such huge margins from Singaporeans.
But then, doing that would be against their original big plan for majority Singaporeans ........
Lately he had confirmed in his dialogue with the 10 journalists on TV: "Does My Vote matter?, that there is no fairness in this world. This ocean parable probably revealed the true insight of his way of thinking and governing the country.
He perceives people as fishes in the ocean and deal with them according to the degree of threats. If anyone simply talks and give ideas, no matter how true or how good is an idea it is of no value to him. Unless the person concerned is a bigger fish, he would not listen to him. So this ocean threat parable indeed is the very realistic way of looking at how he runs the country.
People talk often about good ideas and how to solve certain problems and suggested to him many time to be more proactive and caring. Will he care about such problems? Look at how he replied to people's complaint about high costs of living being created by his high-wage push over the 1970s-1990s. But to him : government is a big fish and people and oppositions are all small fishes so why should he listen to them?
So by the fish parable, he would not change his past tax and recover policies allowing HDB to double-charge on land or LTA to triple-charge on vehicles after the COE was supposed to replace the past system of charging for vehicles.
So would he give way to opposition politicians and would carry on with defamation suits to check them for any fishy stories so it is a matter of who is a bigger or smaller fish in the ocean.
So big fishes like Port Palepas and USA and China souzhou local authority will make him change not all the smaller fishes swimming in the ocean. If the smaller fishes talk about high utility and high land charges and these are the problems alright but the fishes are too small and would be ignored.
So what if the CEOs of NKF, PSA or Comfort Taxi, essentially superannuated ex-government officers are overpaid he would not bother with the small fishes. He must see some big fishes in the ocean e.g. Maersk Lines or port palepas or Air Asia then he would make some changes to his old policies.
Problem is : people are not yet politically matured or sophistication to become big fishes in the ocean so there will be no change to old policies.
If Singaporeans understand the importance of their votes and not give in on all the GRCs and gerrymandering they would not have to suffer the dropping wages and rising costs while the government is denying their complaints.
It is the real ocean we are living in and people must understand enough about the fish parable before there can be a change.