Originally posted by TooFree:
Disagree. Our imcumbent leaders have generally proven themselves and had shown a track records in placing Singapore on the world map. A point to note here is that leaders do have limitation too. We should not discredit a person with meritorious records because of just one mistake. The concerns and worries of citizens' views not reflected and not make known are uncalled for. We have the NMP in the parliament to speak on behalf of the citizens. The system is already in place to generate feedbacks.
I am more concern whether the candidates from the opposition party can solve problems of the citizenry or tackle global issues. At this stage in time, I have not yet heard of any 5 years plans from the opposition party to steer the nation forward. Only keep talking and debating on the flaws of government past polices. Get real. We need a first world opposition to solve problems not create problems.
You may disagree with what I said but what I said are facts of what affected our progress for the past many years. May be you believe our governing system was superior because of lack of complete understanding of good corporate governance.
A good government cannot be right all the time, over-righteous and unchanging in views and policies over so many issues like ours.
A good government will not hold itself as know-all or omniscient and always enforce its will on its people all the time or nearly all the time as has happened for years in our case.
My view that our past government policies have been unchanging and too rigid all these years. Even in the current election campaign one can see the same accusations of oppositions' characters which completely turned off the common humanity. The accusations are one-sided with them in control of all the ammunications of defamation law suits while the other side defenceless or younger persons. Ruling party was not without blames in integrity yet they behaved like they were so righteous throughout.
Granted that our leaders have made some past achievements. They have not just one or two flaws but many which are mainly caused by self-centred preserving of their own images and reputation as if it so perfect and without flaw. It is lacking creativity in many policies not being able to see larger perspective than their immediate concern to be effective in control.
By such autocratic self-belief of self has caused many good men to stop short in making necessary changes e.g. Ex-president Ong Teng Cheong was prevented from putting across some good ideas before and set back the whole accountability of govenrment and economy for years.
If forumers' good ideas given to feedback unit for many years but the leaders refused to respond to them or accept their contributions. They only knew something went terribly wrong like when bigger threats happened to PSA, SIA and HDB or big-scale recessions. Isn't it all too clear that such autocratic self-centred governance has shut out better ideas and contributions of others. Isn't it all too clear that Singapore has been set back due to such narrow track-minded governance.
It is not just the hype about meritocracy or elitish streaming education system which caused setback to creative innovations and practical knowledge application for years. The other major errors like the pro-foreign investment and employment policies have set back the economy.
Even if Shamugaratnam today finally has made some changes the changes hardly touched the surface and has failed to acknowledge that these were not the his ideas and he had taken the credit away to himself?
Forumers have pointed out the danger of over-relying on pro-foreign policies and suggested implementation of technology-driven practical knowledge application, from 2002.
Did any of our scholars or ministers in charge at the time listen. Finally they did perhaps only after the most severe downturns and lagging way behind other Asian tigers and others for years. Yet they pretended they had achieved the big switch to poly- and ITE broad-based practical knowledge application on their own.
The major changes were not the direct results of your admired great leaders because his ministers being paid millions would be too vulnerable to disagree with his over-bearing conceptual meritocracy too deeply planted six feet deep for any one to dare to voice out their own better judgement. Even new promising ministers appeared constrained who spoke only for a while and then kept completely away from any more ideas of their own. Why?
So what was the cause of brushing aside of people's right views and suggestions which caused set-back to education and practical knowledge application for years?
Think about the whole problems in perspective of good corporate goverance which is practised by John Howard of Australia and many others without chaos. Such system will lead to collective leadership which will be far more creative or entrepreneurial. Do not just blindly believe the superficial concepts and assumptions of the old which caused our governance to lag behind for years which did not work at all during the last three recessions. (just read the old Straits Times of Ministers' despairs and their pushing problems to the people)
The biggest danger to our future is the reemergence of old assumptions and concepts which even Ngiam Tong Dow ex-civil servant has commented as too narrow and unhelpful. There has to be fundamental changes if there is going to be any future that PM Lee is talking about.
Otherwise what he said will remain empty slogans like what he said of the opposition.