In order the maintain one-party rule, there will be talks on dangers of disorders, chaos, corruptions and nepotism etc etc to frighten the population into keeping the status quo.
I am sure if the political system is suitably liberalised to allow people to nominate proven individuals of abilities from various associations and societies or citizens organisations, we can easily nominate 10-20 people with abilities to solve the following persistent problems affecting the government:-
(1) Lower the market-valued fees and charges by costing on consumption items excluding land costs and infrastructure costs paid under taxations.
(2) Revamp the excessive manpower structure and hyper-salary structure e.g. ministers of state/senior and parliamentary secretaries, town council/mayors, senior/senior-principals, chief/deputies/Senior Principal (convert to simple short-rein strycture: GM/Senior/manager/executive) to follow private sector practice.
(3) Deregulate the whole of laws and regulations to bring back good corporate governance e.g. adopting the light-government and free-market governance pro-people and pro-entrepreneurship system.
I am sure Singapore has the talents but its citizens are being prevented to come forward to serve due to past controls and legalistic depolitization and machinations which is anti-progress.
If we don't open up how do we know we do not have such talents to serve the country. Let people nominate and submit the names to an independent board of election and we will see many talents before 2010.
Now all the so-called talents and scholars are only limited to a small group of elites who do not need to serve or try because they are already occupying good positions to care.