It was reported in Today ("What about those who don't know how to help themselves? 13.11.2006) that MM Lee has admitted: "The government aims to bring about the maximum benefit for the greatest number of people, instead of finding perfect solution."
Finally MM Lee has admitted after 41 years that certain autocratic policies of the past did not work.
While certain policies have brought benefits to the people not all of the major policies adopted for the past 41 years have brought widespread benefits to the people.
Today it can be seen that a system of autocracy has caused many immense problems affecting the whole society.
Singapore could have progressed further in league with Korea and Finland if it has abandoned such autocracy earlier back in 1970s when the economy was already in doldrums with domestic sector unable to compete with newer emerging developing countries. But sad to say autocracy has been defended without basis with legalistic over-powering of the oppositions and critics with newer and better ideas.
It is clearly anti-progress and too narrow to run the country where the PM or cabinet of ministers decide on everything and run the whole government which has led to many problems e.g. NKF, high costs of living with loss of economic competitiveness due to persistent anti-welfare tax-and-recover corporatization policy, creative accounting methodology in charging for lands and infrastructure, disaffective divide within society and pro-foreign investment and employment floodgate to allow any foreign dick tom and harry to snatch jobs from citizens etc etc.
Many elitist policies are only favoring the rich and the elites in securing sinecure jobs and higher pays without solving major problems like economic restructuring or creating employments. So the rich are getting richers while government has neglected opening up of greater opportunities to people based on broad-based technological knowledge applications to upgrade economic competitiveness. These major policy errors are only the tip of the iceberg.
Autocracy has helped in certain narrow aspects like meritocracy but too narrow a meritocracy only produce snobbish elites like Wee Shu Min who could not understand the needs and aspirations of greatest benefits to the greatest numbers as MM Lee obviously now relented as a more appropriate governance principle.
Many of the past major policies of the government have been too conceptual or self-centred (estate upgrading and GRC) or poorly implemented or only making the governing party easier like perpetual cost and fee increases to enrich the state coffers or winning votes and eliminating the oppositions.
It may be a case of power corrupts or the autocracy is to go on practising protectionism of the elites like Wee Shu Min and get all the facts and figures ready and make changes fast if Singapore wants to upgrade its economic model to allow for mass participation by all citizens.
So it should be the topic of debate in new parliament to review and reexamine the nature of autocracy to prevent further delays to solutions of our many problems. Dr. Vivien Balakrishnan appears to be too negative to such change when he insisted that in doing so government might end up slaughtering the milking cows.
Let him be the one to spell out which of the past sacred cows were indeed milking cows. By asking people :Tell us your solution to the high cost problem" he comes across as an autocrat not willing to open up and come up with solutions to past problems.
So Dr V is sending yet another wrong autocratic message to the new MPs despite the fact that autocracy of the past has caused many serious problems to society and this has to change very fast as now lately admitted by MM Lee's own admission that government ought to provide the greatest benefits to the greatest number.
(see the repeated posts on "20 major government policy errors" to Feedback Unit without so far any positive response)
ermm...I think you over-analysed his response. In response to the question of "What about those who don't know how to help themselves?", his answer simply meant that he can't help every single Singaporean. He didn't admit to any mistakes.
For the elitist issue, it isn't really a government thing but a Singaporean thing. The way we like to rank each other, see who is better than who. What schools you go to? Where do you live? There's so much fuss about the ranking of every single aspect of our life. This isn't a trait directly derived from the government. It's a trait learnt from watching how other Singaporeans behave. It seems to be the Singaporean culture.
In a meritocratic society, the elites get to where they are based on their own efforts. That's fine. There will always be those that are more succesful than others. The problem begins when we begin to place a value on a person. If he's ranked higher, then he is deemed to be more valuable to the country. That a higher ranked person should have a greater 'voice' than those lower-ranked or that their opinion should matter more.
I think that we should not place each other on a scale, merely rate someone as higher or lower. We should instead treat each and everyone of us as different individuals who have different opinions and that our opinions should be judged as it is without regard to how highly or lowly ranked we are in society. So, really, it's not an autocracy thing or whatnot. It's a social issue which requires a social solution not a political one.
Hi kheldorin:
True government cannot help everyone to progress evenly because everyone has different abilities.
It is in theory not wrong also to promote meritocracy to allow the best in academics to gain headstarts and greater opportunities in life.
What is of concern is such policies seem to have been auto-piloted as if they could solve all of our ultimate problems. These policies are not in themselves faulty, but men are self-centred and tend to make it worse by all kinds of man-made persistent tax-and-recover corporatization policies which led to high cost of living and loss of economic competitiveness without listening to other alternative solutions.
Their man-made policy excesses so far have only benefited the elites and the rich resulting in ordinary people struggling to make ends meet as demonstrated by many suicide cases and destitutes seeing the MPs who are however turned away leaving them to jump the MRT.
If we have meritocracy and benevolent dictatorship or autocracy for the good of all it is fine. But if in between implementations injustices are caused and people are pushed to the edge the meritocracy and autocracy are no longer effective or working. But what do people see or hear - so far only lip service and hypocrisy that no one will be left behind.
So under such circumstance it is for truly great leaders to reexamine their leadership and talents and see where things have gone wrong and not to continue to cover up NKF problems hoping that they will disappear on their own.
If new MPs have the real talents and abilities to solve such problems as we have been facing for years they should tackle the source of the problems now - hypocrisy and self-centredness of men!!!
They should start solving problems and stop squeezing the people to no end to build surpluses against its failure to upgrade and restructure the economy talked about for years.
Purely promoting academic grades and results will lead to rote learning at the expense of broad-based practical knowledge application.
In place of scholarship scheme, those who have shown abilities in any practical knowledge applications in schools, polys and universities even in existing fields of knowledge should be spotted and given encouragement to start up new technologies or innovation projects.
When citizens are trained to use knowledge in practical knowledge application it will lead to their fullest training to become entrepreneurs one day and create jobs for fellow citizens.
Singapore needs to promote practical knowledge applicators and not academic rote-learning talents which are now over-supplied.
Many with degrees are becoming educated unemployed and even those with MBAs and PhDs only hope to seek employments with higher salaries without contributing to job creations.
Just as I have posted this topic, autocratic leader has announced another GST hike from 5% to 7% despite the current unemployments and high costs of living and difficulty in payments of existing mortgages of their over-priced HDB flats.
Had there been more collective decisions made after reasoned study with the elected MPs such GST increases would not have been lightly taken.
It just goes to show that autocracy has been the primary cause of all our current problems and life is getting tougher.