The same thing happened in many handling of external affairs - self-centredness.
If the starting point in governing a country is self-centredness based on what a person wants for himself or his entity to the exclusion of other side's point of view, with legalistic wrangling to get what he wants will such a leader or manager be able to engage in win-win situations for himself and for the other side.
Internally, self-centredness can be seen clearly in citizens for years being taken for granted, deprived of many rights and freedoms and not getting any better although in self-denial mode one can still claim that he has built a first-world country from the third world with all sorts of hypocrisy which do not benefit ordinary citizens.
If Singapore wants to move forward it will have to recognise the shortcomings of old policies attributable to such self-importance and self-centredness resulting in stalemating progress due to frequent squabbles with the masses or other entities. It is a different world today where leaders have to overcome fears and prejudices and win over opponents or people affected with win-win solutions.
The self-centredness of man will lead to man's downfall as people will become enemies and no one will be willing to cooperate with one another to get better. Such past policies have got to change including one-tracked taxing and recovering fullest costs to keep more surpluses to look good for the ruling party.
There must be politicians who know better solutions than one-tracked taxing and pressing down on people's rights and freedoms to bring about win-win solutions to all.
IDR will suffer the same fate as the water issue due to personality at work more than anything else the same way as citizens being the losers due to one-tracked mindedness.