Good governance, but whereÂ’s the voice? - LOH CHEE KONG
[email protected]FIRST, the good news: Singapore continues to rank among the best in five out of six areas in the World BankÂ’s latest worldwide governance indicator report.
In particular, it received almost perfect scores in corruption control and government effectiveness. But [color=red]the bad news is that in the category of “voice and accountability”, which measures political, civil and human rights, the Republic’s score hit its lowest since 1996 and it was placed in the bottom half of the 212 countries and territories surveyed. While Singapore led South-east Asia in all the governance indicators, it ranked behind Asian countries such as Hong Kong and India when it came to voice and accountability. According to the World Bank, the latest report — which covers the decade from 1996 — revised the bank’s earlier scores after five new data sources, such as the
Gallup World Poll and the Open Budget Index, were added. These revisions in “virtually all cases result in minor changes in our earlier estimates”, the report stated. However, the revisions saw Singapore move up dramatically in voice and accountability for 2005. [/color]
(To read more, please go http://www.todayonline.com/pdf_open.asp?id=1207HNL004)
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Does a country like Singapore need political, civil and human rights? Is it really that important for Singapore to have these? ARe we deprived of these?
Perhaps, this is something worthwhile to take into consideration before we cast our votes.
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