Does or will govt know root causes of problems

We have been listening a lot to all the MM's talks about change of mindsets, need to install the 4th generation leaders, brain drains and all sorts of changes we need to make to catch up fast-paced challenges in a more complex and competitive world lately.

Does MM Lee ever wonder why we have these sorts of problems after 40 plus years and still cannot resolve them with all the leadership we are supposed to have in our highly talented government.

One simple answer can be given to such a scenario: Government is too self-centred and too slow to accept change and challenges itself.

Often when there is any problem like our falling economic competitiveness, or rising costs thereby driving away our own talents or businesses, such problems were caused by government's wrongful, anti-progress and anti-competitive and even anti-people policies which MM Lee has refused to admit problems caused by himself and his own refusal to change.

Take the case of hoarding of taxes as state surpluses and privatising of basic government services to allow government linked companies to make extra profits from lands and assets already owned in the first place by the taxpayers.

People have been asking for years for greater transparency and accountability in investments of such surpluses belonging to them in overseas projects from Shin Corp to Global Crossing or Bangalore.

What happened to all these feedbacks. Has MM Lee listened for years to these feedbacks. It seems like it is only when MM Lee is forced by bigger forces affecting political sensitive sovereign funds that he has finally decided to change and adopt certain codes of practice for GIC finally as recently announced by Dr. Tony Tan.

Although people have been listening to government call to change mindsets, and even give credit where credit is due there is no change of mindset on the part of MM himself who still stick to many past unworkable policies for years until too late.

The problem is we do not yet have a government who is responsive to criticism or who is fair and willing to admit mistakes or take actions to solve problems?

Very often the key or main issues are ignored with a lot of window dressing trying to explain all the detailed or technical aspects but the principles like policy errors of past were not admitted due to self-centredness or face.

If principles are wrong detailed discussions of technicalities of issues will be pointless.

In the governance of this country, there is a need to recognize that a good government is one which is responsive to changes. Changes can happen only by government itself being willing to make changes to wrong fundamental principles in the governing of a country.

The monies which Temasek or GIC are investing in are people's monies accumulated as surpluses due to over-taxing and profiteering of the people through all sorts of schemes and devices with all sorts of excuses as posted by many people here.

Government has often claimed credits for such surpluses without admitting that these surpluses were the results of wrongful exploitations of their fruits of labor.

So it is not wrong for people to question repeatedly government's investments in many overseas projects like Shin Corp or Bangalore or Russian Township.

Principles are being questioned and not particulars of investments. Has the government so far been willing to be more transparent and accountable in the way it invested their monies - some US$100 billions - in various overseas projects from Shin Corp to Global Crossing, Telcomsel etc.

Because of its past failures to respond to citizens' concern over such reasonable expectations, people are not easily appeased by superficial measures or quick fixes. They will not rest this issue until more is being done to prevent losses of the kind seen in Shin Corp. It is not because the government has not made some profits in some other investments as you mentioned. They know the government has made some profits in some other investments. It is the principle of care and prudence which has to be exercised by anyone taking charge of public funds which has not been followed obviously by those who made these shoddy decisions.

There is obviously much more to be done to ensure that decisions in investments are made only scrupulously and professionally not by gut feel like in the case of Micropolis or Shin Corp.

If Dr. Tony Tan now realized this error of Temasek and began to set up clear guidelines or codes of practice it is a good move. Problem is our leaders have been too stubborn on records over many such negligence and errors and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

NKF should have been taken to tasks way back in early 1990s for similar failures to disclose information to make the organization more transparent and accountable. Due to the similar obstinacy (called variously auto-piloting by Ngiam Tong Dow and Disaffective divide by Dr, Catherine Lim) many major policy errors took years to be admitted and changed.

As leaders, they ought to be willing to accept mistakes but often it took them ages to do so resulting in serious migration, dropping child birth, rising costs of living etc. It is only when his own grand children studying overseas currently also decided not to return to Singapore that MM Lee finally has admitted that we have a serious brain drain problem.