CEO is normally paid more than the figurehead chairman or president some of whom are
quite free and not doing much. I agree with you that this is a mistake
and I believe it is a deliberate mistake to pay president higher salaries to justify PM and
ministers getting their millions.
In the same way, Comfort GM who was previously paid much less was
suddenly paid millions one year when ministers were trying to
promote their own salaries structure.
Why so generous when a cab
company boss in other companies were paid much less than the millions
paid to Comfort GM.
The answer is simple. Since ministers are benchmarking their pays to
million-dollar private sector CEOs but due to scarcity of such
million-dollar CEOs in the private sector the ministers would have to
encourage GLC to increase GMs' salaries to millions in order to justify
millions to be paid to ministers.
Even banker Wee Chaw Yao has said once he does not believe in paying millions to his bank's CEO for well explained rationale like such CEOs are not likely to stay around long enough to serve well and in any case there is no such a thing as millions equate to best candidates or better performance.
Many civil servants received windfalls because of such tweaking of their salaries to justify the ministers' own jumps in salaries.
As said GLC.