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Coffeeshop Chit Chat - Avoiding and delaying “real change”</TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right>
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Avoiding and delaying “real change”
October 15, 2009 by admin
By Abdul Gafoor, Social Correspondent
Whenever I have a tea or meal with a Singaporean politician or policy maker we will always end up talking about need for real change in the Singapore system.
The conversation will start with denials and slowly and eventually he/she will admit there are flaws in the system though he/she will not admit to most of it or the most significant ones. But what will always revile me is when they will excusing themselves by saying Singapore is actually changing but slowly and that it requires time.
This is something I can remember having heard for the last ten years. Ten years is a bloody slow time to do things slow. As a matter of fact they have been pursuing change for last twenty years.
Let me ask every Singaporean politician and policy maker, how long more time do you need to fully effect change? It is very clear that they are not slowly and steadily pursuing it but instead are delaying and avoiding it.
Every politician and policy maker pretty much works on a broader regimental template and territorial boundary drawn up for them by people who do not want real change. They proudly call it synchronisation and synergy and other cliché terms when it essentially is pseudo central planning.
Among the taboo words, topics and concepts that politicians and policy makers in Singapore hate and detest for the last twenty years include “real change”. But what is so ugly about the term. Had their pioneers not pursued “real change” in the 1960s and 1970s going beyond preserving their status quos, Singapore will have remained a developing country and never transformed into an industrialised country.
The greatest irony is that politicians and policy makers’ survival in power and office depends on the real change that they are avoiding and delaying. As much as they may think 50 years in power is a long time, it is actually a short period of time.
The British alone ruled Singapore for about 150 years. The Sri Vijaya conquerors ruled Singapore for two or three centuries. However MM Lee himself has said the next 50 years is not certain.
PAP likes to imagine that party renewal is the real change and is key to keeping them in office. In the elections from 2010 till say 2060, PAP can indeed continue like in earlier elections field scholars, former top officers in military, top civil servants etc. However their survival is not in that kind of party renewal but in how they can solve the problems of Singaporeans and make the dreams and aspirations of Singaporeans come true.
For that they need real change within the system. It is the system that is causing Singaporeans the problems. It is the same system that is standing in the way of the dreams and aspirations of Singaporeans. Of course some politicians and policy makers are well aware of it and are deliberately avoiding it due to the exorbitant political cost of undertaking the real change.
There are also some politicians and policy makers totally oblivious to this and prefer to imagine that all the discontent in the population is from troublemakers, psychopaths and anarchists, failing to realise there cant be smoke without any fire.
Real change will involve radically changing the status quo. Power structures will have to be reshaped which means power structures of some people or groups will have to be curtailed.
Old ideas will have to be discarded not recycled and instead new ideas will have to be adopted. This will require huge courage to openly admit faults, flaws, imperfections and weaknesses in the system through an open and accountable system.
People for whom ivory towers have been constructed will need to be brought down from there. They will need to rethink how to evaluate people, performance, organisations and outcomes and move away from elitist methods, eugneics, self-conceived fixations and stereotypes . Rewards and remuneration will need to change to benefit real performers and real achievers. What all this means is a systematic shift and radical restructuring of the current system.
No politician nor policy maker has any courage to do that as that will involve clashing with their own breed and kind and swallowing their pride to admit what they worked on has become obsolete. Nobody wants to shatter their crystal image of the system nor rock the boat of their peer. Hence they naturally delay and avoid real change and pursue cosmetic ones and naively claim they are pursuing change slowly.
Strange that this may sound but the best thing that could happen to PAP in 2010 election is the opposition winning at 30%-40% of the seats (about 25-40 seats). The incoming opposition MPs will serve as a good reason for PAP to effect the real change that it cannot do so with such large majority.
There will be much less resistance within as then it will become pertinent for them to effect such real change or face eventual political extinction. PAP will not be able to achieve this either with its increased number of NMP /NCMP idea nor with the opposition winning less than 30%-40% of the seats.
A friend was asking me what can happen if PAP does effect real change perhaps between 2015/6 election or 2020/2021 election and whether it can still survive and/or retain full control. The earlier situation will not change during 2015/6 and so it will not be able to effect any real change. By 2020/2021 Singaporeans will be tired enough that any real change by PAP will be too late.
I personally do not wish to see PAP become extinct one day. No matter how right wing it maybe, it needs to stick around and add to the diversity which is critical for any political system to survive. If PAP should fall one day, we will need it then to be the opposition to check the then government. It is the balance of powers that we need in the country. We do not need another party to come into the parliament and take over the whole parliament and rule for another half a century.
The whole thing is like a smoker who exposes himself/herself to health risks through his/her smoking habit and when he/she reaches 50 and his/her risks are astronomical. He/she faces the option of either giving up smoking to live long much longer or continue smoking to die much earlier. PAP has reached 50 now. Lets see what it decides.
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Avoiding and delaying “real change”
October 15, 2009 by admin
By Abdul Gafoor, Social Correspondent
Whenever I have a tea or meal with a Singaporean politician or policy maker we will always end up talking about need for real change in the Singapore system.
The conversation will start with denials and slowly and eventually he/she will admit there are flaws in the system though he/she will not admit to most of it or the most significant ones. But what will always revile me is when they will excusing themselves by saying Singapore is actually changing but slowly and that it requires time.
This is something I can remember having heard for the last ten years. Ten years is a bloody slow time to do things slow. As a matter of fact they have been pursuing change for last twenty years.
Let me ask every Singaporean politician and policy maker, how long more time do you need to fully effect change? It is very clear that they are not slowly and steadily pursuing it but instead are delaying and avoiding it.
Every politician and policy maker pretty much works on a broader regimental template and territorial boundary drawn up for them by people who do not want real change. They proudly call it synchronisation and synergy and other cliché terms when it essentially is pseudo central planning.
Among the taboo words, topics and concepts that politicians and policy makers in Singapore hate and detest for the last twenty years include “real change”. But what is so ugly about the term. Had their pioneers not pursued “real change” in the 1960s and 1970s going beyond preserving their status quos, Singapore will have remained a developing country and never transformed into an industrialised country.
The greatest irony is that politicians and policy makers’ survival in power and office depends on the real change that they are avoiding and delaying. As much as they may think 50 years in power is a long time, it is actually a short period of time.
The British alone ruled Singapore for about 150 years. The Sri Vijaya conquerors ruled Singapore for two or three centuries. However MM Lee himself has said the next 50 years is not certain.
PAP likes to imagine that party renewal is the real change and is key to keeping them in office. In the elections from 2010 till say 2060, PAP can indeed continue like in earlier elections field scholars, former top officers in military, top civil servants etc. However their survival is not in that kind of party renewal but in how they can solve the problems of Singaporeans and make the dreams and aspirations of Singaporeans come true.
For that they need real change within the system. It is the system that is causing Singaporeans the problems. It is the same system that is standing in the way of the dreams and aspirations of Singaporeans. Of course some politicians and policy makers are well aware of it and are deliberately avoiding it due to the exorbitant political cost of undertaking the real change.
There are also some politicians and policy makers totally oblivious to this and prefer to imagine that all the discontent in the population is from troublemakers, psychopaths and anarchists, failing to realise there cant be smoke without any fire.
Real change will involve radically changing the status quo. Power structures will have to be reshaped which means power structures of some people or groups will have to be curtailed.
Old ideas will have to be discarded not recycled and instead new ideas will have to be adopted. This will require huge courage to openly admit faults, flaws, imperfections and weaknesses in the system through an open and accountable system.
People for whom ivory towers have been constructed will need to be brought down from there. They will need to rethink how to evaluate people, performance, organisations and outcomes and move away from elitist methods, eugneics, self-conceived fixations and stereotypes . Rewards and remuneration will need to change to benefit real performers and real achievers. What all this means is a systematic shift and radical restructuring of the current system.
No politician nor policy maker has any courage to do that as that will involve clashing with their own breed and kind and swallowing their pride to admit what they worked on has become obsolete. Nobody wants to shatter their crystal image of the system nor rock the boat of their peer. Hence they naturally delay and avoid real change and pursue cosmetic ones and naively claim they are pursuing change slowly.
Strange that this may sound but the best thing that could happen to PAP in 2010 election is the opposition winning at 30%-40% of the seats (about 25-40 seats). The incoming opposition MPs will serve as a good reason for PAP to effect the real change that it cannot do so with such large majority.
There will be much less resistance within as then it will become pertinent for them to effect such real change or face eventual political extinction. PAP will not be able to achieve this either with its increased number of NMP /NCMP idea nor with the opposition winning less than 30%-40% of the seats.
A friend was asking me what can happen if PAP does effect real change perhaps between 2015/6 election or 2020/2021 election and whether it can still survive and/or retain full control. The earlier situation will not change during 2015/6 and so it will not be able to effect any real change. By 2020/2021 Singaporeans will be tired enough that any real change by PAP will be too late.
I personally do not wish to see PAP become extinct one day. No matter how right wing it maybe, it needs to stick around and add to the diversity which is critical for any political system to survive. If PAP should fall one day, we will need it then to be the opposition to check the then government. It is the balance of powers that we need in the country. We do not need another party to come into the parliament and take over the whole parliament and rule for another half a century.
The whole thing is like a smoker who exposes himself/herself to health risks through his/her smoking habit and when he/she reaches 50 and his/her risks are astronomical. He/she faces the option of either giving up smoking to live long much longer or continue smoking to die much earlier. PAP has reached 50 now. Lets see what it decides.
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