A degree in political science doesn't make one a politician. Politics has to come from the heart and the belly. Some people have the knack. Most don't.
LKY made no apologies for recruiting technocrats via the backdoor for political office. He admitted that they would be no match in a battle with someone possessing political acumen in their genetic make up. However, he warned sinkies that there was a huge difference between being able to deliver great soundbites and actually crafting policies that helped the country.
His favorite term for any politician who is not in his camp is "charlatan".... a conman who is a smooth talker and persuader but is peddling nothing more than snake oil.
You know what... he is actually right. When it comes to boosting the share value of Singapore Inc, the Lee Li Lians of the world don't have what it takes. They may be able to lend a sympathetic ear to downtrodden members of society but when it comes to crafting a formula that takes Singapore to the next level, it takes more than empathy for ones fellow humans.
The sad part is that no PAP technocrat seems to have the answer either.
There are maybe three big tasks for the government.
First is to ensure that there is economic growth. The PAP hasn't done too badly in this respect. But there is a sense that our long term economic well-being has been sacrificed in order to deliver short term results.
Second is to ensure that all people benefit from the economic growth. This one, they've failed terribly.
Third is to sell their vision of Singapore to the people. They also haven't done too badly. In fact they've done so well in this regard that people have been drinking the government's kool aid for long enough for the government to dig them in a large hole.
Regarding the second point, the failure to distribute the wealth of a nation evenly, to ensure an even rate of growth is damning for the Singapore government. It is even more damning when you consider that up around 1990 they had been doing a fairly OK job. And to be fair to Singapore, this problem is also to be found in many first world countries, particularly the anglo American countries like USA, UK, New Zealand. This is what happens when you send all your scholars to all those ang mor countries, they come back with those same ideas that will screw us up the way it screwed up the ang mor countries. There is a fetishisation of the private sector, governments get run like corporations, there is a nexus of the private and public sectors. Everybody gets too caught up in their KPIs, and it is those aspects that don't get measured by the KPI that will kill you in the end.
The problem when you forget about the social sciences and the humanities, is that when you confine yourself to an exclusively technocratic worldview. The people who are more humanities can take a step back and analyse different angles of the issues. Right now there is a debate that is going on in the western world. People in America are all complaining that they have a government "of the rich, by the rich and for the rich". The middle class is getting stretched and screwed, and they are not happy. It's useful to study what's going on over there because a lot of their problems are similar to us.
Much of the education that people receive these days in the economics is also very shallow and deprived of content. Economics has become too mathematical and it is more focused on mental agility and showing how clever you are, instead of reflecting the true situation. Having a prime minister who is trained in mathematics and statistics - oh boy you're really asking for it. Even when you work in finance you know that there are different types of wealth. One million dollars in collateral for bad debts is not the same as one million dollars in cash, and it is not the same as one million dollars in equity of a company run by a bunch of gifted businessmen. Wealth is always better when it is spread around, when it is in the middle class, or in the hands of common folk.
When Singapore was a third world country, it thrived because the early leaders were able to formulate unique solutions to problems. We didn't do things like a lot of the other third world countries did, maybe because our first generation of leaders were courageous enough to find their own way. Now we're just blindly copying other people and not being bold enough to go our own way, and that's why we got afflicted by the problems of the rest of the world. There's this word "corporatism", which helps explain what's going wrong with the world today - it's basically because so many governments are run as though they were corporations, and they impose corporate values on their citizens.
The mentality of our leaders are very warped, so when you listen to them speak you need to translate their ideas to reality and see the difference. They say "we have to look at the long term view instead of the short term". Well they've done exactly the opposite. Much of the reason why they screwed Singapore so badly is because they were too focused on short term GDP growth and they were taking the short term view. They say "we have to be able to implement unpopular policies for the good of the nation". Well the policies are unpopular because they are for the good of the elites, and people by and large understand that. They say "only we can deliver economic growth". But what's the use of economic growth, when so much of it is actually attributed to raising the price of the land so high that nobody can afford it?
It's not as though our admin service is totally incompetent. It can produce people like Donald Low who can articulate very well all the things that are wrong with Singapore. But I think the reason our system is rotten is because it's a system which edges out people like him who dare to tell it like it is. And if everything is controlled by OCBC - well maybe they don't really want what's best for Singaporeans. They just want to build an elite class system and put themselves at the top of the pyramid. The new aristocrats today are the "meritocrats", they are people who think that just because they work a few hours longer every week than everybody else, they deserve to be part of a gilded class and screw everybody else around.
Politics - I suppose it is important. But underlying all that is - are you doing the right thing for your citizens?
