Will PM Wong address Singapore’s astronomical ministerial salaries? asks former ISD director

by Yoong Siew Wah

My dear PM Lawrence Wong, you are divinely blessed, and you are now happily ensconced in your lofty position as prime minister, enjoying the astronomical salary that your predecessor, the venal Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, has bequeathed to you by him setting the high ministerial pay (any different from plundering from the people’s coffers?) over the course of a number of years ago.

With your impeccable credentials of probity, would it not be an auspicious time to review the humongous salaries of these highly controversial political officeholders and modify them to be compatible with international standards?

For instance, the venal SM Lee was drawing no less than four times the salary of the American President, plus a bonus. What kind of golden service was he providing the dispossessed Singaporeans that required no less than four times the American President’s salary? Does it not give you a shudder that this could be some kind of sophisticated plunder?

Why is there no widespread vocal protest or agitation? The time will come, maybe in the next general election.

The opposition parties are apparently dragging their feet, not unlikely because they just don’t have the pugnacity to take on the People’s Action Party (PAP) and have been daunted by the PAP’s overbearing domination.

We are unfortunately endowed with a precarious and inept opposition, and it is up to the voters to put up a more pugnacious opposition to take on the PAP as an equal or better, but there is nothing visible right now on the horizon.

No vocal protest does not mean consent, but PAP still commands more than enough gullible voters to keep them in power.

But is PM Wong going to do nothing about it and allow it to fester? He is still a human being and is not immune to largesse at the people’s expense.

Again, he may be an iconoclast who may be more mindful and sympathetic to the people’s (especially poor people’s) impecunious condition than his predecessors like SM Lee and others, that he may be conscience-stricken to take the initiative to modify the astronomical salaries of the prime minister and his ministers.

The mentally-trepidated public can keep their eyes peeled for any sign of sanity by PM Wong and his sympathetic team to bring down the obscene ministerial salaries to a decent level by international standards.

I am still living on my poverty pension of $1545 a month and half-starving most of the time. Does PM Wong think he can show more humanity than his inhuman predecessor SM Lee by giving me a small raise so that I can live like a human being? What I had contributed in my service to Singapore I don’t think any civil servant or political master can emulate.

Just an interesting aside: I had mentioned that SM Lee was in a state of flux and could be perplexed in trying to find something to do to justify his substantial salary as a senior minister. He is reported to be visiting his constituents in Ang Mo Kio to console some victims of a coffee shop fire.

This is what he will be doing as a senior minister. I was not talking cock.

I watched PM Wong’s performance on TV during his visit to Malaysia and was simply amazed by his competence. He and SM Lee are clearly contrasting personalities. His style of delivery was so mellifluous and absorbing that it would not fail to delight the audience and kindle their perspicuous intellect. Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim could not have been unmoved by it.

On the contrary, SM Lee’s style is entirely in contrast and less subtle. He can even denigrate his hosts, as he did in China.

He was recently feted by the Chinese clan and business community to honour him for his contribution to the Chinese community as PM. He needs such invitations to boost his fading personality.

It is interesting that his nephew Lee Shengwu had some time ago prophesied that his rule was an Ozymandias.

Mr Yoong Siew Wah was the Director of Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) from 1971 to 1974. He was Director of the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in the 1960s. He runs a blog, Singapore Recalcitrant.