Misconcepton: that high pay prevents corruption

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

The author observed that there is a general misconception of the Singapore model of preventing corrupt acts by office holders and civil servants through paying premium salaries. ‘Honesty and corrupt-free’ have been the PAP’s objectives even prior to coming to power. The key points to support the argument are as follows:-

The beneficiaries of the high pay are limited only to about 400 people consisting of the PM, DPMs, Ministers, head of government agencies and departments, and the administrative services officers. The rest of the civil servants on the average are in fact drawing slightly lower salaries (about 90%) as compared to their cohorts in the private sector. Thus, the high pay policy is not applicable to the entire civil services.

The whole idea of paying premium salaries to officer bearers and top civil servants arose in 1994, whereby it was noted that out of the 20 top civil servants promoted from 1978, only 2 of them were still around with the rest left for the private sectors. It provided the impetus for the 1994 white paper to benchmark ministerial salaries to the top echelon of private sector employees.

PAP first campaigned on the promise to ‘Clean up Corruption’ in 1957, and followed up with a landslide victory in 1959 to form the government. Since then, corruption-free has been its motto and three broad objectives were set as follows:-

Honest and clean government – a requirement for party’s survival;
Honest and clean administration – a criteria for Singapore’s survival; and
Honest and integrity as the no. 1 criteria for selecting the political elites.
From the above, it can be deduced that the objective of a high salary benchmark for office bearers and top civil servants is more for retention of talents than prevention of corruption amongst them. Nonetheless, with this policy of ‘high salary to prevent corruption’, its disincentive for corrupt acts cannot be disregarded.

In conclusion, the author cited a Chinese adage “靡不有初，鲜克有终”(mǐ bù yǒu chū，xiǎn kè yǒu zhōng), meaning “most of the policies enacted by the ruling class started off with good intentions, along the way changes were made, and knowingly or inadvertently it would deviate from the original intent. As a result, many policies ended in failure”. It is a stark reminder to the political elites that they need perseverance, determination and self-discipline, to uphold the promise of an ‘honest and clean’ administration, which is reminiscing of PAP’s responses towards the two incidents of ‘ex-Minister of National Development, Teh Cheang Wan’s corrupt act’ and ‘the discounts received by LKY and son in the purchase of Nassim Jade”.

http://www.tremeritus.com/2014/12/12...free-politics/


Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.