17
May
Percolating ministers like a leaky nuclear power plant
I laugh, and continue to be tickled by the comments made in the Straits Times forum. It’s a poor diet of badly-written arguments, but the entertainment and sheer lunacy you read sometimes more than makes up for the invisible sledgehammer against the side of my head.
The papers today are over-brimming with letters bemoaning our government Cabinet’s mini-Fukishima. To be precise, the Minister Mentor and Senior Minister have both decided to retire from the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. This is in addition to the Foreign Minister, George Yeo’s automatic job loss resulting from losing his MP seat in Aljunied.
While many of the forum writers are disappointed for the losses, I’m (ironically) disappointed at their lack of confidence in the remaining PAP MPs. While the 3 ministers, as well as many others before them have contributed a lot to the nation’s development, to suggest that we hang on to ministers as much as possible reeks of a heavy dependence on their competence for direction and leadership. I’d even venture to say that these people exhibit addiction syndromes, hoping to cling onto the past achievements of the ministers, and expecting more and more out of them.
The reality is that nobody, and nobody lives forever. Minister Mentor is in his 80s, and all our ministers are ageing alongside ourselves as we speak. To cling on to a minister of proven capability beyond their prime is not just being unfair to the minister (who may be thinking of retirement), but also to the nation as a whole, by preventing new-comers from taking up posts and demonstrating their ability to serve. In politics, the only way you get a candidate to prove his worth is to give him a post of significance. By asking the incumbent minister to stay on in the post perpetually, we are stifling these new-comers. They are unable to execute new ideas, so the point of innovating new ideas become moot when new-comers don’t get the chance to put their strategies into practice.
We speak a lot about stepping out of our comfort zones. It’s time for Singapore to take that step, and give-up-and-coming ministers a chance to serve Singapore. Renewal is key to any country’s continued growth and prosperity. Let’s give our sincere thanks to the departing ministers for all that they have done for our nation, and let’s put new ministers to the test.