| Can one have too much money? It's an idle question for a wage slave but I recall a German-American businessman saying in Calcutta that there was nothing to spend money on "" no theatre, opera, fine dining or excellent wines. That cannot be said of lavish Singapore, yet Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong obviously doesn't need the extra annual $(S)600,000 (Rs 168 lakhs) salary he will donate to "suitable good causes" for five years. That's an awesome Rs 8.4 crores between now and 2012. |
| Official wages went up by 25.5 per cent last Monday (see this column Measuring your Leaders on March 31) so that the best Singaporeans don't shun politics. Though race is not mentioned in this context, only the Chinese have to be assured of high rewards. Indians have politics in the blood. In India where, as the late Piloo Mody said, if someone could find no other job, he became a journalist. If he was too useless even for that, he entered politics and became a minister. |
| Many years ago "" 1969, I think "" Goh Keng Swee, Singapore's pioneering finance minister who laid the basis of its affluence, claimed that the prime minister's father, then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew earned "something like 10 per cent of what he would earn in private practice as a lawyer." Not over addicted to modesty, the senior Lee corroborated that claim. He said in 1985 he was "one of the best paid and probably one of the poorest of the Third World prime ministers," meaning he didn't mint a fortune and salt it away like so many other Afro-Asian leaders. |
| As minister mentor in his son's government, he earns $(S)2.7 million. "A top lawyer, which I could easily have become," he said the other day, "today earns $(S)4 million. And he doesn't have to carry this responsibility. All he's got to do is advise his client." |
| It's easy to mock such claims. When I asked a British-born teacher at a leading Singapore school why they had dispensed with religious instruction as a subject, the man shrugged and replied, "What can I teach them about money?" But a senior official agrees that only high wages ensure that government employees do not look around for part-time employment, honorary positions with handsome perks, consultancy arrangements or, at the worst, sell favours. |
| He sees it as an additional advantage that Singapore has abolished expatriate/colonial facilities like free furnished housing, official cars or paid schooling. They encourage wangling and create a sense of dependence. Under the present system an employee is paid enough to buy what he wants. The senior Lee may have decided on this after visiting India in the sixties and seventies when he noticed that officials did not have the means to keep up the grand bungalows they occupied and were always hard up. Claiming that Scotch and golf balls were much in demand, he thought it demeaning for senior men of high calibre who were responsible for major decisions to be starved of goodies. |
| As for his son's enhanced salary (whether or not he takes it) being five times more than the American president's, the senior Lee says American presidents have the White House and Airforce One. When they retire, they earn "tens of millions" from writing memoirs. "And Bill Clinton, for every speech he makes, it's at least a million or half a million or he doesn't go." They also set up foundations. |
| He could have mentioned Nancy Reagan scrounging for fine china. Or Imelda Marcos's more than a thousand pairs of shoes. Or Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu's 4,500 chandeliers and a palace that was the world's third biggest. |
| The younger Lee's actual donation might be even more if salaries go up again soon. Since the last hike was in 1994, perhaps this will also hold good for 13 years. But one can't be sure. The prime minister wonders whether the 200 private sector employees who earn more than him hold jobs that are more important than his. |
| Goh Chok Tong, who was prime minister when salaries last went up, set the precedent of giving away the extra money for five years. With Lee following suit, simple folk are bound to wonder why wages need shoot up at all if the extra money isn't needed. Why not a straight charitable allocation? |
| But it's only the head of government who is making the sacrifice. No one else. And everyone, from head of state to office drives, benefits. By forgoing his own share, Lee can look critics in the eye and declare hand on heart that the increase must be in the national interest since he himself will not gain a cent from it. He says the cut will give him "the moral standing to defend this policy." |
| True, some complain that Singapore has no legal minimum wage and that 20 per cent of the people earn a measly average $(S)1,500. But as someone wrote the other day, this gulf is only to be expected. An ancient Chinese saying has it that an able general is worth more than 10,000 foot soldiers. They can't be paid the same. |
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