An evaluation of PAP’s mid-term performance: The quality of political leaders (Part 2)
Published on 2018-04-07 by The Online Citizen
by Kwok Fangjie
Last week, I had argued that we were already mid-way into the current Parliamentary term and the People's Action Party (PAP) did not do well in terms of bread and butter issues. This week, I will look at things from a different angle – the quality of today's political leaders.
As Dr. Gillian Koh from the Institute of Policy Studies noted, the younger generation of political leaders will need to navigate the country in a more complex global landscape. Given so, would the younger Cabinet members be ready to take on such a challenge in steering Singapore to greater heights?
How effective has Singapore become under our highly paid 4G leaders?
The lack of planning by the government cannot be more aptly seen in the hospital bed shortage. While the number of hospital beds grew by 2500 from 1980 to 2014, the population grew by more than 3 million in the same period. The quality of healthcare has similarly declined, with 22 patients infected from a hepatitis C outbreak at Singapore General Hospital in 2015.
Although this problem has been partially alleviated with the upcoming Sengkang General Hospital, this predicament simply cannot be imagined during the era of the 1G PAP leaders? A similar situation was present in the supply of HDB flats although I will not go further into that topic.
In July 2017, transport minister Khaw Boon Wan claimed in a forum that train reliability has improved three times since he took over from Minister Lui Tuck Yew. Less than 4 months later, the worst breakdown happened due to flooding as a result of falsified maintenance.
While he chided the CEO in his ministerial speech, there was no further action taken against top management despite calls for the CEO to resign. This is again in contrast to Lee Kuan Yew's stance that "Everything.. just has to work. If it doesn't work, I want to know why, and if I am not satisfied, and I was often not, the chief goes and I have to find another chief. Firing the chief is very simple"
continue reading here :
https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/201...eaders-part-2/