Selfish Meritocracy? Chok Tong is wrong

In his latest sermon, Chok Tong preached about selfish meritocracy and the need for those who have risen to the top of the heap to help those below, not to pull away the ladder. It is a serious call, a virtuous sermon to remind the successful to help those that are less successful, to give a helping hand instead of keeping the hands in the cookie jar to help themselves for more.

I think Chok Tong is seeing only one side of the coin. Singapore is a very selfless meritocracy in every count. As a country, we are extremely successful and we are very generous in sharing our success and wealth with people around the world. The people from the Third World are invited and swarming here to make their fortunes. The luckless and unable to make it people from the First World are also here to be treated like gods and given great jobs and great salaries that they would not get back home.

We have turned a swamp into a shining jewel and our first class infrastructure and systems are for people of the world to come and share and enjoy. We have the best universities and students from Third World countries are invited to study here instead of their down and out universities at home. And if they cannot afford the high cost of living, no sweat, our Govt will pay for tuition and living allowances, bond free. Several hundreds of scholarships were given out every year to these fortunate foreign students. Even their monthly allowances were more than what Singaporeans gave to their children.

We are even more generous in offering job opportunities to foreigners as long as they tell us that they are talents and have papers to prove it. We even sideline our not so able PMETs to make way for these foreign talents to make it good here.

Now, who is saying that we are guilty of selfish meritocracy? Look at how many foreigners who are now CEOs of our local institutions earning millions annually, which we could have kept them for our locals. But no, we are generous, and we believe in selfless meritocracy. We don’t mind giving the millions to foreigners who are good, and hopefully they don’t pull the ladder from the locals when they are up there, given the opportunity by the our govt to be here. Hopefully they don’t see it as tribal preservation to pull the ladders from the locals and offer the ladders to their friends from their home countries.

Singapore and Singaporeans can vouch and swear that we practise selfless meritocracy, and particularly in favour of foreign talents. Many foreigners have benefited from our meritocrazy. The locals that failed to enjoy the generosity and the meritocrazy policy have only themselves to be blamed.

What do you think? I think I am telling the truth. I only wish that our Govt practises a little bit of selfish meritocracy to benefit our own people.