$million Ministers

Recently, Emeritus Senior Minister (ESM) Goh Chok Tong incurred the wrath of many Singaporeans by asserting that “ministers are not paid enough” and that it was “very populist” to demand ministerial pay be slashed. To rub salt into wound, he said he had tried unsuccessfully to get two from the private sector (one earning $5 million and the other earning $10 million a month) to be future ministers, before adding that people who can’t even earn $500,000 a year are not minister material and in fact “very mediocre”.   

Netizens predictably gave him a earful.  Not a few pointed to the new bunch of ministers across the Causeway in PM Mahathir’s Cabinet, who are “all taking less than 20k ringgit a month”. In particular, they cited DAP secretary-general and former Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng, who in addition to being a double degree accountant, also has the distinction of being jailed twice for his political convictions (1987 & 1994) in a lengthy political career. Lim told the press that becoming a minister was something beyond his wildest dream, as must be any thoughts of snaring a big fat minister pay. No less inspiring was the example set by DAP MPs Tony Pua and Dr Ong Kian Ming who volunteered their “half-year, no pay” services to the Finance Ministry to help Lim settle in. Pua was an ASEAN scholar with a degree from Keble College, Oxford while Dr Ong was a Fulbright Scholar from Duke University (USA) with a degree in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Netizens said these are the people we need in government - people who are not in it for the money but for the spirit of public service.  They are right.  However, one must also not forget that Malaysia’s situation is vastly different from Singapore’s.  Malaysia is at the crossroads where the new government has the historic opportunity to lift the country from the morass to which it has sunk. The people are enthused and the leaders (and wannabe leaders) fired with a sense of mission to transform the country. They are at the same stage in which Singapore found itself back in 1965. The new dawn that Malaysians seek today is the survival that Singaporeans sought in our immediate independent years. In such ‘revolutionary’ situations, how much you are paid as a leader meant little to you.  

But two or three generations down the road, if Malaysia is successful and prosperous, it may not be so easy even for them to attract people into politics simply because that impetus for action will not be as urgent or great.  This was what happened to Singapore.  With security and survival no longer a pressing issue, the PAP realised that people were content to let the leaders carry on. Hence the PAP’s self-renewal process that focused (some would say over-focused) on remuneration as a key indicator of one’s qualification for high office. Kevin Lim’s article (“Politics is much more than just a contest at earning millions of dollars”, published in TOC, 5 Aug 2018) rightly asserted that “truly worthy politicians are either thrown up through very challenging circumstances or imbibed with years of high ideals to do something worthwhile for their countries”.  But ESM Goh was also not wrong when he said that “in peace and prosperity where there are no dragons to slay, personal aspirations, freedom, privacy and life-style take precedence”. These are very challenging times for Malaysians but if all goes well for Malaysia, a time may come when KL will have to pay their ministers ‘Singapore salary’ to keep them in government or get people to join politics.