World best civil service

The Accenture reports put the Singapore Civil Service as the best in the world. No surprises here. How else could the country run so well and for so long. The civil service is the backbone of the country's development, but often their role was underplayed. There were gripes about some inefficiencies here and there. What's so surprising and difficult to understand about this? Only God will think that he is perfect and cannot tolerate a little complaints. All earthlings are imperfect and will have slips or imperfections here and there that will draw flakes now and then. No matter how good is a system, there must be flaws, big or small. This is the realities of life. Despite all the imperfections, we indeed have a really good civil service.

Selling of core national assets

I greeted the news of the selling of our power stations with jittery. The big motherhood statements like liberation, another version of privatisation, are used to justify the move. It will definitely not affect the consumers. What an assurance. Can any vouch that this will not happen? In the past, all the privatisations were sold as the panacea for efficiency and cost reduction. What happened? Only the reverse. But the selling of the country's core assets is a different kettle of fish. Many disturbing questions come to my mind. Do we need the money? What are we going to do with the money? Buy sick foreign companies at a premium since no one is going to sell good and healthy companies except us? Or is the technology of the power station going to be obsolete that it is better to sell them now? The questions of national security is well answered and taken care of. And the consumer's and nation's interests are guaranteed to be protected. All thought through. The sale will only have benefits. Benefits to who? When all the concerns are addressed and confidently predicted that they will not become a problem, what can that we cannot sell? And it was also reported that the changes will not alter prices. For how long? We will see and monitor this again in a year or two down the road.

JB, a sad state of affair

Abdul Ghani met the demonstrators who were unhappy with the high crime rate in JB. As usual, he warned the demonstrators that it could lead to unexpected consequences. Now what did he meant by that when what the demonstrators were asking was for tighter law enforcement against crimes? Are the demonstrators going to be hurt instead of the criminals? It seems that there are two kinds of citizens. One protected by the law even if they turned to crime. The other of no consequence to the law even when they are victims of crime committed by the former.

What is Singapore Post up to?

I thought no organisation is to price in the 2% GST increase to the consumers? In his reply to Leong Sze Hian, Tay Poh Choo, a VP from SingPost said, 'As a GST registered company, Singpost collects GST on behalf of the Govt. In this exercise, we would like to assure the public that there will be no increase in revenue for Singpost.' And the 1c increase in postage is exactly 2%. Ok, accepted. And Singpost will absorb the 2% increase for all other local weight steps. 'We will return 1% of the franked postage to franked mail customers from 1 July.' Puzzled, 2%, 1%? Why take all the trouble?

myth 145

Finally David Gerald called it a myth The independence of independent director is a myth. I have said that before and now David Gerald is putting it on record in the media. The mechanism in the appointment of independent directors in contrary to the objective of having independent directors. David has agreed with my suggestions that an independent body must be appointed to provide directors unrelated to the organisation and its management. Only then can independent directors function independently and speak with a strong and impartial voice to self guard the interest of minority shareholders. I have suggested that MAS or SGX appoint SIAS as such a body. David has included included SID and two accounting bodies. I personally do not favour SID or any other bodies. I still prefer SIAS whose members are minority shareholders and have a genuine interest to safeguard their own interests. You need the owners, especially minority owners, to look after their own interest. Never trust anyone else.