At last I can surf the Net again at home. Computer problems bugged me the whole of last month. I couldn’t blog or browse my favourite sites at leisure. It was terrible. I could only listen to the BBC World Service on the radio, watch BBC World and CNN on television, and read the international news weeklies and the local dailies. If that seems to add up to a lot of information, think again. I am in Singapore.
Let me give an example of the local media. Singapore ministers recently gave themselves a pay rise. Even the junior ministers’ salaries went up by as much as what Dick Cheney earns in a year as the US vice-president. The pay hike was necessary to ensure the best and the brightest enter public service, said senior ministers. And The Straits Times, Singapore’s main paper, faithfully supported the decision. Nothing wrong with that. Singapore may be served by one of the most expensive ministries in the world, but it does provide good government. But was it necessary for every staff columnist to stand up and be counted in favour of the decision?
One columnist mentioned his MIT thesis and why he didn’t go into academia (to escape "genteel poverty"). According to him, the prime minister deserves a pay rise because his enthusiasm for his job is apparent from his occasional hearty laughter in public. Not every minister shows the same enthusiasm, he complained. But who are those sourpusses? That wasn’t mentioned. No wonder. I can’t recall a single instance when a minister went to court and lost his case in Singapore.
The columnist — who is a pundit, after all, with an MIT thesis — knew where to draw the line. But it’s strange indeed when a prime minister’s pay rise has to be justified on the grounds that his hearty laughter shows his enthusiasm for his job.
Thank goodness I can surf the Net again and visit my favourite sites where writers seldom begin by saying where they got their college degrees from.
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