Elitist structure in S'pore undermines our progress....

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

http://sgtalk.org/mybb/Thread-Articl...s-our-progress

Yesterday 6:45 AM Post: #1 sgbuffett
Elite Senior

Posts: 11,112
Reputation: 36 The enemy of meritocracy is elitism.

In the early days when Singapore became a nation, the govt put in place a scholarship system to nurture selected talents as the populace was not well educated and some people having the benefit of good education would help the rest to move forward.

This system has grown to become and elitist system in which the interest of a small group is now being served by the whole society. How did this happen?

In order to justify a the existence of scholar elites, a narrative had to be put forth to elevate the importance of this small group. This is done by usurping the achievement of the rest of society to be attributed to this small group. One example is the promulgation of beliefs such as "without PAP and LKY" there would be no Singapore'. This oft repeated narrative is embedded in Singaporean's' minds is not founded on facts and reality. Singapore workers through the 70-90s were a rare breed that ranked among the best if not the best in the world attracting investments from developed countries.

The false narrative is then used to justify extreme pay scales and perks among the elites not just among ministers but the whole corterie of minions in the civil service, stat boards and military service.

Playing up their own importance to capture a disproportionate share of rewards in itself does not cause that much harm as money is not everything and our prime minister boasts that his pay is just 1 plate of char kway teow per person. The real harm is done to the ordinary citizens who are now viewed as expendable and replaceable economic digits. The elites are fine with importing large numbers from developed countries - imports are seen as economic equivalents of our own people, they are happy to hand out citizenships, PRs to them -in their eyes there is little difference between a true blue Singaporeans and the imports.

Singaporean identity, values and bonds among ordinary people is seen with diminished importance and this has become the end result of elitism.

Today, it is no coincidence that Singapore suffers the highest income inequality and growing divergence of interests between the elites and the people. The danger is the elites holds a concentration of power and economic control over masses and the divergent interests leads to extractive policies that is now starting to lead to a decline in the quality of life and prospects for ordinary Singaporeans.

They will argue that the military is important and the minister is important for disproportionate allocations but not once have they uttered workers are important and have to be better rewarded

The late Lee Kuan Yew architect of this unbalanced system also make sure that ordinary people have little means to influence changes and safeguard their interests through various laws, information cointrol (secrecy) and media control. The system he put in place is self-reinforcing.

To effect change and progress, there are few feasible approaches. We still have a choice at the ballot box but not everyone exercises it wisely. My suggestion is for us to reach out to other Singaporeans and tell them the truth so that they can act wisely.




Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.