From Third World to First: The Singapore Story, 1965–2000

After several years in government I realised that the more talented people I had as ministers, administrators and professionals, the more effective my policies were, and the better the results

Singapore was ranked as the least corrupt country in Asia with a score of 9.18, ahead of Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan. Transparency International (based in Berlin) placed Singapore in seventh place worldwide in 1998 for absence of corruption.

People want a good, honest, clean government that produced results. That was what the PAP provided. It is now less difficult to recruit talent from the private sector

than adequately compensated by the honour of high office and the power they wielded, and that public service should entail sacrifice of income. I believed this high-minded approach was unrealistic and the surest way to make ministers serve only briefly, whereas continuity in office and the experience thus gained have been a great advantage and strength in the Singapore government

the remuneration of ministers and political appointees in Britain, the United States and most countries in the West had not kept pace with their economic growth. They had assumed that people who went into politics were gentlemen with private means. Indeed, in pre-war Britain people without private incomes were seldom found in Parliament. While this is no longer the case in Britain or the United States, most successful people are too busy and doing too well to want to be in government.

governments who have to be elected into office, as a rule, underpay ministers in their official salaries

The need for popular support makes

went further to compare the salaries of Philippines President Marcos at 100,000 pesos yearly, or just over S$1,000 a month, and the president of Indonesia, governing 150 million people at a monthly salary of 1.2 million rupiahs or S$2,500. However, they were all wealthier than I was. An Indonesian leader retained his official residence on retirement. A Malaysian prime minister was given a house or land to build his private residence. My official residence belonged to the government. I had no perks, no cars with chauffeurs thrown in, or ministerial quarters with gardeners, cooks and other servants in attendance. My practice was to have all benefits expressed in a lump sum and let the prime minister and ministers themselves decide what they wanted to spend it on.

Our successors have become ministers as one of many career options, and not the most attractive one. If we underpay men of quality as ministers, we cannot expect them to stay long in office earning a fraction of what they could outside. With high economic growth and higher earnings in the private sector, ministers’ salaries have to match their counterparts’ in the private sector. Underpaid ministers and public officials have ruined many governments in Asia. Adequate remuneration is vital for high standards of probity in political leaders and high officials.

On the other hand Singapore has shown that a system of clean, no-money elections helps preserve an honest government. But Singapore will remain clean and honest only if honest, able men are willing to fight elections and assume office. They must be paid a wage commensurate with what men of their ability and integrity are earning for managing a big corporation or successful legal or other professional practice. They have to manage a Singapore economy that yielded an annual growth rate of 8–9 per cent in the last two decades, giving its citizens a per capita GDP that the World Bank rated in 1995 as the ninth highest in the world.