For someone appointed as Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Grace Fu is a master of misinformation, a retard in communications, and pretty artless on Facebook. Don't blame us, we never voted for her. She slided into parliament in 2006 on the coat-tails of some senior politician in the Jurong GRC.
"I had some ground to believe that my family would not suffer a drastic change in the standard of living even though I experienced a drop in my income. ... If the balance is tilted further in the future, it will make it harder for any one considering political office," she wrote. What's there to misunderstand about her focus on pecuniary priorities? When she made the threat about "harder for any one considering political office", she surely wasn't referring to other political aspirants within her family group.
And if there's any doubt about what was "tilted further in the future", she makes it plain as day in her following posting: ".. it may not be wise to call for the trade-offs to be tilted further to an extent that it dissuades good people from coming forward in future." You probably heard the same refrain from the nocturnal denizens of Geylang, "No money, no honey."
The long overdue correction in the obscene ministerial salaries is hardly a trade-off between personal and national pursuits. It is a matter of public service altruism versus self centred greed. If money is all that matters, Lim Kim San would not have taken up the challenge of building houses for the masses as a volunteer, and foregoing a salary for three whole years.
Unfortunately for us, Grace Fu is not the only misguided soul. She's simply one of many MIW following the example of her political paymaster. PM Lee Hsien Loong told BBC journalist Jonathan Head in 2009: "...these are jobs where you make decisions which are worth billions of dollars. And you cannot do that if you’re pretending and you just say, well, we’re all in it for the love of king and country."
Papa Lee makes it nauseatingly clear in "Hard Truths" (page 123): "We're in this part of the world where "money politics" is the culture, we're not in Europe, nor Australasia or some region where different political cultures prevail."
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right, all greedy crooks from greedy cultures and upbringings.
ReplyDeleteThe most graceful thing for Grace Fu to do now is for her to resign from her political appointment.
ReplyDeletepatriot
The new formula makes me even more upset
ReplyDeleteOur ministers are actually enjoying a monthly salary increase of 23.8%!
ReplyDeleteThis is because in 2010, our ministers received a total of 34.5 months but only 20 months in 2011.
e.g. for ministers with grade MR2:
2010 monthly salary: $62,194 ($2,145,700 divided by 34.5 months)
2011 monthly salary: $77,000 ($1,540,000 divided by 20 months)
77,000 / 62,194 = 123.8%
Love the way u write, surely u do not mince your words. Excellent writing !
ReplyDeleteI THINK the lightning party needs to go for some communication course ascit seems that most of them are minsundertood consistently. Are the comedians ?
the high salaries was designed to massage the consciences of some ministers and MPs to look the other way when financial resources which should have been directed toward the needy sectors of society were channelled instead to money making enterprises.
ReplyDeleteThis DisGraceFooL should learn a thing or two from Mr Chen Show Mao, quitting a multi-million law partnership for a $15k a month MP job. Mind you, he quit at the top of his game - after closing the largest IPO in history at that time, was it in 2010 or 2009? Anyway, it certainly wasn't 20 years ago.
ReplyDeleteNow will she resort to coveting the jewellery of other Asean ministers' wives?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the daft people in Yuhua SMC loves her. She trounced Teo Soh Lung in the last GE.
Saycheese
As they are still paying themselves in millions after the cut, she was jus using the same old stunt trick of the PAP old man to fool people to think that it is alright to pay them millions. Like someone ever said, this is called corruption in other countries but here pap called it salary. So PAP mus keep stoking up this old stunt to hide their immorality.
ReplyDeleteActually, we were already forewarned not to expect too much of this review when some PAP MPs tried to pull off the same stunt before the review was completed, saying the same thing but in different ways. And it backfired for one of them ,the one who said something like they cant be paid lower than the private sector Towkays or else they lose face when go meeting the towkays, remember? Now that the review outcome is going to Parliament for approval, this FU Fool mus have been arrowed to do the same stunt by her PAP masters but she failed miserably as well. Gee, PAP is spending so much time thinking how to fix the people than doing work all bcos they dont want to go straight.
To be fair, she had a convincing win for GE2011 against the SDP candidate. In any case, the best course of action for her on hindsight was to have remained silent.
ReplyDelete‘Pay cut of 37%”
ReplyDeleteWe should compare the new ministers’ salaries with year 2009 salaries instead of year 2010 because year 2010 is exceptionally good year, our ministers received a whopping 34.5 months (16 months fixed pay + 9 months performance bonus + 8 months GDP bonus + 1.5 months annual variable bonus).
"To be fair, she had a convincing win for GE2011 against the SDP candidate. "
ReplyDeleteNone of the PAP is convincing win else why do they need to resort to gerrymandering ? Unless one agree that gerrymandering as a form of unfair treatment and bullying is acceptable. And for that the PAP already lost the respect of voters, what moral ground are they to negotiate and lead the public ?
"For someone appointed as Senior Minister of State for the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Grace Fu is a master of misinformation, a retard in communications, and pretty artless on Facebook"
ReplyDeleteAnd I laughed too when some retard went on TV and blamed the non-Chinese SMRT staff for breakdowns. Where on earth did we go to find cretins like that to be part of our government?
http://lohandbehold.com/2011/12/27/fish-rots-from-the-head/
The logic of politicians’ remuneration:
ReplyDeleteYou propose a formula for your own salary and present the proposal to the parliament for approval. You and your cronies have total control of the parliament. You know your proposal is definitely passed without meaningful debate.
You propose salary formula for you and your cronies to base on a group of top earners who are mostly from GLCs and your cronies' companies. You also know that your controlled parliament will pass your proposed formula. Next thing you do is to get GLCs and your cronies' companies to pay the chief very very well. As such, your and your cronies' salary will be increased accordingly.
After the people object to your proposal, you appoint one of your cronies to review the proposal and he recommend a revised proposal that you and your cronies (not the people) are happy about it. Then you present the revised proposal to the parliament again for approval. You know that all your cronies in the parliament will support the revised proposal because the revised proposal is for their own good. The parliament is still dominant by your cronies and the revised proposal will be approved without any question.
After the revised salary proposal is done, one of your cronies can say she suffer pay cut by joining politics. She claimed she could earn much more in 'private' sector. Look at what 'private' sector she has worked before joining politics. She has worked for few GLCs before invited to join politics. Are GLCs really 'private' sector? If she is right, those GLCs must have paid her very very high salary. This proves that if you have raised the GLCs chief salary this will actually effect higher salary for you and your cronies.
By controlling the corruption at lower levels, foreigners who do not know the details of this system will believe that a pro-business governance system is free of corruption. Is the system really corruption-free?
Based on the logic, it proves that the current system is very very clever to ‘legalize’ corruption at the highest level. If not, what is it?
You may look at the logics of GRC, NCMP and NMP. It is not difficult to understand the ultimate motive behind a fake democratic ‘feudal dynasty’ politics in action in a modern world.
Just wondering if Chen Shui Bian does it the Singapore way, is that called corruption or not ?
ReplyDeleteWhat a disgraceful thing for someone who is expected to be Graceful as she is named.
ReplyDeleteIts a shame to others with the same name.
"Grace Fu is a master of misinformation, a retard in communications, and pretty artless on Facebook."
ReplyDeleteAnd still she think she deserve millions while still learning on the job on communication ?
Will a employer pay someone who lack experience on a industry the same salary of experienced and capable person in the same industry ?
Just because she belong to lee's circle, she think that she deserve to be pay ridiculous amount of salary ?
Hi all
ReplyDeleteCheck out this weblink: http://whenimadethedecision.tumblr.com/
Grace Fu's FB posting looked like a standard template but filled in the appropriate blanks.
"To be fair, she had a convincing win for GE2011 against the SDP candidate. In any case, the best course of action for her on hindsight was to have remained silent"
ReplyDeleteThe comment above does not take into account the fact that Grace would never have won her seat if she had run under the banner of another party other than the ruling party. She belong's to a select group ho've been bred and harnessed to maintain Kuan Yew's system and to look away when this system ignores the plight of the bottom 30% of our society.
Give her credit for jumping on the "right" bandwagon.
BTW what does a minister of state actually do?
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that the civil service are doing all the work
Ministers are just the person who give the final approval. All work is done by civil service and only need to convince ministers to endorse.
ReplyDeleteThat is why many feel that getting scholars as ministers may not be necessary. Smart Singaporeans with good EQ and love for Singaporeans will do just fine. The high pay to attract high performers is just a way to justify high ministerial pay. Looking at our ministers, are they that super?
I suggest we follow other country's example in limiting the terms of government to 2 terms, even Communist China practices this.
ReplyDeleteIf people take on public post knowing that they will not be serving there for long, then they should not be too overly-concerned about their pay!
Why we're so angry over their high pay is because their recent performance do not justify their high pay.
Now If You Want To Stay On, Stop Talking About Pay & Start Showing Us Some Good Results Or Performances
Singapore went down right royally the day they dipped their grubby hands leegally into the cookie jar. They were paid obscenely with other people's money so they will look the other way to protect their own salary when other meritocratic relatives are appointed to high paying jobs or when they don't make money from their high risk foreign investments. They will have to take care of their own if they don't want to lose their unobtainable elsewhere salary because they go down together.
ReplyDeleteSaycheese
"To be fair, she had a convincing win for GE2011 against the SDP candidate. "
ReplyDeleteNone of the PAP is convincing win else why do they need to resort to gerrymandering ? Unless one agree that gerrymandering as a form of unfair treatment and bullying is acceptable. And for that the PAP already lost the respect of voters, what moral ground are they to negotiate and lead the public ?
January 8, 2012 2:42 AM
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My mistake since Amy Khor was the top scorer.
Anyway my point was that although she went into politics through the GRC, she managed to garner a much higher vote count than her other party members.
Even if I agree with you there that there was gerrymandering, you would still have to explain why some did better than others. For instance, why the PAP's share of votes in the East side is lower than the West side.
"Anyway my point was that although she went into politics through the GRC, she managed to garner a much higher vote count than her other party members. "
ReplyDeleteBut do bear in mind, even if she win, can we still say that the PAP MPs win in indignity and in fairness behind a party that has a long history of heavy slandering and bullying the opp party by her party during election campaign ? I hope that Singapore don't have short memory where PAP assure the public that there is fairness but only to resort to their dirty ways using state media when push to desperate corner.
"For instance, why the PAP's share of votes in the East side is lower than the West side. "
I don't have the explanation but perhaps the govt will like to shed some light on it by releasing raw information. I don't think it is fair that only PAP party has this information to make decision and direct resource accordingly. If gerrymandering does not play a major outcome of PAP's win, then by all means, remove gerrymandering then and then will the public at least has one less thing to lament. And beside, there are factors to consider, like abuse of authority and power by leveraging on political association , PA, RC, etc to assist in the campaigning. Needless to say, the outreach for PAP is greater as it can rely on using more state resources unlike opp party.
She was CEO of PSA in charge of Singapore operations, not the group CEO. And before the "meteroic" rise after the old guards left, head of the Finance Dept (EVP I think). It seems likely that her "private sector" pay was not too different from her political pay before the 37% cut, if not lower.
ReplyDeleteOn surface, the figure (37% cut) appears to be quite substantial.
ReplyDeleteBut on second thought, year of 2010 is exceptional. Our ministers received a whopping of 34.5 months pay (16 months fixed pay + 9 months performance bonus + 8 months GDP bonus + 1.5 months annual variable bonus).
So it is more appropriate to compare the new ministers’ pay with year 2009 or 2008.
Don’t be surprised if the new salaries are an increase from year 2009 salaries!
e.g. if ministers received only 20(the same as 2011)months pay for year 2009, then the new ministers’ pay will be an increase of 23.8% from 2009!
Here the mathematics:
for ministers with grade MR2:
2010 salary: $2,145,700 (34.5 months pay)
2009 salary: $1,243,884 (2,145,700 ÷ 34.5 x 20)
2011 salary: $1,540,000
1,540,000 ÷ 1,243,884 = 123.8%
"Anyway my point was that although she went into politics through the GRC, she managed to garner a much higher vote count than her other party members. "
ReplyDeleteBut do bear in mind, even if she win, can we still say that the PAP MPs win in indignity and in fairness behind a party that has a long history of heavy slandering and bullying the opp party by her party during election campaign ? I hope that Singapore don't have short memory where PAP assure the public that there is fairness but only to resort to their dirty ways using state media when push to desperate corner.
"For instance, why the PAP's share of votes in the East side is lower than the West side. "
I don't have the explanation but perhaps the govt will like to shed some light on it by releasing raw information. I don't think it is fair that only PAP party has this information to make decision and direct resource accordingly. If gerrymandering does not play a major outcome of PAP's win, then by all means, remove gerrymandering then and then will the public at least has one less thing to lament. And beside, there are factors to consider, like abuse of authority and power by leveraging on political association , PA, RC, etc to assist in the campaigning. Needless to say, the outreach for PAP is greater as it can rely on using more state resources unlike opp party.
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Reply:
I do not disagree that the incumbent PAP has significant advantages running up to the elections. Firstly, the electoral boundary changes are not transparent and often sudden. Further, the incumbent PAP has significant resources it can mobilize.
But in your replies, you have kept digressing into a rant about the morality of PAP's electoral victories, which is not my point.
My point repeated, is that Grace Fu won the Yuhua SMC with a better-than-average margin, as compared to other PAP candidates in SMCs such as Joo Chiat, Punngol or Pioneer. This would indicate that she had done some groundwork, compared to other PAP candidates.
And the purpose of raising this point in the name of fairness is that at least for GE2011, she did not ride back into Parliament under the GRC umbrella.
If that had been the case, that would give her less reasons to grumble about the pay cut for prior to GE2011, no GRCs has been lost by the PAP.