Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Strong Leadership Needed

In the 2002 wuxia film directed by Zhang Yimou, Jet Li is the nameless protagonist "Hero" who aborted the assassination attempt on the King of Qin in 227 BC because of two words, "天下". Tiānxià (天下) translated literally means "all (everything and everyone) under heaven", implying that peace can only prevail if there is only one ruler.

True to form, Teo Chee Hean was evasive about taking charge when speaking to 500 students at the Nanyang Technoloogical University (NTU) Ministerial Forum. Instead of providing guidance and a leadership beacon for the youngsters, he fell back to the whimper of consensus building. Instead of one strong voice, the preference seems to be to pander to a cacophony of opinions. Compared to 50 years ago, Teo claims, today's generation have more views, more questions, more ideas. Meaning the pioneer generation - which he urged the younger set to emulate - was a collation of bland, unenquiring minds with no initiatives of their own, and ever ready to fall in line behind one shepherd. Reality being such, no one guy lives forever, and someone needs to step into his shoes.

With no able captain at the helm, consensus building can be an uphill task. We already have a historical baggage of race and religion differences, and adding more foreign elements into the melting pot is no help. The good news is that more Singaporeans are throwing their hat into the coming elections. Despite all the talk of polarisation, Singapore is not ancient China during the Warring States period, "all under heaven" need not apply. Better to place faith in true democracy, and keep a look out for the saboteurs who undermine the time tested institution.

The King of Qin (Chinese: 秦王; pinyin: Qín Wáng) liked the ancient way of saying "I" (Chinese: 寡人; pinyin: guǎ rén). Unfortunately the two Chinese characters "寡" which means less, or lacking, and "人" which means man, or person, in ancient Chinese could potentially have the meaning of "a man who lacks morals" (Chinese: 寡德之人; pinyin: guǎ dé zhī rén). Self appointed king or not, no person lacking moral authority should be allowed to rule.

8 comments:

  1. Honously, I am not perturbed by who forms the government. To me it is more important that this government not be given a blank cheque. This means, the ruling party should not have 75% majority rule. The advatage of this below 75% is that whoever governs have to seek consensus when changing laws e.g. the recent ban on alcohol after 1030. MPs under this government will work hard to gain support for future elections. Under today's political climate, MPs just have to lick ministers balls and carryout who the bosses want. People become non importance.

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  2. The LTA enforcement officer blurted out "My boss instruct me not to issue summons" when confronted by someone at the CC why he is not issuing summons for illegal parking by grassroot leaders.

    Never thought our PAP leadership can also sanctioned this type of breaking the law among themselves ?

    PAP has integrity? My foot!

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  3. The CEO of Sin lighted rows and rows of firexrackers infront of locals and tourists(watch videos on Youtube and Facebook).
    Others found in possession of firecrackers will be charged.
    The Chinese Saying 官可以放火, 民不可以点灯, meaning (Rulers CAN do what is disallowed or outlawed) the People are at the Mercy of the Rulers.
    In Sin, the Rulers are elected by the People, some call them Sheeple, the 60% who voted for the Regime in 2011 are daft to have voted for rulers. Hope they will prove Lee Kuan Yew wrong before he expires.

    patriot

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  4. Strong Leedership like these photos?

    http://mothership.sg/2015/02/here-are-some-photos-of-brigadier-general-lee-hsien-loong-looking-absolutely-terrified-while-lighting-cny-firecrackers-in-spore/

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    Replies
    1. This says it all:
      (下面是李显龙总理在点燃爆竹时的一系列表情……原来总理这么怕点爆竹啊,难怪新加坡不许放鞭炮)

      So fire crackers are banned just because one guy is too chicken?

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    2. Looks like he's crying........

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  5. But the modern day guǎ rén of the little red dot is not lacking. True courage is overcoming real fear in lighting up a slow burning fused mighty firecracker!

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  6. "Self appointed king or not, no person lacking moral authority should be allowed to rule."

    Problem is, there is no sin free person :)

    So top decisions are tainted with sin

    If so, what are sheeple, largely ignorant, voting? Pigs into parliament?

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