Good govt policies ‘hinge on quality of leaders’

SINGAPORE — Government policies have to keep evolving as challenges come up, but whether the right shifts are made hinges on the calibre of leaders, said Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say.

The three challenges that will confront Singapore in the near future — workforce, population and ageing — have thrown the issue of the quality of leaders into sharp focus in the coming polls, added Mr Lim today (Aug 27), as he announced he would lead the incumbent Members of Parliament (MPs) into what is expected to be another slugfest against the returning Workers’ Party in East Coast Group Representation Constituency (GRC).

“This General Election (GE) — yes, it’s important to make sure, at the local level, we’re electing people who can serve the community ... but, I think (what’s) even more important is for us to put together a team to ensure we can lead and serve Singapore at the national level for the next 10, 20, 50 years,” said Mr Lim.

“Better politics is very important ... Once the nation is caught in a situation of bad politics, good policies cannot survive. In the last 50 years, because of good politics, that’s why year after year, decade after decade, we were able to come up with better policies,” he added at a People’s Action Party press conference to introduce its slate for East Coast GRC and Fengshan Single Member Constituency (SMC).

Senior Minister of State (Trade and Industry, National Development) Lee Yi Shyan, Minister of State (National Development, Defence) Maliki Osman, and two-term backbencher Jessica Tan will be defending their East Coast wards.

Mr Lim also said the ruling party comes up with initiatives to further the interests of people rather than to win votes, citing the foreign manpower policies in recent years as an example.

Given the global economic tumult about a decade ago, the Government concluded that “one good way to protect Singaporean workers ... was to expand the size of the workforce”. The foreigners that were brought in buffered the local workforce from fluctuations in the economy and helped Singapore avoid the problems of high unemployment and wage stagnation plaguing other countries, he said.

“It was the right strategy for the last decade, but it will not be the right strategy for the next decade and beyond,” said Mr Lim.

With the Government slowing down imported manpower since 2010, the challenge ahead is to transform the economy with more productive enterprises and faster innovation,
he added, noting that Singapore’s population will reach a peak soon and put a lid on workforce growth.

“These are big issues that we really are confronted with: How to overcome these three peaks — the workforce peak, the population peak, and the ageing peak. This is something that keeps many of us awake at night,”
 said Mr Lim. Reflecting on his team’s performance in GE 2011, he said the strong signal voters sent by dealing them a drastic slide in its vote share — 54.83 per cent, versus 63.86 per cent in 2006 — has seen MPs redouble their efforts to engage with residents on their concerns.

“Immediately after the 2011 GE, we reflected quite deeply on how we want to learn from those experiences and ... the message given to us was that we need to listen more to Singaporeans; we need to connect with them deeper (and) understand their concerns,” added Dr Maliki.

Mr Lim said they have been organising their outreach efforts to engage small groups of residents from both HDB flats and private estates, block by block and group by group.

“We do not need another drop of five percentage points for us to continue to improve ... We responded constructively, with real action (and) not just with words,” said Mr Lim.