I dreamt that the bird flu wiped out the Singapore Cabinet entirely.
Yes, the Health Minister caught it from one of his handshakes in hospital & brought it back to the entire cabinet and it just could not be stopped!
The result was that elections had to be held immediately!
The good news was that the PAP lost the majority in Parliament & the coalition of Alternative Parties formed the government.
As widely known, there was not enough talent from the ranks of these parties to form a powerful cabinet. The Alternative parties did some brainstorming & decided on the following:
The New Cabinet was to be formed by Carefully Selecting from a Wide Range of Candidates who would apply for the Cabinet Posts. These Posts would be advertised in Singapore and Globally.
The selection Committee for the Cabinet would be formed comprising of:
2 Representatives of each of the coalition members,
The head of each of the Chambers of Commerce,
The head of each racial grouping in Singapore
The head of the main religious organizations in Singapore
The head of each NGO in Singapore
An equal number of ordinary Singapore Citizens randomly selected. Citizens who were keen to be chosen were invited to enter their names in a pool of prospective candidates. The random draw was duly conducted successfully & a wide range of ordinary Singapore Citizens were selected to make up the rest of the selection committee. This was to balance the elites with the ordinary people in the selection process.
The task before them as a Selection Committee was to short list a total of up to 8 candidates per Cabinet post. As it was a large Selection Committee, a simple voting system applied for decision making after discussions and debates about the attributes of each candidate.
The Job Specifications of Each Cabinet Post & the Detailed Tasks for them to achieve were spelled out clearly. For the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Home Affairs, Defence and Finance, candidates had to be Singapore Citizens for at least 10 years.
All the other Ministerial Posts were open to Local and Global Candidates. The Advertised Compensation Salaries plus bonuses were pegged at the average cost of the top 8 First World Countries’ Government Cabinets. Not surprisingly, the applicants were numerous for all the posts & applicants came from both Singapore & abroad.
The Short Listed Candidates were then given 90 minutes Live Slots on National TV to present their own profiles & brief objectives for the Cabinet Posts they were applying for.
Thereafter, Citizens went to the Selection Polls to select the candidates they wanted for each of the Cabinet Posts. Redundant Posts such as Minister in Prime Minister’s Office were eliminated.
A slim but trim Prime Minister, Deputy PM & his Cabinet were selected.
The surprise was that despite many qualified & experienced Global candidates, there were also many professionally qualified local Citizens who came forward to serve the nation.
The Results
All except one selected Cabinet Minister was a Singapore Citizen. The non citizen was from Hong Kong and he was selected to be the National Development Minister based on his vast experience in Hong Kong’s Government. Amongst unsuccessful applicants for the other Ministries included Hilary Clinton, her husband Bill, Tony Benn, Gordon Brown, Kevin Rudd, Mahatir Mohammed, Thaksin and George Bush.
The selected Cabinet got down to the enormous task ahead firstly, to replace the incompetent heads of the previous governments organisations including GIC/ Temasek, the various Parliamentary Secretaries, the heads of GLCs while keeping a few good men who had a good track record of fairness & demonstrated competence plus non partisan political outlook. Government Agencies such as the CPIB, CID, the Police & Armed Forces also saw similar changes in their chiefs based on the same criteria of competence & non-allegiance to political masters.
Unfair & unjust policies such as market pricing of public housing, profit driven public health care, & poor subsidized care for the aged were overturned & revised.
Public Transportation was nationalized & the COE was revised to ensure that fine tuning of peak traffic became the real objective while fund raising became secondary.
Foreign Talent Policies & Foreign Worker Policies were revised to ensure that real talents were attracted & admitted. Wages were revised upwards for manual & unattractive work such as cleaners so that locals were attracted to do this work. Foreign labour were brought in to make up the shortfall. In the process, the wage gap between the have & the have nots were narrowed & a more even distribution of GDP was achieved. A minimum wage was implemented based on the cost of living in Singapore. This also allowed for repatriation of unnecessary foreign workers since more locals came forward to do the unpleasant work.
Public gathering laws were changed to ensure that citizens could protest & provide feedback peacefully & Speakers Corner Rules were modified to encourage real feedback.
To promote & improve Singapore’s International Image for Justice, the High Court & Lower Court Judges were nominated by an Independent Law Society & an election of Judges ensured that independent judges were selected.
The HDB & PA were de-politicised & policies were implemented to ensure that they were organs of the State without allegiance to any political masters.
The unfair & unacceptable retroactive policies implemented for CPF withdrawals, minimum sums & medisave sums were overturned. New policies were calculated & implemented for new entrants to the CPF scheme while old contributors reverted to the original schemes as implemented when they commenced their contributions to CPF. In other words, the shifted goal posts were moved back to the original positions!
Given that the new Government’s cabinet of ministers were selected by citizen & comprised of recognised professionally qualified persons and/or persons who had proven themselves despite a lack of qualifications, market confidence ensured that government policies were supported wholeheartedly. In the International Arena, Singapore’s new government received wide acclaim & support; in fact, a huge round of public expression of confidence.
PMETs, Old Men & Women were willing & able to find employment & decent incomes again when many had been driven to near desperation under the old administration. Coffeeshop talk & discussions changed positively with the renewed vigour of citizens & all round smiles in the city.
Foreign criminals who had been taking shelter in Singapore were identified, given a fair hearing & those who had a case to answer in their home countries were repatriated according to new treaties that were enacted with friendly nations around us.
While some speculation disappeared from the real estate market, there was a healthy interest in purchasing homes in the “new” Singapore, and, many “quitters” started to return to the State bringing back many lost talents who had their hearts & soul for the nation.
Education policies were revised to ensure that there was room for late bloomers. Further, the quota of limiting higher education for each cohort to 25% was abolished. So long as a student was able to meet the minimum standards & was motivated, the student was allowed to progress forward to higher education. History & the Arts were reintroduced to allow for a more wide ranging development of the human potential. Recognising that English had deteriorated, proper lessons in English grammer were reintroduced in Schools. Tuition was abolished & slow learners were given the opportunity to learn in school after hours with the recruitment of the tutors into the school system. Students were thought to rationalize & think & rote learning was abolished.
GRCs & the “first past the post” method were abolished and a Proportional System of Representation was implemented according to popular feedback. This was to ensure that a more representative government of the people would be elected.
The policy of recruiting foreign sportsmen with the objective of winning Olympic medals was abolished. Local sportsmen were given opportunities to train & improve with the best coaches from around the world. Healthy sports for all was the motto for those less inclined to championship competition.
In the next elections, Singapore citizens voted the same cooperative parties again & the number of PAP elected members of parliament diminished further. During these times, the PAP had many deserting the party & joining the alternative parties who were the government. Some good men were accepted with open hearts. The Family started to lose it’s influence & most members had moved overseas knowing that the hatred for the deeds of the old man was too painful to be easily forgotton.
I woke up from this dream with a huge smile on my face and happiness in my heart.
Sadly, it was, but a DREAM, however, I knew in my heart that it would come true some day soon!
p.s. if anyone has suggestion that could make this dream more real, do write to me at singaporespring2016@yahoo.com, I will see how it might be incorporated.
Good dream! May it generate more good dreams.. 8)
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