At a roundtable discussion where all four presidential hopefuls, Mr Tan Kin Lian, Dr Tan Cheng Bock, Dr Tony Tan, Mr Tan Jee Say, came together for the first time, editors from The Straits Times posed a wide-ranging set of questions collected from both within the newsroom and from the public.
One of the questions, which came from @RealSingaporean on Twitter, was: What do you think would be a fair salary for the President?
In a video by RazorTV, each of them gave one-minute responses to the question.
Tan Kin Lian
"My position is very clear. If it is $4 million, the fair salary is less than half."
"If it is reduced by the salary review, probably about half."
"I've read the views of many people and they say why are you paying such a big salary when you don't have much to do."
"I want to assure the people of Singapore, if I am the President, there's a lot of things to do, and even so I want to donate at least half."
Dr Tan Cheng Bock
"It's a question that is quite difficult to answer. And you cannot just pluck a figure from the air and say ok this is the amount."
"There must be some basis when they make this type of decisions."
"And, I would say, we have to study the roles and responsibilities of the President. Many people think that the President is just going around waving hands and so on."
"But I read President Nathan's report and I think he has done a lot of things."
"Apart from the ceremonial, the custodial role and so on, I think it's a lot of work that is being done. Therefore I think before (making salary) cuts, let's study the subject properly."
"There is a committee reviewing it, I will go by what the committee has decided."
Dr Tony Tan
"The government has set up a salary review committee under the chairmanship of Mr Gerard Ee, comprising of people from a wide sector of society in Singapore. I'm sure they are studying this issue very seriously."
"What the compensation the President should get, the ministers should get, other public service (office) holders."
"We should wait until we get the decision and whoever is President, will I'm sure abide by the recommendation and decision of the committee as determined by the government."
Tan Jee Say
"I agree with Dr Tan Cheng Bock that we can't really pluck the figure from the air, but there are certain benchmarks."
"And I would disagree with the approach taken by the government and the Prime Minister in his terms of reference for the committee in taking a discount off the benchmark of salaries against the salaries of CEOs. I think that is the wrong approach."
"The minister is not a CEO, he is a public officer looking after the public interest. And his salary should be benchmarked to somebody in public sector."
"In Japan and the UK, they benchmark the salary to the lowest-paid civil servant."
"I think we should as public figures, you should not take the CEO's salary as the starting point."
"I would prefer a certain multiple of minimum salary, maybe we don't have a minimum salary in Singapore. But, obviously I would advocate a minimum salary."
"But let's take the lowest salary of the civil servant, the lowest grade. If it is $1,000, then take a multiple of it, whether its 20, 30 or 40."
"In Japan it's 40 times because well, I heard, I read the report somewhere it's 40 times because salaries are low."
"in UK, it's lower than that because the UK salaries are higher."
"So I would benchmark against a public officer, if not a minimum salary."
