Should Political Parties be involved in business?

[winnipegjets]

The AIM issue requires us to decide whether political parties should be involved in business. Look at Malaysia & Thailand as example. The ruling party have business that are getting government contracts most of the time. The question arises ...did these companies won the contracts on merits or based on connections. In Thailand and Malaysia, the answer is obvious.

Many questions have been raised about the competency of AIM in its role of providing municipal management software services to the PAP town councils.
How could a $2 company with no prior record get a contract to provide services to town councils? Did AIM win because it was a PAP company and the town councils were of the same political camp or AIM's offer was irresistible in terms of returns to the town councils. Teo, the PAP MP, thus far have not presented a strong case to justify the award to AIM. The savings was in the region of thousands, not ten of thousands.

If the AIM deal was that good ...why not retain AIM or buy back the software? Why is there the need to look for new vendors?

Political parties should not be allowed to own business because of the obvious conflict of interests.

 

[Leongsam]

Political parties should not be allowed to own business because of the obvious conflict of interests.

The NZ government owns many businesses. They are known as SOEs. However, the management of the companies is kept at arms length from the politicians.

This can work in NZ where there is a distinct separation of powers. I'm not sure if it will ever work properly in an Asian context.

 

[Debonerman]

Leegality of the issue is mind boggling.......

 

[winnipegjets]

The NZ government owns many businesses. They are known as SOEs. However, the management of the companies is kept at arms length from the politicians.

This can work in NZ when there is a distinct separation of powers. I'm not sure if it will ever work properly in an Asian context.

The issue is business owned by the governing political party, like examples we see in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia. We never knew the PAP was involved in business until the revelation of AIM. Now, that it is out in the open, this is an issue we need to address. How do we prevent the rampant corruption that we see in neighbouring countries when the ruling party directs government projects to business owned the party?

 

[eatshitndie]

cia creates many businesses as cover for their fishing operations. one of them was "ciao", based in bedok bay. purpose: collaborated with and fund high tech start-ups to cum up with inventions and technologies that could offer break-thru' solutions for intell ops. it has morphed and is no longer operating as "ciao".