I totally agree.The middle management or what I crudely call the machinery is basically alright. It is the drivers at the helm who seems clueless as to where to go?The paradigm and idea mill was long screwed.
And lets face it . It seems to be a certain family at the helm, the rest of them are just parts of the machinery,Things have been accelerating at a crazy pace after the PE By-elections. Now there is a crazy kamikaze style dash to get approval for a population white paper.
What this does is simply force the hand of the electorate. In Singapore , traditionally One family makes the decision, the machinery executes it. the mass are traditionally deemed too stupid to think for itself.
In any case in the next election, the effects will be unmask-able. As unhappiness on infrastructure inadequacies and such will increase. IN any case, it may be what the old man foresaw anyway, several parties in parliament, and they will be intelligent , qualified politicians. However he may be gaming to still hold the driver's seat?In any case some other party holds the driver seat. There were be difficulties in taking over the machinery. There will be poison pills planted.
Of course, taking reference from the Ajunied TC saga, the poison pills and self destruction button when the incumbent loses power may already be planted and very deep within the organizations.
Which leaves any new challengers with less savory methods to solve the problem. Jailing and freezing bank accounts and passports of revolting goons. It is not whether the challengers have a choice. They may have to prepare to build an infrastructure very quickly as a back-up plan. Of course there is no excuse to keep an incumbent in power due to self destruction buttons within the machinery.
The equivalent of the Fed Chairman in Singapore is actually the boss of MAS -in other words Heng Swee Keat's old job.
You do not need a PhD in finance, but these days economics is so complex that there won't be a lot of people who can master all the details without a PhD. You need a very very good grounding in all the issues. I would say the reason why Tharman is well regarded is that he has the right grounding in Economics and he has learnt his stuff well. But even then, in the recent years, events have made a complete fool out of people who claim they know anything about economics. Anybody who says they understand economics is either exaggerating or stupid.
If you want enthusiasm and passion, one strong indicator is to have done a PhD in that subject. (Not some other irrelevant field of study, ie a medical doctor - what the fuck doees that have to do with anything). It is not necessary to have a PhD but it helps tremendously.
I have some personal experience in doing policy analysis. If the middle management is knowledgeable but the boss is a fool, then the system doesn't work either. That's why I don't believe "as long as the civil service is competent we're all right".
