Let’s celebrate! I feel so rich!
Parliament is debating ministerial pay, which in Singapore means everyone already knows the ending and is only arguing about the font.
The committee, totally independent as these committees go, looked at the last 15 years (post GE2011 disaster) and decided the entry-level minister’s reference salary should climb from $1.1 million to $1.8 million. That is the number that will make jaws drop in the foreign headlines. The local headlines, for some reason, will never be so catchy. Existing office-holders are not eligible to the new benchmark. They will receive a one-off adjustment of up to 9% from 15 October, but the man on $1.1 million may still leave the room on about $1.2 million. Most MR4 ministers, we are told, should hover around $1.35 million by the end of this term. The $1.8 million figure is a reference, not a promise. Please do not confuse the two.
Ah, such restraint. So much sacrifice.
The Prime Minister’s own benchmark doubles the MR4 reference, which takes it from $2.2 million to $3.6 million. He will donate the increment — about $1.4 million a year — to “suitable good causes” for five years. Other ministers are not expected to copy him. As he put it, he holds the ultimate responsibility for the framework. The rest of the Cabinet holds the rest of the money.
Chan Chun Sing the Math scholar, did the arithmetic for those of us who still count in months. Annualised over fifteen years, the benchmark move works out to 3.6 per cent a year, which is slower than median wage growth. Civil servants, meanwhile, have had three adjustments in the same stretch. Political service, we are reminded, already comes with a 40 per cent discount off the median of the top 1,000 earners, who now clear a little over $3 million. Without the haircut, the reference would sit above $3 million. So really, these are not greedy folks. They are actually exercising restraint and making sacrifices.
MPs will not be left out. The monthly allowance rises from $13,750 to $18,500. That is the number that will be muttered on the MRT by people whose increment this year bought them a dinner at Jumbo.
The official story has not changed since the last time this movie played. Good government needs “good people”. Good people, like pretty women, have alternatives. If the pay falls too far behind the private sector, the talent stays in the banks and the law firms and the country’s leadership gets whoever is left. Corruption is what happens when you pay peanuts. Singapore does not pay peanuts. Singapore pays cashews, then explains that cashews are a sacrifice because almonds exist.
Nobody is required to believe the alternative is a cabinet of altruistic saints on “only” $80,000 a month. The country is small, the job is public and the last time salaries were cut, in 2011 (post GE2011 disaster), it was because the public had noticed. 15 years is a long freeze if you are the one frozen. It is a short freeze if you are still paying off a four-room flat while the same government tells you that fertility is a national emergency and a decent lunch in town is at least $8.
The joke, if you want one, is not that ministers are paid. It is the tone in which the raise is sold: as an act of civic courage, undertaken only because avoiding it would be irresponsible or even disastrous for the country. We cannot duck the issue simply because it is politically difficult. Quite. The difficult part is saying $1.2 million out loud in a week when most of us are still checking Reddit for cheaper lunch options.
Tonight the House will say the necessary sentences. Tomorrow the increment will be a line item. The “good causes” will receive a cheque with the PM’s name on it. The rest of us will do what we always do when the numbers get large: convert them into years of our own pay, wince and go back to work.
The $100,000 will clear. The ministers will obligingly turn up for work even when they have better options elsewhere. Someone, somewhere, will call that the price of good leadership. And you will still need to turn up for work and draw your miserable salary. The country will function and you may be thinking too highly of yourself if you think that it’s because of you turning up for work.