Friday, November 20, 2009

Peanuts, Monkeys and Ministers

If we do not pay Ministers adequately, we will get inadequate Ministers. If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys for your Ministers. The people will suffer, not the monkeys. I have been in the government long enough to know that if the Cabinet is inadequate, and worse, dishonest, disaster for the country must follow.

- Goh Chok Tong, Republic of Singapore, 1993: cols. 1260-4, quoted from Jon S. T. Quah, " Reward for High Public Office in Singapore," in Christopher Hood & B. Guy Peters with Grace O. M. Lee (Eds.), Reward for High Public Office: Asian and Pacific Rim States (London: Routledge, 2002), p. 156