This is reproduced from a comment I posted on an article found at theonlinecitizen.com:
One of the points I can discern from both your contributions (@iVOTEahMENG, @Steven Kho) to this thread is that presidential pay helps to maintain the president’s dignity. I disagree. Is S$4M a year really necessary to provide the President of a sovereign state with ‘dignity’?
If you look at it from a basic human point of view, I believe one should only talk of maintaining or preserving dignity when one is not paid enough to afford decent clothing to wear, to nourish oneself properly and has no proper home to live in.
The S$4 million sum is for the President’s personal use. Everything else, including “entertainment expenses”, Istana maintenance and salaries of the Presidential support staff are covered in the Civil List and detailed in this Statute.
So @Steven Kho’s comparison of salaries with sports/business figures above is not a consideration of dignity.
Perhaps you are talking of a salary befitting his status and responsibilities as a head of state. Yes, I agree, as a head of state he should be paid more than the ministers in parliament. Surely, then, S$4 million is a reasonable amount, considering that the Prime Minister’s salary is S$3 million. Other ministers are paid S$1.5 million a year. Is this justified? The Government certainly thought so in 1994 when they released their White Paper linking competence and honesty with higher pay, and they have certainly stuck to this stand over the years.
But for me, I think this is legalising corruption rather than preventing it. I have personal experience that excuses are easy to make when one has privileged access to a public good (in my case, Internet access in the student residence where I am part of the volunteer admin team. I try to use my privileges for the benefit of others but mostly it’s for my own purposes that I take advantage of this. Whether this is corruption or not, I don’t know, but my point here is that keeping to principles is hard, and we should encourage people to/who do so.) and I think that for our public servants we should look for people with principles who are ready to perform their public duty with or without such perks.
With regards to political independence, @iVOTEahMENG is of course correct that each candidate will be backed by a political party. But this will happen whether or not the candidate solicits this/these parties for support, because the parties will want to throw their support behind particular candidates.
Dr. Tan Cheng Bock in his rally has raised a valid point that his fellow candidate Mr. Tan Jee Say while discrediting the other three Tans for being past PAP members and therefore less than completely independent, Mr. Tan Jee Say himself is a former SDP member and also not completely independent.
This is absolutely true. However, the point I believe Mr. Tan Jee Say has been trying to make is that as he has never been publicly affiliated with the PAP, he
can provide the necessary checks and balances on the majority-PAP government.
He is aware that his campaign also serves to raise the profile of “non-PAP forces” in preparation for the next election, which admittedly is not non-partisan as Mr. Tan Kin Lian claims to be and could therefore represent a conflict of interest.
But would paving the way for a more representative democracy really be a problem for Singapore?
Furthermore, I would like to point out that representatives from several parties have come out in support of Mr. Tan Jee Say, and this to me is much more of a unifying, representative effect than having more people support a person.
I know two candidates who are willing to use their personal pay for the public good, and neither of them is a Doctor. I don’t know who you will be voting for – it is your decision – but I am very sure now who I will want to see as the President.
