Sunday, April 10, 2011
Government: A more complicated concept than you think
One very sad situation in Singapore is that despite all of us having suffrage (the right to vote), not everyone is very clear on what exactly are they voting for. And one important concept of democracy is that it is believed that collectively as a country, people would be able to vote for the people or party which best represents their interests, hence giving them the vote of confidence to 'represent them'.
Representation comes in 2 ways: The party (or coalition of parties) which secures a majority (more than 50%) of seats forms the government, and the rest forms the opposition. In Parliament seatings, both the ruling party (or parties) and the opposition have the right to air their views, after which the governing party will take in all views, then decide what is the best course to go after that debate.
That is, of course, the very basic of what a Parliamentry government is about. However, in our lives, 'government' comes in many layers. Just ask yourself. In the Singapore context, what does the word 'government' mean to you? Does it remind you of the ministers? Does it remind you of the members of Parliment (MPs)? Does it remind you of the PAP? Does it remind you of the courts? Does it remind you of the police, army etc? Does it remind you of the ministries? Does it remind you of HDB, NEA, PUB, LTA etc? Does it remind you of the Town Council your house is under?
If your answer is 'yes' to all the questions, yes, the answer is so complicated. 'Government' in Singapore is so multi-layered, and does not mean and stop at a simple person/group of people such as 'the ministers', 'the MPs' or the PAP. This is simple demonstration of how ‘government’ is organised in Singapore.(picture done by me)
At the very top of governing the country is the Prime Minister (PM). Under the PM, there will be ministers in charge of the individual ministries, such as the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Finance, etc. The PM together with the ministers form the ‘Cabinet’, the highest decision-making group in government. In the Singapore context, the ‘Cabinet’ also includes non-ministry ministers such as the Minister Mentor, Senior Ministers and Minister without Portfolio.
In any organisation, there are always the ‘thinkers’ and the ‘do-ers’. In the national context, the ‘Cabinet’ can be said to the thinkers, i.e. they set over-arching, long term and general directions for the country, in areas such as economic structure, tax policy, manpower, healthcare, defence and education etc. The Cabinet is a subset of the elected Parliament, i.e. every Cabinet member has to first become an elected MP before he can be appointed by the Prime Minister to become a Cabinet Minister. Like any other MP, the Cabinet members are due for elections at least once every 5 years.
Downwards, it will be the non-political, unelected aspects of government. Under each minister is a ministry, staffed by politically-neutral civil servants, who specialise in their areas of work by profession. The highest civil servant in the ministry is called the Permanent Secretary. Under the leadership of the Permanent Secretary, the civil servants work out and execute the nitty-gritty of policy direction set by the Cabinet.
For example, the Cabinet can set a direction of ‘we want to develop green technologies in Singapore’, and the civil service will iron out details such as ‘how to develop it – government agencies do or private sector do?’, ‘how much to subsidise companies in research of green technologies?’, ‘which talent to bring in?’ etc etc.
Further down the stream, it will be the statutory boards / public agencies under the Ministries, each specialising in a very specific area. For example, under the Ministry of Health, you will have the Health Promotion Board to promote healthy living, SingHealth to govern the public hospitals and clinics, and Health Sciences Authority to research / approve health consumables in Singapore etc.
Unlike the Cabinet members and other MPs who need to go for re-election at least once every 5 years, staff in the ministries (civil servants), public agencies and stat boards (public officers) need not. They are government officers by profession, so they will take orders from the elected Cabinet (sometimes also known as the ruling party).
So what exactly is government? Government can be seen as multi-fold. In setting the general directions for the country, enacting laws, controlling the national budget etc, the PM and his Cabinet have the power, and would be ultimately responsible.
However, that’s not where the only power lies. Inside the civil service and public agencies, there lies power to enact by-laws, or regulations as we know it. For example, the NEA has the power to decide what to do to people for littering; HDB decides which estates to go through upgrading first; EDB decides which companies to attract to Singapore to create jobs, Spring Singapore decides which companies to help develop through subsidies and knowledge transfer, WDA decides what kind of workers to subsidise for training and by how much; CPF Board decides on how your CPF can be used and what are the minimum sums needed; SCDF decides on fire safety regulations, the police decides which areas of the law to enfore more actively etc. Of course, depending on the internal protocols, regulations of different severity will be approved by different authorities: some within the stat board / agency, some to the ministry, some to the minister, some to the Cabinet (like allowing Casinos).
So from here, I guess you can see that 'government' in the Singapore context is multi-fold, and it consists of both elected (the Cabinet) and non-elected (civil servants and public officers) people. These people, each in their own areas and layers, have varying amounts of power to create and enforce laws and regulations in the country. As such, while ultimate power lies at the top of the pyramid (the elected Cabinet), within the structure there exists people with discretionary powers to make Singapore for better or for worse, by enacting small or big regulations on controls, taxes, subsidies etc.
How does this link to the GE then? Watch out for my next post. Elections: What are we exactly electing?
lowtide blogged @
4:20 pm
