I think being a good politician in a democratic country is one of the hardest jobs in the world. I say good because well.. it’s not hard being a bad one. What differentiates a good one and a bad one? Well many many things.. everything from abilities, talent, capability, integrity but most importantly… to me it’s the heart to do what’s best for the country and not anyone else.
Doing what’s best for the country is hard. Hard because sometimes the right decisions to make for a country often is the least popular among the very people who voted you in. It’s like when we were teenagers we wanted to sleep late and go out a lot but our parents didn’t allow us that even if we wanted it right? It’s because our parents had the heart and resolve to do what’s best for us… even if it we didn’t know yet that it was good for us.
One such example of this is Margaret Thatcher, the longest serving Prime Minister the UK has ever had and the only female one so far too.
Back in the 1980s while she was Prime Minister she knew that unions and strikes were holding the UK economy back. So she took steps to restrict and eventually abolish these unions, moves that were very unpopular among the working crowd which accounts for a very large voter base. It was unpopular, but she did it and saw it through not because it was good for her… (in fact if anything it was BAD for her)… but because it was good for the UK.
If you want to know more about her life, you can watch the movie Iron Lady.
Closer to home there is another leader like that. His name is familiar to many Asians: Lee Kuan Yew.
Few can deny that Singapore is what it is today because of MM Lee Kuan Yew. He has made many hard decisions too and one of them I feel… is their openness when it came to immigration.
Now immigration is historically often a politically unpopular thing in most countries. It’s simple to see why. Immigration leads to its own set of side effects. Rising property prices, less job opportunities among the locals and in some cases increasing crime rates. Singapore though has always opened doors to immigration. It’s simple to see the effects of that. How many people do you know who are working in Singapore right now? And how many people do you know who are working in say… Japan? In fact I bet you know more people who are working in the US than in Japan… because Japan has a closed-door policy when it comes to immigration.
Still in this video I found online, MM Lee Kuan Yew explains why Singapore needs immigration.
To summarize:
1) The fertility rate in Singapore is 1.01. That means every couple only produces one child which is not enough to replace the current population.
2) Low fertility rates are low among developed countries because the cost of having kids is high.
3) An aging population causes economic problems like what Japan is facing.
I respect MM Lee Kuan Yew and I admire him as a leader. I admire leaders who are able to do what’s best for the country for it is leaders like this that leave behind a legacy that no number of monuments or statues or road names of leaders can ever live up to.
PS: This blog post is about what it takes to be a good leader/politician. Sure there are good and there are bad leaders and politicians but lets not use this opportunity to flame the bad ones. Yes there are many all over the world. Lets just hope that the good always outweigh the bad.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space