Published Sat, Feb 7, 2026 · 10:20 AM

[SINGAPORE] Money must never be the incentive for joining politics, but neither should it be the factor that keeps the best people from entering public service, said Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong.

This is as Singapore’s future hinges on its ability to attract the best team to govern generation after generation, he added.

ESM Goh said this at the launch of Coordinating Minister for National Security K Shanmugam’s new book on Friday (Feb 6).

His comments came two weeks after a committee was formed to review the salaries of Singapore’s political appointment holders, including all ministers and Members of Parliament.

The eight-person committee, chaired by Gan Seow Kee, who is chairman of the Singapore LNG Corporation and an alternate member of the Council of Presidential Advisers, will submit its report to the government when ready, Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing said on Jan 12.

In his first public speech since stepping down from politics, ESM Goh noted that Shanmugam gave up a lucrative career as a lawyer in the private sector when he joined the front bench as law minister in 2008.

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This was as the then senior counsel understood inequality in a personal way, having come from a family that was not well-off.

However, Singapore’s political, economic and social environment has changed, and it is increasingly harder to persuade good, capable people nearing or at the top of their careers to devote themselves to political service, added ESM Goh.

“It does not bode well for Singapore if the most capable among each generation of Singaporeans shy away from public service,” he said. “They are products of the Singapore system, but they may not feel the same obligation to give back to the country as the generations before them.”

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They may also assume that the system will continue to thrive regardless of who runs the country, while others are put off by the intensification of public scrutiny due to social media, he added.

The financial opportunity cost of being a minister is also a factor that any rational individual would have to consider, noted ESM Goh.

“It will not be easy to find another Shanmugam who is willing to forgo tens of millions of dollars over a 20-year period as minister,” he said. “And the Cabinet needs more than one Shanmugam.”

ESM Goh noted that as a backbencher, Shanmugam had spoken in support of paying political officeholders a competitive wage that reflects their heavy responsibilities and impact on people’s lives.

In the 2007 debate on civil service salary revisions, Shanmugam also said that while public sentiment was not positive on the need then to raise salaries, this was an issue that the government has to spend political capital on, for the longer-term good of the country.

The government must convince Singaporeans of this, as the city-state’s future depends on the ability of its democratic system to produce the best team of men and women to govern, said ESM Goh.

Political salaries – including that for the president, prime minister, speaker, deputy speaker and political officeholders – have not been adjusted since 2012, when the government accepted a review committee’s recommendations which put in place the current salary framework.

In 2018, another committee chaired by accountant Gerard Ee recommended that the salaries be adjusted annually in line with the movement of benchmark salaries, which had gone up by 9 per cent since 2012.

However, the government decided then not to make any changes, as the salary structure remained valid and there were economic uncertainties in the previous few years.

ESM Goh said many democracies in the First World have become dysfunctional, and to avoid this happening in Singapore, there must be highly capable and well-motivated candidates for people to choose from, election after election.

“There must be enough of them to form a top-class Cabinet. Without a top rate government, the Singapore story will end badly,” he said. THE STRAITS TIMES

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