Let leaders come off the pedestal

1) I perceive Singapore's society to resemble Asian societies more.

As mentioned in the passage, Asians tend to prefer to follow their leaders rather than take the initiative to assume leadership; as a result, they expect their leaders to be perfect which is unrealistic in actual fact. Most Singaporeans are a conservative people and they tend to be less forgiving towards actions that conflict with their ideas of a proper moral code of conduct. In the NCMP Steve Chia's incident in 2004, he was publicly chastised for taking nude photographs of his maid at his home. Even though he claims that this is an expression of art, this incident still caused a furor and a political backlash. There were even calls for him to be stripped from office. His reputation was severely tarnished. If the same incident was to take place in a more liberalized Western society where people are more open to this kind of artistic expression, I am pretty sure that it would not have entailed such serious repercussions.

Another point raised is that Asians are more inclined to think that everything the boss says is right and less inclined to contradict him. This is also quite prevalent in Singapore. Some Singaporeans place too heavy a trust on the government, so much so that they lose their sense of scepticism and doubt. In the recent Northstar V exercise, PM Lee highlighted that a particular citizen was very relaxed about the issue of terrorism coming to Singapore as he had complete faith in the government to properly handle the situation. Such subservient thinking is definitely a situation of being too trustful and lazy to step out of his comfort zone. Moreover, Singaporeans are not being supported to challenge authority as well. There are no laws to protect whistle blowers at the moment and they face serious consequences if found out by their superiors. An example is the NKF saga. 3 people who blew the whistle on NKF were sued and had to pay defamation charges while the actual culprit, the board of NKF got away scot-free. This will only further serve to encourage Singaporeans to blindly follow authority so as to avoid persecution. In Western societies, there is more freedom and people dare to expose the wrongdoings of the relevant authority in power e.g. exposing pictures showing the American army torturing Iraqis prisoners by Newsweek without fear of being sued by the Federal Government.

2) I do not agree with this proposal.

When we give authority to a person we elect to be leader, he is expected to fulfill this duties and responsibilities and at the same time, meet up to certain of the population’s expectations. We ourselves should not demand unrealistically high standards on our leaders too, like expecting them never to err. It is harder for people without authority to exercise much leadership because of the lack of political clout and influence. It is also true that having leadership skills is a prerequisite to official rank and appointment so it is quite difficult to separate leadership from official rank and appointment.

In the passage, Professor Heifetz suggests that MPs are only like authority figures and not necessarily leaders and we should not coerce them to live by impossible standards. However, the passage mentions that the width of pedestals can be adjusted and this means that our standards are already becoming more flexible. Thus, it is the duty of an authority figure to conduct himself with morally acceptable standards. Of course, we must also learn to appreciate authority figures based on their leadership abilities and not their private lives. It is imperative for a proper balance to be achieved and not a separation of authority from leadership.