Intelligent and dynamic Politicians.

By P N BALJI

Four of the 20 ministers in the Singapore Cabinet are ethnic Indians. The fourth most important politician in Singapore is an ethnic Indian – Deputy Prime Minister Prof S Jayakumar. The other three hold important portfolios: Tharman Shanmugaratnam is Finance Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan is Minister for Community, Youth and Sports, S Shanmugam is Law Minister.

That makes up 20 per cent of the Cabinet when Indian Singaporeans make up only about 8 per cent of the total population. Now for the icing on the statistical cake. The President of Singapore S R Nathan – is also of Indian origin.

But they are all where they are not because of their ethnicity. They are political heavyweights because of that one word that Singapore is obsessed with: TALENT.

The four ministers were plucked out of their high-fl ying careers in the civil service, academia and private sector and convinced, or cajoled as the case may be, to join the ruling People’s Action Party and eventually the Cabinet. Dig deeper into this statistical story, and you can see a couple of contradictions.

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