Singapore Slashes Officials' Salaries - NYTimes.com SINGAPORE - Government ministers are paying a high price for an electoral setback last year that stunned the governing party and may have changed the dynamics of power in Singapore: Collectively, they have lost millions of dollars in salary. The governing People's Action Party, or PAP, won, as it always has, last May, but in what felt like a voter uprising, it took its lowest percentage of the popular vote and its greatest loss of seats since independence in 1965. Responding to one of the voters" top grievances, Parliament last week approved significant cuts in the pay of government ministers, whose salaries are among the highest in the world. The salary of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is to be cut by 36 percent, to 2.2 million Singapore dollars, or about $1.74 million. And in a graded system that has the look of civil service, the salary of "entry-grade" ministers will be cut by 37 percent, to 1.1 million dollars. The reductions will also affect the president and all lawmakers. The televised parliamentary discussion of the salary cuts sometimes seemed like an accounting seminar, with charts and complicated formulas as well as discussions of what it takes in business-oriented Singapore to lure top talent into government service. The cuts grew out of an election last May in which the opposition won six of 87 elected seats in Parliament and the government won just 60.14 percent of the popular vote, the lowest in history. In Singapore's political context, this outcome was a shock, and the prime minister called it a watershed. The PAP has never been out of power, and until this election there had never been more than four opposition members of Parliament. "We will take a totally fresh look at our problems and policies, and rethink what is necessary and best for Singapore's future," Mr. Lee said shortly after the election, adding: "Our political system can and must accommodate more views, more debate and more participation." Many Singaporeans say they are seeing signs of change, at least in style, as the government appears to be listening and responding to the voices of a more assertive public. The governing party is certainly determined to stay in power, they say, but to do so it must begin to take into account this new dynamic of open opposition. "The fear is gone" is a phrase that is often heard now, as is the assertion that "the genie is out of the bottle" for a more open political field. "The election has given Singaporeans a taste of what a truly competitive election was like, and people like the idea of having a choice," said Alex Au, whose political blog, Yawning Bread, was part of a surge in Internet discussion that contributed to the election's outcome. "The election showed that the possibility of this monolithic quasi-authoritarian government coming to an end one day is real," he said by telephone. On the other hand, on the PAP side, my view is that the PAP is trying to see what changes they can make that might take the sting out of public anger. Some say that Singapore is now moving into a new political era, when the stern, father-knows-best governing formula of the nation's founding leader, former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, depended on an obedient public whose members were seen and not heard. "We are transitioning now into a post-Lee Kuan Yew era, and what it holds is something that many will watch with a lot of interest and perhaps anticipation," said Eugene Tan, an assistant professor of law at Singapore Management University. "I think there's a realization that they need to engage head-on the need to connect with average Singaporeans, not just rationally but also at the affective level," he said. The elder Mr. Lee - the father of the current prime minister - often derided what he called the "heat and dust" of the political arena, and said that Singapore did not have the human capital to field two "A-teams" that could offer the voters strong alternatives. After the vote on ministerial pay Wednesday, the elder Mr. Lee defended the high salaries as "a pragmatic course that did not require people of caliber to give up too much for the public good." In an argument that was also made by lawmakers during the parliamentary discussion, he said, "To find able and committed men and women of integrity, willing to spend the prime of their lives, and going through the risky process of elections, we cannot underpay our ministers and argue that their sole reward should be their contribution to the public good." Mr. Lee himself was one of the first casualties of the May election, stepping down shortly afterward from his position as minister mentor and leaving government service, at the age of 88, for the first time in 52 years, since before Singapore's independence from Britain. In addition to the salary cuts, the government has made moves to address public grievances over imbalances in income, high living costs, a wave of immigration and recent problems with the transportation system. "Now they are going all out to woo Singaporeans, especially the younger ones, and they'll go all out to do things on the human side," said Catherine Lim, a novelist and frequent critic of the government. I've never seen such a splurging of good will, and every day smiling ministers are mingling with the crowds, taking a placating tone rather than an aggressive one. The PAP will use the next four years, until the next election, to woo voters and denigrate its opposition, she predicted. But whatever the substance of its new, kinder face, she said, "There's no going back to the way things were."