Leadership needed in today's world?

The YoungPaP has held its 17th Youth leadership training course on 2.8.2007 as posted on its website.

The Youngpap must have witnessed no doubt the various problems confronting the country of late from NKF malpractices to government ministries' incurring financial losses in many projects due to negligence and carelessness as reported by Auditor General and recently to Shin Corp losses etc.

Are the Youngpap's Youth Leadership training course aimed at providing solutions to problems facing the country citizens ?

If not then, what is the purpose of such training. Will it produce the desired results to turn the wrong doings and malpractices like NKF, Shin Corp and all the hidden problems around.

What is leadership, talents, insight, foresight ? Are leadership, foresight or talents some form of self-centredness or assumptions?

Are our leaders too conceptual and governing by too much look-good assumptions.

Are all the policy utterances about meritocracy, leadership, pragmatism, merely excuses to allow them to promote themselves and their own kind with all kinds of self-awards of their own connected elites.

Is all the anti-welfare fear as painted merely used to justify their one-tracked taxing and back-charging of all costs to citizens via the Government-linked privatized entities causing perpetual rising costs of living and the loss of economic competitiveness in our domestic wing of the economy.

Are we still building a country based on the philosophy of bringing about the greatest benefits of the greatest number?

Should we continue to allow talk-only conceptual leadership while ignoring and passing over genuine problems as unsolvable or just to allow such conceptual leaders to get by?

Should people continue to make sacrifices while leaders keep taxing and recovering all costs while stinging on needful services from medical care to housing and education etc.

Are our leaders interested in governing the whole country to benefit themselves and their own narrow-minded agendas and look-good reporting?

What is wrong with governing the country with accountability, balanced roles, checks and balances, codes of conduct, using objective pre-defined independent assessments.

Despite many years of wrong doings as stated in the foregoing, ministers are still persisting in refusing to change as witnessed in the latest refusal to grant permit for holding cycling event by WP while allowing youngpap to hold such similar event.

It is clear that the government has degenerated into one of legalistic wrangling of laws and regulations to maintain political control, taxing and recovering costs and even profiteering depriving people of essential services like medicare, utilities, education, housing, transportation etc.

As a result of such a system of autocratic government, the country has taken a setback since the 1970s with its own domestic economy stagnating, dropping wages, young and educated unemployments.

The domestic economy is being squeezed out of their survival by government's getting into businesses of all sorts to compete with its own citizens.

What happen to all the talents of our own citizens or do we have no talents?

In the fast-paced technology, we need to build collective or distributive leadership whereby all policies and decisions of government are not resting on the desires or self-centredness of a few leaders but are distributed or decentralised through pre-planned work processes to be performed by the whole government team.

Only when a leadership system is so translated into down-to-earth implementation processes with accountability and check and balances will it lead to broad-based participation and knowledge application by the all with the support of the masses.

Therefore considering the above-stated circumstances facing the country as a whole our leaders today should be in possession of not only directional visions or foresight but more importantly they should possess the quality to make good accountable decisions and have the implementation ability to translate all policies and decisions to broad-based knowledge applications and teamwork.

We will need to leaders who were able to empathise with people's problems and suffering as expressed in feedbacks such as the "20 major major government policy errors" given to the Feedback Unit since 2002.

We need ministers and civil servants who could come down from their ivory tower and be able to solve many problems we are facing and to restructure the economy to value-adding technology-driven economy talked about for years.

Perhaps youngpap members who have attended such training courses should share with all whether they have indeed received the kind of leadership training to help solve problems or only to qualify them to gain their own internal promotion.