leaders

what are the qualities of a good leader

trust
multi-racial and multi-religious and is located in a region that is dominantly Muslim
- therefore need to be bilingual?

perseverance to lead his people by personal example through hardship and strife eg lead the way by having a pay cut or a wage freeze when the economy is not doing well

• acts astutely, incisively.
E.g. in addressing the water issue with Malaysia, responded calmly and rationally to a politicised issue;
• A leader must be intelligent, able to assess any situation accurately and arrive at viable and sound decisions quickly.
• E.g. the PM with his team have read correctly the trends and wired Singapore into an intelligent island, thus facilitating its entry into a connected world much more quickly than other developed countries.

instill sense of loyalty, patriotism

• His eloquence in communicating - politicians go through speech training

• Able to introduce and put in place ideas that seem inconceivable but are likely to be regarded as necessary to spur the country on to greater heights.
E.g. encouraging foreign talents to work and live in Singapore; accepting homosexuals in the civil service; recently, Education Minister, Tharman Shanmugaratnam effected drastic changes to the education system, e.g. removing supposedly sacred cows such as streaming in primary schools and revising the system of ranking of secondary schools; at the tertiary level, MT grades are no longer included in the computation of scores for entry into local universities and these institutions have more autonomy in the selection process.