Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Poland's elections: Huge lessons for us


I feel it is best to begin this post with quoting the opening lines of the article.

How can a government with the best economic record in Europe (indeed in the entire OECD) be humiliated at the polls by a Euroskeptic, nationalistic, and economically illiterate opposition – one deemed unelectable only a year ago? That is the question many Poles, and friends of Poland, are now asking, following the defeat on October 25 of the Civic Platform government. If creating jobs and boosting incomes can’t get you re-elected, what can?

Through our lenses, the Poles have voted for themselves a freak outcome of the sort we would have feared. Fortunately the Singaporean voters are far smarter than the Poles. The PAP and WP are also smarter then their Polish counterparts. Question is how do we keep this up? There is nothing we can do about the voters here except for the very long term. That take place in families, our schools and NS. On the other hand politicians must carefully study and dissect the lessons of the Polish experience and I hope not tragedy. Poles have signed up to learn a lesson the hard way.

Lao Zi was wrong. He said,

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.

That was a mistake the governing party made.





1 comment:

  1. Self-serving politician wrote that piece. The success KPI is determined by voters. There is no iron law that economic growth tramp other considerations in an election.

    ReplyDelete