Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa tried to spice up the first Policy Address of his second term last week with a pledge he and his team would take pay cuts of 10 per cent from April. In doing so, he could well have taken a page straight from the book penned by his Singapore counterparts.
Ministers in Singapore - like those in Hong Kong - are handsomely rewarded for their efforts to lead the public service. Unlike them, however, Singaporean cabinet pay packets fluctuate widely from year to year, tied both to rates paid for a basket of private-sector posts and the performance of the wider economy.
The result in Singapore has been a stream of salary adjustments to the take-home pay pocketed by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and their ministerial colleagues from the long-ruling People's Action Party (PAP).
In late 2001, for example, when Singapore was gripped by its worst recession in a generation, ministerial pay was lopped by more than 17 per cent. The cuts extended to all political-appointment holders and also to the senior ranks of the civil service.
Announcing the amendments to Parliament - where all but a handful of MPs are drawn from PAP ranks - Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the reductions signalled a desire to lead by example. '[They will] send a clear signal that Singapore was in a grave situation, and show that the government was taking the lead in wage restraint,' Mr Lee told the House.
The year before - when the city state's economy was riding a lucrative export boom and grew by almost 10 per cent - the picture was reversed. A revised pay scale announced in August that year saw the prime minister's salary boosted by 14 per cent, while more junior ministers enjoyed a 12 per cent gain.
The sharp rises - which followed a two-year ministerial pay freeze during the regional economic crisis - provoked a rare stream of public criticism in a state where deference to authority is the norm.