Helping yourself, or others?

I read with great interest in an article saying about Indonesia's fight against corruption. One key thing which I took away from the article is that it's difficult to fight corruption because many of them wants to hold public office to help themselves, not to help others.

I'm not against raising of salaries for any post. However, since someone likes to compare Singapore to other countries, based on this comparison with even US, are we overpaying??

Now, someone might say we're not comparing apple and apple, and we're a small country. Then why on earth are we benchmarking things like our GST and property market with the other countries. Double standards????

Speaking of double standards, I remember not too long ago, someone was advocating Annual Variable Component (AVC) in the salary structure. Meaning, when times are well, raise it and the bonus. If times are bad, cut it. So why on earth are we raising salaries if we're suppose to give more bonuses instead?? Double standards again????