The Singaporean President of Russia
From the cheeky editors of the FT: The Russian football team has successfully employed a foreign coach because there was no suitable domestic candidate. Why should the Russian state not behave in the same way? The Russians seem to be keen on the smack of firm government, but also want a president who understands business and isn’t too corrupt. The obvious solution is to import a Singaporean. It is interesting that they make this leap of logic – just at the beginning of the month we featured a comparative piece on this blog from Dr. Chee Soon Juan, leader of the Singaporean opposition, whom I had met at an International Bar Association conference. The citizens of both Russia and Singapore suffer from the same damaging myth: that economies grow fastest in the absence of democracy. See the FT piece after the cut.