It doesn't because their premise falls apart in democracies too. Civil servants in democracies are not elected and they have the same 'stopping power'. A planning officer in the UK could just as easily decide to arbritrarily block plans they disagree with as in an authoratian country.

To my knowledge, while authoritarian it's not a totalitarian state, and Singapore has fairly effective means of redress (aka, rule of law).

These are the 'benevolent authoritarian-ship' outliers - very rare and depends on chance that the current person in power truly acts in the interest of the public - but when they are gone there's no legal framework in place that keeps their successors to do whatever they please.

EDIT: commenters are still all referring to Singapore which I remind you is the very rare outlier case.