Notable quote by Wong Kan Seng

'Whether Mas Selamat is in Singapore or he has fled our country, we will hunt him down as we did before.' Wong Kan Seng said in Parliament

The independence of an Indepedent Presidency

Low Thia Khiang raised the thorny issue of how independent is our Independent Presidency in Parliament. He reckoned that the two key system is as good as two keys opening simultaneously, or two keys working as one. This has led to the call for a more transparent process in the excercising of the presidential powers. Tharman replied that our system is sound, run by men of high integrity and challenged Low to question their ability to act as honourable men. We are in fact in a very privilege position at this moment in time to talk and debate over the issue of how independent is our Presidency and whether there is a need to be more transparent to let it be seen that the Presidency is indeed independent. At the moment it is all about faith, the faith of good men in office. Otherwise the issue would not even be raised, that there is no doubt in the people's mind. Now, what do we have in practice now? We have a President in office who was a candidate nominated and sponsored by the govt. A govt's candidate, and walked into the office by default because of the stringent criteria that ruled out the possibility of more candidates being qualified to contest for the position. And he is assisted by a Presidential Council of eminent citizens, also nominated by the govt. It is only natural that the independence of the President becomes an issue. We are fortunate that the President has not been called upon to exercise his powers on controversial issues. If there be a day, the President's independence will not just be discussed in Parliament only. It is obvious that for the President to work independently, he needs to be independent or not too closely linked with the govt. And this applies to the Presidential Council as well. We are all familiar with the chorus, 'All the King's men.' Parliament also raised the issue of the transparency in the process in which the Presidential Council and the President would have to walk through before coming to their decision. This is still not apparent to the people. The other point that I would like to raise is the possibility of the two keys opening the vault in the middle of the night. Is that possible? Would there be an alarm system when the vault was opened, by two keys, but without proper authorisation? Who guards the vault to prevent such a happening?

Sharing our reserves

The reserves were accumulated over many years, probably from 1965 onwards. Theoretically all the old citizens contributed to it one way or another and is a minority shareholder to this money. Now that we are using the reserves to share with the citizens, does it mean that every citizen, new or old, will be entitled to the same handouts, ceteris paribus? If yes, are the old citizens being shortchanged or the new citizens just being treated to a buffet from the accumulated reserves which they did not contribute a bit to it?

The Sahibs are coming

Obama is going to put a cap to the salaries of CEOs whose corporations received bailout aids from the govt. Many of these highly talented CEOs will be making a beeline out of America, and where to but paradise. It will be a great loss to America, a brain drain. America will lose their great talents. And paradise will benefit from their presence, their skills, experience. More good years ahead. Just pay them for what they asked for. Every cent is worth it. They will come in handy to manage our investments in Citibank, now BOA, UBS, Barclay and whatever.

An end to treasury raiding

Obama is furious at the irresponsibility shown by the corporate big wigs in Wall Street and the American corporate world. Despite so many of them being bailed out by the taxpayers, they are still splurging on themselves and paying themselves crazy. Obama is going to put a stop to all the money madness in America. He is going to put a cap on the CEO's salary at US$500K per annum for those corporations receiving govt aid. This madness of salary without a cap is running to a wall. It has been going on for too long. How could it be allowed to continue for so long? An employee with an open ended income that can literally shoot to the moon? Only the greedy could not see anything wrong with it. There must be a cap to all salaries and all incentive schemes to stamp the abuses and corruption in different guises.