Debate about the EP continues, willy-nilly, to centre on what the job-holder can or cannot do. It's as if he (or she, to be hypothetically fair) loses his identity as an ordinary citizen upon taking up the office! The Singapore Constitution now defines him or her, so it seems.
To reiterate a statement by Mr Shanmugam, "The President can speak on issues only as authorised by the Cabinet; and he must follow the advice of the Cabinet in the discharge of his duties." For good measure, the minister added that if the EP chose to go against the Government of the Day (GoD), he can be booted out of office -- through the courts, of course.
When the idea of an EP was mooted, an important rationale was his acting as a check on a future rogue government. But now, it seems, the government's worry is the emergence of a future rogue EP!
And one EP wannabe, Tan Kin Lian -- saying he has looked at the Constitution and has not found the requirement that "the president must be dumb" and cannot speak out publicly -- could not resist the following dig: "It seems the President has less freedom of speech than ordinary citizens." (The Sunday Times, 7 August, page 6).
Given that all (or nearly all?) the EP wannabes have become active on the social media, I have one more "village idiot" question: Will the one who becomes the EP, after the 27 Aug election, be allowed to continue to post his views on his blog, on Facebook, or on Twitter, etc? Is he allowed to be "poked", to be "liked", to have "followers"?
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Enough said. So, here's a "suitable for Sunday" joke which Nick sent me:
A Little Christian Humour Jesus and Satan were having an endless argument about who was better on the computer. God was tired of hearing all the bickering. Finally, God said, 'THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I'll set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, judge who does the better job.' So Satan and Jesus sat down at their keyboards and typed away. They moused. They faxed. They e-mailed. They e-mailed with attachments. They downloaded. They did spreadsheets! They wrote reports... They created labels and cards. They created charts and graphs. They did some genealogy reports. They did every job known to man. Jesus worked with Heavenly efficiency and Satan worked with Hellish fervour. Then, 10 minutes before the time was up, lightning flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and -- the power went off. Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the Underworld. Jesus just sighed. Finally the electricity came back on, and both of them restarted their computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming: 'It's gone! It's all GONE! 'I lost everything when the power went out!' Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan was irate. 'Wait!' he screamed. 'That's not fair! Jesus cheated! How come he has all his work and I don't have any?' God just shrugged and said... |
JESUS SAVES! 
haha, i should have seen that coming!
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