So, can the Elected President blog, Twitter or get poked on Facebook?

I was obviously not the only one to have been struck by Law Minister's K. Shanmugam's candour in his response to two rather cheeky questions on the Elected Presidency (EP), by two well-known academics, at a recent forum (see yesterday's posting).

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!

  

Talk softly, and carry that big Constitution

Word of the day: Timbre

One usually associates this word with music, for example, "The timbre of her soprano was rich and lovely," that is, her music has that distinctive tonal quality (thefreedictionary.com).

But Law Minister K. Shanmugam used it thus: "At the end of the day, it comes to the timbre of the man -- is he of presidential timbre?... Is he able to discharge his duties in a way that commentators have set out: skills, wisdom, knowledge?" ("Independence depends on candidate's 'timbre' ", ST, 6 August). The minister was responding to a question about how he would judge whether an Elected Presidency candidate was independent. [Note: the EP polls is on 27 Aug, a Saturday. Yawn. But I'm noting it here for the record.]

Anyway, I wondered about the word's extended usage. Well, the online oxforddictionaries.com says it can be used to describe "the distinctive character or quality of someone". Hence. for instance, "You must demonstrate your moral timbre as a human being." Wah, this minister is also a wordmeister.

Today's ST also carried an interesting exchange between Mr Shanmugam and two academics -- Dr Cherian George and Professor Tommy Koh -- at a forum on the President's Roles, Responsibilities and Power. The item is headlined "Should the president speak up?". I am putting it here without further comment:

Cherian George: Imagine a situation where the Government mishandles rising ethnic tensions. Would it be proper for the elected president to come out before Singapore reaches the brink, and tell people to calm down? To independently bring his wisdom to bear rather than seek the advice of the Government? I think back to the situation in 1992 Thailand, where the Thai King actually called in the politicians and chided them in front of the cameras.   

K. Shanmugam: I think your question goes to the nub of the angst that many people feel. It starts with a concern that the Government could go wrong.

In any democratic system, those are among the risks that you take... Governments can make mistakes, they can sometimes seriously mishandle, and that is why you have elections. And the only remedy is to rectify that during elections.

Our model is not the Thai monarchy. Our model is the English monarchy and its conventions, and even more limited than the English monarchy. You have never seen the English queen have the PM and the opposition crawling on their knees in front of her. That is not the model.

The hypothetical that you are talking about, if the president spoke up in that situation, he would have been completely unconstitutional. That is not the role for the president.

Tommy Koh: A few weeks ago, the Agung (King) of Malaysia invited PM Najib (Razak) and the leader of an NGO called Bersih to the palace in order to head off what he saw was likely to be a confrontation that will bring chaos to KL. The agung tried to make peace by suggesting that Bersih not have an outdoor demonstration, but have it in a stadium.

He tried to persuade the PM of Malaysia to agree to give a permit to let Bersih hold its demonstration in the stadium.

If we were to face such a situation in Singapore, is that an inappropriate exercise of the good offices of a president?

Shanmugam: I think that in the first place, when the Agung asked the leader of Bersih to the palace, the press reports we read suggest that it was actually with the consent and at the request of the prime minister. If the PM actually approached the president of Singapore or the agung in Malaysia, the agung will be entirely acting within his rights to then have a conversation with somebody else.

Can he, of his own volition, invite people over and give them advice? My own view would be, if it is kept out of the public view and he talks to them privately, it should be possible.

National Day video parody

This is a video parody marking National Day (9 Aug). Starring Chua Enlai and others, it takes a dig at local events that had made it to the news this past year. I found it funny, especially the punch-line ending:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD5RLNQiTIQ

For the insing.com story on why the video was made, see:

http://news.insing.com/tabloid/national-day-video-makes-waves-online/id-7efc3d00

Seen a zebra recently? A raised one at that? Wait... it's crossing the road!!

I have been trying for the longest time to tell people why I find the traffic sign below funny, and even mentioned it in my article on literalitis (see my posting on 1 Nov 2010):

Then I recently came across this painting below by an American artist, spotted on the Net. Thank goodness, there's someone else who shares my sense of humour:

From raised zebras crossing the road to... what is possibly the smallest road hump in Singapore, near my home:

Since it's on a footpath, this tiny speed bump must have been put up to stop all those speeding rush-hour pedestrians from walking too fast, and tripping over each other (bum-to-bum traffic?). Or maybe it's to slow down the raised zebra after it has crossed the road?

Meanwhile, someone else claimed, on her blog, to have spotted the smallest roundabout in Singapore:

The picture above was taken at Changi Village, in 2008, so I'm not sure if it is still there. Also, it is technically not a roundabout, but to help vehicles make a U-turn. The blog I referred to is:

http://ivyidaong4.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html

Just plane delight!

Being an aviation buff, I wanted to see the half-size replica model of the Bristol Boxkite, the first aeroplane that took off from Singapore on 16 March 1911, only eight years after the Wright brothers made history's first powered flights on 17 December 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

The Boxkite replica is currently on display at Changi Airport's T2 (pic below), so I drove there today in my Soo-soo Kee Sweet Pork (the Ah Beng rendition of the Suzuki Swift Sport). The Boxkite had a 70 horsepower Le Rhone rotary engine and could reach an airspeed of 40 miles per hour (about 64 kmh). My little hatchback car packs in 125 horses and can hit 100 mph (160 kmh) but can't fly!
  

The Boxkite (a biplane, that is, it had two wings each spanning 10.5m) was not flown here but was packed into crates and reassembled. Then, on that historic day -- 16 March 1911 -- Belgian aviator Joseph Christiaens became the first man to pilot an airplane in Singapore, taking off and landing several times at the old Race Course, now Farrer Park.

The Boxkite could carry one passenger. Those who seized the chance paid $50 (a princely sum then) for the 10-minute ride.

How did I get hooked on stuff about aeroplanes? I remembered that as a boy, I would invert my little rattan chair and imagine that the back opening was the cockpit windscreen! Later, when I was a late primary and early secondary school kid during the 1960s, my father would take me to see the Royal Air Force airshows (these must have been held at Tengah). I still remember the Gloster Javelin and Hawker Hunter fighters and the Vulcan V-bombers. There might have been supersonic English Electric Lightning interceptor fighters too.

In secondary school too, I started building up a big collection of plastic model planes. The basic ones cost only 90 cents then (Airfix brand).

I also started "flying" line-control planes -- fitted with noisy 10cc fuel-driven engines that needed an external battery to be initially hooked onto the spark plug to fire it up. I had to crank up the propellor by hand or with the aid of a spring-loaded device. Only the elevators (the tail flaps that cause the plane to go upwards or downwards) could be controlled by the long twin nylon lines attached to a handle. So, there I stood in the field, "spinning round" with the little plane as it went round and round. "Crashes" were common but the plane could be easily reassembled.

Ah, those were carefree childhood fun days.         

Village idiot's question: What is the EP's KPI?

I'm trying to ignore all the "wayang" (stage-managing) over the Elected Presidency run-up (as opposed to what's going on in the social media), but it's really getting to be irritating.

One EP wannabe candidate, in particular, seems to be regularly in the right place at the right time for the mainstream media to report.

There's a certain flavour-of-the-month (FotM) consistency to their grandstanding. All started with protestations of how independent they are from the ruling party. Examples of such independence were trotted out.

The current FotM is how focused they are on being "the voice of the people". It reminds me of a certain music recording label, HMV. All insist they do not/will not sing to HMV.

But really, when all is said and done, what is the EP's KPI, and how is that matched to his remuneration package, currently $4 million plus (but likely to be reduced)?

Ministers' salaries, for all the controversy surrounding them, are pegged to private sector benchmarks. What is the EP's benchmark?

One can even argue that his custodial roles can be assigned to a panel of eminent Singaporeans familiar with both the import of the national reserves and the integrity of key public service personnel. There is already a Presidential Advisory panel which can, with changes if necessary, become such a panel.

We can't have our cake and eat it. Either it's a KPI-based $x-million job which has a benchmark to the corporate world, which means the EP will have to have commensurate executive power; or it's a job with its current responsibilities as spelt out, in which an eminent and qualified individual who has already reached a high pinnacle offers his service as public service. All expenses related to all his presidential duties are fully paid for by the state, and what he gets is a suitable but not multi-million dollar remuneration package.

But, just as my argument for the $2 COE is tilting at windmills, so is this argument. It's just two cents worth.

Why we should not peel away the apple skin, says this health article

The artist's drawing I put up on Saturday, of Charlie and Viper flying together, was blurred. Here's a sharper rendition:

It'll be just a short posting today -- the link to an intriguing article on why we should not peel the apple's skin when we eat this fruit. I can't verify if it's a reliable health-tips website, but if you think it is, you may want to bookmark it.

http://www.doctorshealthpress.com/health-articles/why-you-should-never-peel-apples