Originally posted by Gedanken:
Well and good, Atobe, but still, with so little separation between the court and the government, I would propose that the more appropriate Latin phrase to be "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?".
Who, indeed ?
I guess the biggest failures in MM LKY's legacy is the lack of any institution, or institutional procedures, that can independently function on its own in the selection process of leaders for the various positions of Government - WITHOUT him poking his finger, or having a say, or influencing the outcome.
Be it the choice of candidate for the Elected Presidency, or for the CJ position, and perhaps the Commissioner of Police, as well as the Chief of Defense Force, let alone the nominee for the Prime Minister's post - including the investments in creating a National Zoo, Bird Park, Sentosa Island, and even a Night Safari - every aspect of Government Policy and decision has MM LKY's fingerprints all over it - (Read his memoirs about the necessity of any leader to be able to perform multi-tasks, and putting potential leaders in a pressure cooker environment - similar to training US astronauts for space missions).
Now that he is supposed to be in semi-retirement, LKY is still being kept informed, and seems to be keeping an eye despite LHL being at the helm.
LHL has been groomed to be as omni-potent as LKY, but unfortunately his brush with cancer prevent him from being completely one.
However, someone's creativity came to his rescue - to overcome his handicap by having a support staff of SIX "Ministers-WITHOUT-Porfolio" in the Prime Minister's Office - (resulting in a Cabinet with the most number of Ministers, and Ministers-Without-Portfolio).
This process of grooming a leader can be seen from previous press report in the early 1990s when LHL - being the Minister of Trade and Industries - had opposed the Sentosa Development Board of Directors decision to upgrade the dated and "toy-like" Monorail System into a full fledge LRT of sort, and having the monorail extended from Sentosa onto the main island of Singapore.
The "brilliant counter" proposal from LHL was to have the lumbering SBS buses driven across a causeway into the narrow streets built by the British during the 1940s, on an island that was once called "Pulau Blakang Mati", and with this ignominous name being changed to "Sentosa".
The question asked then was "Why should LHL interfere and over-ride the decision of those experienced persons selected to be on the Board of Directors to run Sentosa Island, all of whom probably had a keener sense of business acumen in their decision to upgrade the Monorail as part of the overall plan to increase visitor attendance at Sentosa?"
Ten years later, in 2004, it was announced that a completely new Monorail System is to be introduced, and will be connecting Sentosa with the main island of Singapore.
It seems that the earlier decision of those keen-eyed Directors, appointed to the Board of Sentosa Development Corporation, is now vindicated.
Someone should have asked this question: "Could the sliding visitor numbers to Sentosa over the last ten years be arrested, if we had gone ahead in the early 1990s with the decision to reinvest in a new Monorail System? "
Without any institutions that can be "Politically Blind" and which can act independently for the supreme interest of Singapore, can Singapore ever have the X-Factor in anything or everything that is being done ?
Who should we blame for the absence of the X-Factor, when all planning is always being overseen and guided by the unseen hands and mind of ONE, who claim "supreme omnipotence" in the ownership of Singapore and her Future that "even in his grave, he will rise up to raise hell for the interest of Singapore" ?
Regretably, your question itself is begging for an answer which hardly can be satisfactorily responded under the present circumstances.