For the past 40 years the country has been governed legalistically i.e. passing laws to entrench controls of the population overriding people's larger interests:-
(1) ISA and press licensing laws and non-disclosures of essential investments and other information needed by the public to demand greater accountability and transparency in government performance.
(2) Amendments to judiciary system and criminal intercutory and burden of proof procedures. Abolition of jury trial thereby curtailing the independence of the judiciary affecting the fairness of trial especially in political defamation cases.
(3) Overriding of people's freedom and right of speech and political participations with entrenchment of political control through ISA even after cessation of communist threats in the 1980s.
(4) Increasingly draconian laws depriving citizens' constitutional rights : chewing gum law, petrol-filling law, press-lincensing law, and all the tax-and-recover systems to corporatise essential government services to fullest market prices and charge the highest fees.
(5) Curtailing of constitutional rights of citizens to elect their best candidates under the one-man-one-vote system e.g. using GRC in the name of minority racial representation to stay in power.
(6) Increase the ministers' salaries to world's highest paid ironricebowlers despite people's strong objection without substantiation of benchmarking of salaries on equitable apple-to-apple comparison.
(7) Repeated denials of major problems and failures at restructuring the old-model pro-foreign early-year economic policy to one which will bring about value-adding technology-driven model.
It is very clear that the system is too legalistic adopting the belief and assumption that as long as the leaders are able to get laws passed in parliament to get what they want, every problem can be solved. Is there any social and cultural vibrancy being produced by such legalistic laws to motivate and empower people to support the right set of policies?