How to siam questions.

The Straits Times today has a great email interview with the Emperor Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew where in it, he once again manages to escape the more difficult questions that he is posed. Wait...

An EMAIL INTERVIEW.

Note that this means that he has no excuses (like misunderstanding the question, tone and otherwise, getting carried away on a tangential thought etc...) for missing the point of the questions posed...Unless he (SHOCK) did. Because if he did, that means that he would probably have failed his GP essay and therefore not been in the top 600 students who are now in the Singapore reality show called "Singapore Idol: Prime Minister Edition". Where would Singapore be without him then? Lost I tell you! LOST!

*Ahem*

Anyway, because of password failure etc, I can only post a photograph of the transcript of said interview.

Question: Some people have argued that it's not just an issue of complacency, but also incompetence. Do you agree?

Answer: When you are complacent with handling a wily detainee, then you have been negligent.

I guess it's troubling when you have a person paid that much a year giving you answers like that.
As a teacher, I would say that he's gone off topic and has not addressed the issue inherent in the statement. As a Singaporean, I'm concerned that he's being paid THAT much to give us answers like that. As a political observer, I applaud him for siam-ing the question quite effectively.

I like how in all his tirades so far, he's been very focused on his lambasting of the security officers who screwed up (although I'm surprised that they haven't picked out a name to scapegoat just yet). I agree that the people directly involved would be the ones most responsible for the great escape. What's interesting is that the media seems more interested in converting said tirade into a lecture on how ALL Singaporeans need to be less complacent.

After all, we're hardly ever in the position to deal with these things are we? I thought that that's why we're paying our ministers such huge salaries? The reasons given were that if we didn't, we'd be screwed as a country and we'd have to work as construction workers and maids...right? And terrorists would break out of pris...uhm...never mind.

Now I realise that the reason that we pay such huge salaries to our government is so that accountability can be thrown out the window and questions can remain unanswered.

Thanks.

But I'd like my money back now please.