Government wants the sort of President we don't want

This is the sort of President that the government wants - another SR Nathan, not another nation loving Ong Teng Cheong who tried his level best to make the institution perform its function better.

It is a role that is still very much a work in progress and SR Nathan wasted two terms not strengthening it in order to prepare it for more severe emergencies tomorrow. No wonder so many people begrudge his high pay. His job really reminds me of the CEO/Chairman of the board ignoring shareholders because the Board is already on his side.

I am more with Prof Thio Li Ann more balanced views. I liked her openness and room for possibilities. Come on, the law is not static or dead.

So what is Shanmugam telling us? He is telling us the sort of President the Cabinet wants. Should we accede to his shopping list? I hope not because there is another side to this Presidential Elections which we cannot avoid. A vote for their candidate is a vote for the PAP revenue maximizing way of governing Singapore. Do I want that? Obviously not.

While I am at this, I have noticed that Tony Tan is aircon Tony. He doesn't go out to meet the people on the street like the other candidates. If he wants to meet the poor and disabled, he goes to their proxies, i.e., the orgnizations caring for them. Yes, he is always friendly and smiling but distant. This guy doesn't know how to be a people's President. He is just a sharp policy maker and perhaps a closet believer of Social Darwinism given his elitist slant as a cabinet minister. He must be a Social Darwinist or else Lee Kuan Yew would have thought he didn't have the right stuff to run Singapore as PM. As a Social Darwinist he would believe in upgrading the Singapore gene pool with foreign talent. That's seemingly alright but also carry with it an unacceptable collateral: the weak genes in our society must be eliminated. Now this is helping me to understand why the government and MCYS in particular practice "tough love". Just because "love" is present doesn't mean there is true charity. They are just trying to find a more humane extinction for our social and economic losers. People don't get it; the way they run this place, there will always be such losers. Instead of investing in learning how to help them win, the government have decided that they were destined from birth with inferior genes to lose. Where is the morality?

If Tony becomes President there is little need to discuss issues with the PM. They were cut from the same tree and on the same page. Why do we want a PAP clone in the Istana? Especially when they are all closet Social Darwinists. At least Lee Kuan Yew had the personal courage to admit it. His successors are shamefully evading it.