The Emperor's New Clothes

There is a "live" forum program that lives up to its name, and it's called "Talking Point." The pathetic facsimile organized by Channel NewsAsia (CNA) last night turned out to be a cosy fireside chat with moderators Sharon Tong and Walter Fernandez.

Lobbing softballs at the Prime Minister, both were obviously trying very hard to protect him from the "tough" queries emanating from the public.  What was shown on the television screen were saccharine sweet tweets from obsequious sycophants, the grassroots type worshippers who would have sent mangoes to Michael Palmer.

The CNA website did have some real hard questions meant for Lee, but they took them down quickly - probably for fear of losing their jobs. Three such samples that survived the deletion:

• Sir, do you know how stressful it is for us singaporean kids now? We no longer compete with our own people but foreigners as well. #askpmlee
• How to have work life balance when we are all slogging so hard to meet the high end living demands in Singapore? #askpmlee
• What can we do to promote racial harmony? Because, let's face it, racism is still common. #askpmlee

None of those above was aired, but of course that was expected. Still, one clever fellow managed to embed a paraphrased quote from Aung San Suu Kyi ("the visitor") to make it sound milder. What Daw Suu actually said was, "You can't expect everyone to agree with you, that is simply not possible... if you believe that what you are doing is good for the country, then you must be prepared to lose the next elections."

Lee nearly jumped out of his seat when the words sank in, and exposed the ugly self when he said he disagreed with the part about losing an election. In that priceless moment, we saw the emperor without his clothes.

The game was up, and the charade was painfully played out for the rest of the program. So much for wanting to forge a new way forward with all Singaporeans by answering questions “live”. Perhaps junior needs to take up private tuition lessons from the Burmese democracy icon who also said: “But transparency is linked to confidence. We need a leadership that has enough confidence in themselves to be transparent and enough honesty to accept criticisms and to meet it in the best way possible which is to say by redressing what needs to be redressed."

Liddat, how to rebuild trust between electorate and govt?