If PAP is in power, the President will have to listen to them

One could easily see the biggest irony. The President does not have the power to direct investment decisions nor extract accountability from those who are appointed to invest the reserves, when they make huge losses to the reserves. However, he has the power to prevent ELECTED GOVERNMENT of the day from spending the reserves!

As for the appointment of key appointment holders, the President must appoint key appointment holders ACCORDING to the advice of the Cabinet and the Presidential Council whose members are basically, appointed by the Cabinet. Interestingly, the PAP leaders have said several times that if there is a “rogue government” voted in, presumably not PAP, the President could help to prevent it from making various key appointment so to preserve the integrity of the system. This is in fact a contradictory motive and power distribution.

Basically it means, if PAP is in power, the President will have to listen to it and his power will be curbed. But the PAP has also planned for the day when it loses power, then it could make use of the President to curb the power of the “rogue government” or even cripples it totally. Why? This is because the President will be there to protect the PAP appointed individuals on the key positions from being removed by this “rogue government”. Yes, this includes the Chairman of GIC.

This is the kind of system PAP has designed for Singapore; or rather, for its own self interests. PAP leaders have once said, if opposition is to form the government consecutively for two terms, Singapore will be finished. Actually what they meant was that for the first term, PAP could still try to cripple the rouge government but by the second term, this rogue government would have people who will be qualified to be President and the system would actually deprive PAP from making a come back to be the ruling party again. It is PAP which is going to be finished, to be exact.

This is really a kind of irony, really. It is just like the GRC system. It will be very advantageous to PAP as long as no opposition party is good enough to win any GRC. But once a GRC is lost, it will become the biggest nightmare to PAP’s hegemony of power or it might become the beginning of the end of PAP’s ruling status.

Similarly, the Elected Presidency will only be good as long as no “non-establishment” individual could win it. They may not be the cute little puppet that PAP wants him to be. PAP thought that as long it is in power, this will not happen. But the late President Ong Teng Cheong has proven to be too inconvenient for it to handle.