Unlike other head of states who started working from their first day of work, Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob has done next to nothing in her first month since her “election” on Sep 15. Officially, the only President-like work the S$128,000-a-month figurehead has done so far is to host a dinner to Qatar’s President – a double job considering Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong already hosted him to lunch.
Aside from moving out house, for her work unrelated to her Presidential duties, Halimah Yacob wasted media resources to shore up her popularity by issuing a number of motherhood statements as if she is Mother Theresa. “Support children with special needs“, “Thanks Healthcare workers for their hard work“, “More can be done to support vulnerable women“, “Lauds self-help group to help all races“. Most notably, Halimah Yacob did not contribute a single cent to any of these causes she claimed she support. It was all a propaganda stunt paying lips services and walking off to another group.
S$128,000 is gone from the national coffers today and nothing has been achieved. To be fair to Halimah Yacob, the scope of work for the Singapore President is already conspicuously useless. However, Singaporeans are short-changed by what she did not do.
Halimah Yacob did not exercise due diligence auditing, or at least finding out, the amount of national reserves and CPF funds, which Lee Hsien Loong is desperately hiding. The puppet President did not give an update on her views of the corrupted Prime Minister appointing his former private lawyer as the country’s Attorney General. Even for current affairs that matters to Singaporeans, Halimah Yacob pretended like she is living in another world oblivious to the worsening state of affairs happening in Singapore. Not only her hands are tied but her mouth is also stuffed by Lee Hsien Loong. While “useless” is a popular criticism reserved for her predecessors SR Nathan and Tony Tan, fake Malay and Mother Theresa-wannabe Halimah Yacob can inherit the same title and add “shameless” on top of it.