suppose this storm is ride and handled by chee soon juan, what would be the outcome?
it could have been even worst!
PM LHL had the choice to let it slide and "whatever will be, will be" or he could have shown more decisiveness by taking control of the situation from September. Instead because his father is in charge, and he hasn't challenged his father to slowly step aside over the years, he let his father dictate the terms.
And since ah-pa didn't know or didn't want to do anything(almost sounds like he's even worse than Bush in that aspect), LHL also didn't say a squeak that show that he could do something, and restore a bit of the self-esteem and confidence.
Instead the government relied on Tony Tan to spin news out of nothing, thinking that it'd be enough to get people to ignore the sliding economy and perhaps if we ignore it long enough, the problem would go away.
LHL could have taken a leaf out of PM Kevin Rudd's book. PM Rudd has been on the forefront ever since Lehman collapsed, pushing for and getting the policies passed to address the slide in business and the people's confidence, to do some spending to create jobs, and to reduce the chances of the economy crashing to the depths. The result is that Australia's economy, if in a recession- according to NAB- will only shrink 0.25% in 2009.
That's way better than most developed nations in Asia, Europe, and in North America. If Singapore crash -10% this year, the worst Bloomberg news have said, we are 50 times worse off than Australia. That's how bad it is, and that shows the utter lack of depth in the leadership of the government. They didn't understand, or didn't want to reconcile the fact that this recession is way way different and deeper than other recessions in the last 30-40 years.
When they finally realised it, the economy cratered at -12% for the last quarter of 2008. It was ridiculously late.