The Rhetoric
“I had anticipated in the 1980s that sometime inevitably, somewhere, somebody is going to come up with a compelling reason why we should use up our reserves…I tell you what will happen, we’ll all kick the bucket.”
– Lee Kuan Yew rejecting a suggestion to use reserves to care for the elderly, Straits Times, Jan 2001The Reality
“The new provisions make it possible for the Government to transfer its reserves to selected statutory boards and Government companies, without such transfers being regarded as a draw on past reserves… ‘The Government thus has a carte blanche to bail out its ailing companies without the need for Presidential approval.'”
– TODAY on the Constitutional Amendment to allow reserves to be transferred to stat boards and GLCs, May 2004