Basket.

Well, unless you've been hiding under a rock all this while, you would know that former JI leader Mas Selamat Kastari escaped from Whitley Detention Centre at around 4.05pm on 27th February, and that nearly a week later, they still have not caught him.

Needless to say, this is a major embarrassment for the government - although, obviously, no one has publicly called it as such, though it was tacit in DPM Wong's unprecedented apology in Parliament - not just because he managed to escape from one of the most remote and secure locations on this island, but also because he is still at large; on both counts, despite the best efforts of our supposedly top-class security forces.

I suppose the government can look on the bright side, because this event has completely overshadowed the increasingly fractious debate over the Budget, particularly on how a projected S$700 million deficit could turn into a S$6.4 billion surplus. But between that wildly inaccurate prediction and this embarrassing security slip, our government's reputation for efficiency is beginning to look a tad tattered. Whatever happened to the coldly successful official apparatus, at which one could throw any number of negative adjectives, but had to admit worked, and worked well, in the end? Is incompetence seeping into the system we so value? How does this all look to the outside world? Why is it that salary increases don't seem to be bringing us better governance, but in fact, disturbingly, quite the converse?

These are questions our leaders would do well to consider. What they should also consider is not just whether heads will roll - they definitely will - but whose head should roll. Responsibility for such serious breaches goes right to the very top. High officialhood should never be an iron rice bowl.

On a lighter note, "experts" (the term is to be used very loosely) continue to sound convinced that the man of the hour is still in Singapore. According to this article, he can hide out almost indefinitely in, I quote, "one of Singapore's sprawling forests".

I mean, that line just says it all. You have got to be fucking kidding me. Bukit Timah Nature Reserve is not the fucking Amazon basin. It is not very dense jungle at all, is a fairly well-travelled place and 500 officers combed it thoroughly (according to the article). It would then appear implausible, to say the least, that not one person caught sight of a ragged (if he fled alone, as they appear to be implying, he would certainly be pretty ragged by now), short Malay man who walks with a limp.

Seriously, he's gone. And he probably had help. The more they refuse to give us the facts of the case, the sillier they look - and at this point of time, they look silly enough already.