Parliamentary Opposition Leaders Lim Kit Siang has asked a reasonable question: Why should the taxpayer be made to suffer for the cancellation of the half-bridge project, a hastily fabricated unsound scheme by any standard?

It is not the first time that such huge projects - invariably carried out through an opaque system of tendering - have caused a colossal loss of tax revenue.

Sometimes we wonder whether the government is administering a country or running a night market.