Her voice over the last few weeks had grown faint, her speech slurred and monotone.
The keynote speaker, former socialist prime minister and leader of opposition party Together 2014, Gordon Bajnai was filmed by state media from an angle and location that presented his voice as faint and his speech insecure.
He said he fainted during the speech, part of celebrations linked to Singapore's 51st anniversary as a republic on August 9. "I think that's what happened.
It's a nightmarish moment, and it is almost unbearable to watch this Lear-like wrath fall on its passive, defenseless victim (Hero has fainted before the speech begins).
At a recent gathering at Hijos y Amigos de Fomento, the Cuban club in Union City, the clatter of three simultaneous matches abruptly halted when a news bulletin flashed across the television screen that Fidel Castro had fainted during a speech.
"One day, our yet-to-be monarch and chief agonist, buoyed by the influence of a thick Turkic potion known as espresso kaffee, and because of faintest impropriety of speech that by and by inhibited the correct recitation of spells, turned the comely nervous prince -- Maxwell Hennesy Charming, brother of the flapper maiden already mentioned -- into a performing monkey, or hanuman".
This is not to damn this speech with faint praise.
He developed parkinsonian symptoms, so that his limbs stiffened and his speech grew faint.
The Washington Post's David Broder, the dean of the press corps, damned John Kerry's acceptance speech with faint praise: "He did not blow his big moment".
After reading the first paragraph of his speech in faint, hobbled Russian, however, he gestured for a local priest to read the rest to his audience of politicians, intellectuals and diplomats.
Sounding a faint echo of a speech Wednesday by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who argued for restoration of morals to save capitalism, Mr. Ackermann added: "If you have lost the trust of societies, you cannot just respond technically, you have to respond morally".
