The world famous efficient government of Singapore is facing some embarrassment as a wanted terrorist escaped from a detention center and has been on the lose for two weeks.

From the IHT:

Mas Selamat Kastari, alleged to be the leader of a terrorist group here, escaped from a high-security prison two weeks ago in a major embarrassment for this efficient, tightly battened city-state.

In a furious response, the government put the entire country on alert, setting up checkpoints, sealing its borders, patrolling its parks and its shores, even urging people to keep an eye on their bicycles in case the wanted man decides to pedal to freedom.

With each new empty-handed day the embarrassment deepens as Singapore confronts its Tora Bora moment, its most-wanted terrorist suspect melting into the urban terrain just as Osama bin Laden evaded U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

For some people here this noisy, flailing search - even more than the escape itself - has cast Singapore in an unfamiliar light of haplessness.

Mas Selamat Kastari escaped from the detention center when he asked to use the restroom.

As a nation, Singapore is as lean and mean and flexible as the rapid-response military the Pentagon dreams of, and it reacted with impressive speed and agility to recent Asian outbreaks of bird flu and SARS.

But for the moment it seems to have met its match in Mas Selamat.

His disappearance challenges its basic promise to its citizens that the government will keep them safe and comfortable.

The authorities have released little information about his escape on Feb. 27, but they say that he acted alone and on the spur of the moment and that he is probably still in Singapore.

The official account is that the prisoner asked to go to the toilet while waiting for family members to visit, then simply disappeared from the Whitley Road Detention Center.

If this is true, said Lee Kin Mun, a leading political blogger who calls himself Mr. Brown, the government should “take a leaf from school exams, where security seems to be tighter” and where students must be escorted to the bathroom.

He is believed to be the head of the Singapore branch of Jemaah Islamiyah and his mug shot is now everywhere in Singapore.

Wanted posters are everywhere, mug shots have been transmitted to millions of cellphones and the entire nation of four million people has been deputized to look out for a round-faced man who is 1.58 meters tall, or 5 feet 2 inches, weighs 63 kilograms, or 140 pounds, and walks - or at least runs - with a limp.

Newspapers here say it is the biggest manhunt in Singapore’s history.

Here is a mugshot of Mas Selamat bin Kastari from Interpol: