The One About Inori

The Straits Times Online

My comments in red 

April 5, 2008

JI MAN MAS SELAMAT’S ESCAPE Guards were negligent, says MM

His message: Those who think nothing can go wrong are being complacent

By Sue-Ann Chia & Goh Chin Lia

FUGITIVE Mas Selamat Kastari was ‘an escape artist’ who had evaded arrest many times, and Singapore’s security officers knew this, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday.

Yet, the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist leader was able to lull his minders at the Whitley Road Detention Centre into believing that they had him under control, before he gave them the slip.
Lull his minders? Did he burn lavender essential oils? Sang “rock-a-bye baby”? Please let me know because if I can figure out how to lull my baby to sleep, it would benefit me.

‘When you are complacent in handling a wily detainee, then you have been negligent,’ Mr Lee told The Straits Times in an e-mail interview.

No shit!

He responded to questions on the issue of complacency for today’s Insight feature which takes off from his earlier comments on Mas Selamat’s disappearance.

He said last month that the break-out was a ‘very severe lesson in complacency’.

“Very severe lesson” ONLY. 

Mas Selamat, 47, who had planned to crash a plane into Changi Airport, escaped from Internal Security Department custody on Feb 27. He is still on the run.

The Government has promised a full account of how he escaped, after a three-member panel completes its investigations.

The panel which inquires and then investigates and then reports to themselves. Noice. 

In answering questions posed by The Straits Times, Mr Lee addressed the issue of complacency among citizens, saying: ‘Anyone who believes nothing can or will go wrong in Singapore is living in a make-believe world.’

Where unicorns and leprechauns AND merlions exist. (And when lions are native to a little fishing town called Temasek.)

He said Singaporeans are being complacent when they believe that the Government will take care of all security matters.

If they can’t, then why are they being paid shitloads of money? Certain people are sitting in offices, shaking their legs and allowing security lapses AND THEN NOT BEING SACKED FOR DOING SO! Maybe… I dunnoo… just MAYBE, they are related to the big brother by marriage? 

MPs and political observers interviewed for the Insight feature said decades of peace and prosperity could have caused some Singaporeans to believe the Government had everything under control and nothing could go wrong.

Correction: It’s THE GAH-MEN that gives the common folks the idea that everything IS under their control and NOTHING CAN GO WRONG. Everything oso wanna control control.. cannot litter, cannot jump into train tracks, cannot have more than 3 people in a group, cannot anyhow tok about the gah-men loud loud in pubic public, cannot don’t sing national anthem in school……. if they control any further, people cannot even fart in public LIAO. How to not believe that nothing can go wrong liddat? The army oso keep calling people back to do reservist mah.. so many ah bing kor in the army.. the military airplanes and helicopters everyday oso fry here fry there……. how can anything go wrong lehhh??

How did complacency creep in? Some observers like former MP Augustine Tan blamed indifference or lack of understanding of the Government’s workings.

Lack of understanding of the Govt’s workings CAN NOT be more over exaggerated! EVERYTHING is top-secret!!! NOW THEY BLAME COMMON FOLKs FOR NOT UNDERSTANDING GAH-MEN TOP SECRET? Hey, what’s that coming out from that male cow’s ass?

Others felt the Government was partly to blame.

Pfft… partly??? Pffftttttt…. 

People’s Action Party MP Lim Wee Kiak called complacency a ‘side-effect’ of an overly successful Government and civil service.

Ehh… successful, blame the people. Unsuccessful, blame the people. Do they blame the wall when they walk into the wall? 

‘This has bred a dependency mentality in our population who will blame the civil service and Government if any of their needs are not met,’ he noted.

So, blame ourselves?  “I, the common folk living in the bowels of Jurong, blame myself for letting Mas Selamat escape.”

I give an example: If you own a company and your assistant or your employee screws a project or an order up big time and offended your client. Would you, as a COMPANY DIRECTOR take complete responsibility, do damage control and apologise and/or reimburse the client, AND THEN deal with your employee accordingly? OR would you tell your client, “Ohhh it’s not my fault.. it’s my employee’s fault.” 

Incidentally, we have had this situation where the boss of a certain company blamed her assistant for screwing up our application and left it as that. Did not refund our money. Did not apologise. Needless to say, we are not only NOT going to give them more business, we are also telling people to AVOID this company. 

But MM Lee disagreed that the Government deserved to be blamed. He said: ‘Complacency sets in when a people have not suffered any shock or setback for a long time.’

The Gah-men never gets blamed.  

Hence, his warnings against complacency over the years, ‘because most people believe that bad things will happen to others, not to themselves’.

And so we should rightly be living in fear all the time. Since now we know our Gah-men cannot protect us one lor.

Hey, did I stumble onto a little secret? That they really want us to fear for our safety and trust them even more but this plan backfired? Hmmm.. trying to be like 9/11?   

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Seriously, I smell rat. IF one were to commit murder, for example, the police would have hunt that person down in days. Look, Took Leng How murdered Huang Na and even though he managed to escape without a passport to Malaysia (hey, it’s not the border security’s fault ok… it’s errr… it’s our fault…) they tracked him down within weeks.

Heck, you commit credit fraud and you would be thrown into jail fairly quickly! No matter how you try to hide!

So, HOW can this guy still be at large?

And they always say people who leave the country are quitters, THEN they justify themselves by bringing in foreign talent (and paying them shitloads of money while the rest have to survive on $800 per month with a family of 5) to ‘replace’ these people who left.

I quote from one person on The Straits Times forum (apologies.. I cannot find that exact post so if you are the writer of the following and want to be credited, do let me know):

If your bucket has a hole, do you patch the hole or do you keep adding water into it?