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17-02-2015, 11:10 PM
An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
Can someone make the PAP overkill machine stop already? It's like watching the demented, monotonous uncle at a gathering belabour the same point, over and over again, grabbing your sleeve and not letting you go until he's convinced that you agree with everything that he says.
If indeed there are irregularities in WP's Town Council governance, it's something that the mainstream media (now occupying spot no. 153 in the World Press Freedom ranking) will happily highlight--they have the AGO's report to scrutinise. And as the WP has mentioned time and time again, the AGO had found no evidence of 'corrupt practices or missing money'.
But this isn't enough for the PAP. Members have to clamber over each other to feed the media with what they think is the most damning soundbite. (I think Shanmugam's 'WP took money from the man in the street and gave it to their friends' takes the cake. The New Paper could have substituted 'WP' with 'PAP' and ran it as a headline during the debate on ministerial salaries--because that was exactly what the man on the street was thinking. But oh well, 153.)
Lee Hsien Loong, in what is an ill-judged and juvenile attempt to show Singaporeans what happens when they vote an Opposition party into Parliament, has unleashed his ministers into the fray like a brat trying out his Pokemon cards. We get Khaw Boon Wan, looking like a character from an 80's Hong Kong martial arts comedy, rambling on about how in the 'good old days' those found guilty of mismanagement would commit hara-kiri. Since hara-kiri was banned in Japan in 1873, one can only surmise that Khaw's 'good old days' is a reference to his past life as a pre-Meiji-era samurai.
And there's Heng Swee Keat, as bug-eyed and big-toothed as something from a Ren and Stimpy cartoon, appearing slightly crazed as he denies that the debate has anything to do with 'partisan politics'. And of course we get the creepy Grand Komodo Dragon himself, Shanmugam, whose attitude has always seemed like contempt for anyone who didn't go to law school, and whose mode of attack, in the best tradition of litigation, has been to cast shadowy insinuations.
Why the PAP is so obsessed with WP's account books is really quite clear to all of us. The first reason is to deter anyone from joining the Opposition, because any scent of blood leaking from a wound will send the PAP into a relentless feeding frenzy. But this might actually turn out as an argument to reduce PAP super-majority in Parliament--what's the point of having different members of the same party repeating the same damn thing when they conduct their tag-team assault?
The second is to suck up all the oxygen in the chamber and leave very little left for the scrutiny of the other lapses and irregularities in the ministries as detailed in the AGO report. The third is due to the kind of ego and entitlement cultivated through years of single-party rule: they still haven't got over the trauma of losing a GRC and are unable to engage in gentlemanly discourse with those who took away their prize.
I think the ministers we have are first and foremost technocrats. They are probably at their best explaining the policies of their respective ministries, in the comfort pool of warm data reliably provided by their ministerial underlings. But they're ridiculously inept at this brief to 'fix the opposition' (the actual thing that needs fixing is a broken record, hello). They look clumsy, and obvious, and hysterical, with head-scratching non-sequiturs and unverifiable anecdotes and drama-queen assertions. Body-piling on the opposition is an ugly sight. If the PAP is unable to restrain itself from such schoolyard-bully pettiness in the future, then it's up to the voters to restrain them--by sending less of them to Parliament.
https://www.facebook.com/alfiansaat/...52565180452371 (https://www.facebook.com/alfiansaat/posts/10152565180452371)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?200880-Can-someone-make-the-PAP-overkill-machine-stop-already&goto=newpost).
Can someone make the PAP overkill machine stop already? It's like watching the demented, monotonous uncle at a gathering belabour the same point, over and over again, grabbing your sleeve and not letting you go until he's convinced that you agree with everything that he says.
If indeed there are irregularities in WP's Town Council governance, it's something that the mainstream media (now occupying spot no. 153 in the World Press Freedom ranking) will happily highlight--they have the AGO's report to scrutinise. And as the WP has mentioned time and time again, the AGO had found no evidence of 'corrupt practices or missing money'.
But this isn't enough for the PAP. Members have to clamber over each other to feed the media with what they think is the most damning soundbite. (I think Shanmugam's 'WP took money from the man in the street and gave it to their friends' takes the cake. The New Paper could have substituted 'WP' with 'PAP' and ran it as a headline during the debate on ministerial salaries--because that was exactly what the man on the street was thinking. But oh well, 153.)
Lee Hsien Loong, in what is an ill-judged and juvenile attempt to show Singaporeans what happens when they vote an Opposition party into Parliament, has unleashed his ministers into the fray like a brat trying out his Pokemon cards. We get Khaw Boon Wan, looking like a character from an 80's Hong Kong martial arts comedy, rambling on about how in the 'good old days' those found guilty of mismanagement would commit hara-kiri. Since hara-kiri was banned in Japan in 1873, one can only surmise that Khaw's 'good old days' is a reference to his past life as a pre-Meiji-era samurai.
And there's Heng Swee Keat, as bug-eyed and big-toothed as something from a Ren and Stimpy cartoon, appearing slightly crazed as he denies that the debate has anything to do with 'partisan politics'. And of course we get the creepy Grand Komodo Dragon himself, Shanmugam, whose attitude has always seemed like contempt for anyone who didn't go to law school, and whose mode of attack, in the best tradition of litigation, has been to cast shadowy insinuations.
Why the PAP is so obsessed with WP's account books is really quite clear to all of us. The first reason is to deter anyone from joining the Opposition, because any scent of blood leaking from a wound will send the PAP into a relentless feeding frenzy. But this might actually turn out as an argument to reduce PAP super-majority in Parliament--what's the point of having different members of the same party repeating the same damn thing when they conduct their tag-team assault?
The second is to suck up all the oxygen in the chamber and leave very little left for the scrutiny of the other lapses and irregularities in the ministries as detailed in the AGO report. The third is due to the kind of ego and entitlement cultivated through years of single-party rule: they still haven't got over the trauma of losing a GRC and are unable to engage in gentlemanly discourse with those who took away their prize.
I think the ministers we have are first and foremost technocrats. They are probably at their best explaining the policies of their respective ministries, in the comfort pool of warm data reliably provided by their ministerial underlings. But they're ridiculously inept at this brief to 'fix the opposition' (the actual thing that needs fixing is a broken record, hello). They look clumsy, and obvious, and hysterical, with head-scratching non-sequiturs and unverifiable anecdotes and drama-queen assertions. Body-piling on the opposition is an ugly sight. If the PAP is unable to restrain itself from such schoolyard-bully pettiness in the future, then it's up to the voters to restrain them--by sending less of them to Parliament.
https://www.facebook.com/alfiansaat/...52565180452371 (https://www.facebook.com/alfiansaat/posts/10152565180452371)
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com (http://www.sammyboy.com/showthread.php?200880-Can-someone-make-the-PAP-overkill-machine-stop-already&goto=newpost).