SMRT Graffiti Wake Up Call

It was almost a reprise of the Mas Selamat flight from his cell at Whitely Road Detention Centre, the authorities were so slow and incompetent that the defaced MRT train had a full 48 hours run in public view before the vandalism was detected. Last August, a new police department was actually set up specifically to secure Singapore’s public transport network against criminals and terrorists. Instead of the stereotype photoshopped mugshot of the Muslim terrorist, they should have been on the look out for an Ang Moh with a spray can.

SMRT has installed countless CCTVs at the train stations, ever ready to catch Singaporeans in the act of littering since trash bins have been removed in their vicinity for fear of bombs being deposited instead of litter. The officers monitoring the CCTV screens must have been bored with looking down necklines, if they watching at all, for they never saw the coach painted on the side with the trademark signature of the perpetrator, "McKoy Banos".

A man named Oliver Fricker has been "assisting the police in their invesgations", to use same parlance of the CAD boys currently reviewing the finances of City Harvest Church. The foreigner is a 33-year-old Swiss national, having been granted entry into the country as a business consultant by the ICA which, until recently, had been handling out work permits like free tissue paper. The real cuplrit is probably the one who flew away. British citizen Lloyd Dane Alexander arrived here a few days before the incident, and purportedly left Singapore for Hong Kong before the security guys woke up with red faces.

For sneaking into the Changi depot restricted area by overcoming a series of barriers, including cutting through a fence topped with barbed wire along Xilin Avenue, Fricker faces potential jail time and permanent defacement of his butt. Just ask American Michael Fay. Fricker was arrested one week after the incident was first reported to the police on May 19, longer time than Mas Selamat took to scoot off to Scudai on the Malaysian side of the Causeway.

Dr John Harrison, a specialist in terrorism research at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said, "It could have been a very serious situation. An individual with knowledge of the system and intent to disrupt or damage it could do much, much worse". But neither Transport Minister Raymond Lim nor Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng has bothered to comment on the breach of national security. Come to think of it, all the Ministers have been awfully quiet. All they all asleep or just afraid to lose their budgetted 8.8 percent wage increment because of a public relations gaffe?