Sunday, August 4, 2013

Truth Be Told

When his Ministry of National Development staff gave him a tearful send off in September 1992, Dhanabalan told reporters he would be spending more time with his church. When he had to make way for Lim Boon Heng as the new Temasek chairman on August 2013, he said same: spending more time with his church, currently Bukit Panjang Gospel Chapel. You gotta take that with a large pinch of salt.

My uncle met him at a Varsity Christian Fellowship (VCF) gathering eons ago, when he first donned the white and white uniform (him, not uncle), and asked him why his political party seemed to be unpopular among some circles. The cocky response was that, with 70+ of the votes, they had to be popular. Period. End of sharing.

When he was in charge of Development Bank of Singapore (DBS), there was a time when the bank paid the lowest salaries on the island. Asked why, he said he prides DBS as the training center for Singapore bankers. The mass migration to the other banks continued unabated. To halt the stampede, he quietly revised the pay scales to match the market rates.

Then he killed the POSB girl. Many, including yours truly, closed all their accounts and moved their money to another bank, any bank. Queried by the press, he boasted that the impact of the POSB takeover was minimal. Insiders reported a different story, and POSB was revived.

When SingaPolitics wrote in the Sunday Times that "a rare breed of leader (was) lost with Dhana's exit", they must have originally intended a piece on fiction.

Yesterday Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen warned of a new threat on the horizon: the distortion or false information, rumours and smears that emanate from the Internet. That's nothing new. We have seen with our own eyes the source of the distortion, rumours and smears, and mostly it is from the 149 ranked mainstream media.

18 comments:

  1. Excellent piece. Congratulations. It is the mutual admiration club. You might have also mentioned that DBS was given POSB Bank when it was in danger of failing at the time of the Wall Street crash. Fancy giving away the creditor(of some $2 billion) to its debtor. President Ong was appalled and questioned it later much to his regret.They retorted that he had signed on it and then vilified him publicly for rasing the issue. A state funeral was denied.

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    1. Where is the sense of proportion and fairplay in denying President OngTC a state funeral while on the otherhand it's befitting to give one to LKY's wife ? Will such a ridiculous precedent be extended to mrs peanuts Goh CT, mdm Ho Jinx ?

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  2. Happy Singaporean8/04/2013 10:05 AM

    Well well, I'm happy that he was slapped. Hope it hurt like hell.

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    1. This short ass menace including Wong KS, Mah BT and P Yeo deserve to be slapped by the people rather than by ah loong.

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  3. Janadas Devan should advise LSS not to play with analogy and NEH acronym. They are so bad at it that it affects their peerless white public image.

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  4. The survival of the PAP depends on it to remind us of an impending danger, threat or whatever.

    They do this because their origins is not as pedigree as they paint themselves to be.

    What really is shocking is how can so many want to be part of their scheme!.. all attracted by $$$,$$$,$$$ alone?
    If, that is true, then they will always hold the majority, and we will remain as infantile as they regard us to be.

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  5. what did the sage said???

    when locked in a room with one short indian, a deadly cobra and a gun and TWO bullets

    WHAT SHOULD YOU DO?

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    Replies
    1. first step, force the short indian to eat the cobra, save 2 bullets if both are dead.

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    2. omg ... i feeling sorry for the cobra

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    3. Use one bullet to shoot the indian; don't have to shoot the cobra as he is more useful. The cobra will be grateful to you and perform tricks (and threats) for you. You become rich(er) and you save the bullet for another future danger.

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  6. wondering what are the proper procedures to have a "industrial" land converted to "residental" useage in Singapore???

    need to go thru legal proceeding?

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  7. "..resign as National Development Minister...to return to private sector..."

    What is private sector, truely? Was he ever in the private sector, before or after his stint as National Development Minister? Singapore Airlines and DBS, private sector meh, or part of Singapore Inc? Chairman of Temasek Holdings for 17 years since 1996. Last I heard it is an investment company owned by the Government of Singapore (GOC) and run by the family. I dunno how much time he spent with his church then, gotta ask Tattler's uncle.

    Definition of Private Sector from Wikipedia:
    In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy, sometimes referred to as the citizen sector, which is run by private individuals or groups, usually as a means of enterprise for profit, and is not controlled by the state. By contrast, enterprises that are part of the state are part of the public sector; private, non-profit organizations are regarded as part of the voluntary sector, a subset of the private sector.

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  8. That Chicken Little is going ballistic again with his scare mongering. Who is a bigger threat? Mas Selamat or the system which let him walk out in broad daylight and had to depend on our neighbours' police to do their job for them? Feckless bunch of pen pushing self-glorifying millionaires good only at coining acronyms : DRUMS to you...

    "Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is TELL THEM THEY ARE BEING ATTACKED, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. IT WORKS THE SAME IN ANY COUNTRY."
    --Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

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    1. To the chicken littles, frivolous utterances can kill u.

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  9. The Bitter Truth8/05/2013 11:36 AM

    When Dhanabalan was MND Minister he wanted HDB to show on its audited accounts that the Government was subsidising public housing. The then external auditors (Price Waterhouse) disagreed because accounting principles valued HDB assets like land on historical cost basis. Land cost of HDB is zero. To get around this the Government created SLA (Singapore Land Authority) to own all State Land. Land held by HDB was transferred to SLA. After this, land required by HDB to build flats had to be purchased from SLA based on price set solely by Government Valuer. There is no negotiation. This allowed the Government to “inflate” the cost of building HDB flats (as shown in HDB accounts). HDB can then claim it was selling flats below cost. But when in reality when taken as a whole the Government (HDB and SLA together) was making substantial profit on HDB flats. Both HDB and SLA are wholly-owned by Government. SLA is a self-funding agency and is not included in the Government Budget. SLA has billions in surplus each year and has massive reserves. HDB public housing allowed PAP to scam (drain) the CPF accounts of Singaporeans by selling them over-priced HDB flats.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the dots... it makes sense now!

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    2. Thanks bro, and we learn that they are good at one thing at least - creative accounting! Of course SLA then squirrel away the "profit" from land sales as "govt surpluses", and out of reach from the people and definitely out of reach of the next party taking over!

      Same trick that Li Ka Shing uses now and then to sell his own private assets at inflated price to listed entities he controls (aka Fortune REIT anyone?) :)

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