Money Down The Drain

When Lee Kuan Yew was asked in July 2010 if he thought the response from the various agencies to the recent spate of floods in Singapore was sufficient, he was quoted as saying,"whatever we do when we get extraordinary rains like we had recently, no amount of engineering can prevent flooding." Oops, looks like another "I stand corrected" statement is in order.

The Public Utilities Board (PUB) just announced that it will be spending about $750 million over the next 5 years to carry out 20 drainage improvement projects to achieve a higher level of flood protection. Presumably most of the money will be allocated for implementing the recommendations of the Expert Panel for Drainage Design and Flood Protection Measures, like introducing a polymer lining to smoothen the Stamford canal walls and speed up the water discharge. Longer-term solutions mooted include the construction of a diversion canal and detention ponds, items which Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan was so hesitant to commit on - "These are very expensive projects. We have to approach this methodically and carefully." (MyPaper, 3 Jan 2012)

Actually, that's the worrying part. This is the guy who was given $104 million to spend for YOG and ended up with a bloated $387 million expense. Of which $79.8 million was parked as "Other Costs", an accounting entry that was not even picked up for query by the Auditor General. Yet the then 50-year-old, who was heading the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS), insisted that his team "did not overspend or waste or squander the $387 million budget" allocated to the project - note the sneaky sleight of hand here, actual $387m amount expended (per report card presented in parliament) equals exactly the revised $387m budget proposed (supposedly figure approved by PM Lee).

Which means the $750 million can easily balloon to $2.2++ billion. With pro-rated "Other Costs" to match. Instead of more CCTVs to monitor flood-prone areas, what we need is a closer watch of these profligates at the helm. Note only $2 million is needed to remove the sewer and NEWater pipelines from Stamford Canal and line it with polymer, leaving lots of room to fiddle with $748 million.

The New Army

"The Men Who Stare at Goats," is a weird story about a secret, psychic military unit established in 1979 by the most gifted minds within the US Army. Defying all known accepted military practice - and the laws of physics - they believed that a soldier could adopt the cloak of invisibility, walk through solid walls and, perhaps most chillingly, kill goats just by staring at them.

The goats of the title, according to author Jon Ronson, have been hidden at a Goat Lab at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and de-bleated for security reasons. The experts there contend that a goat's heart can be stopped by the intense gaze of a certain kind of supersoldier.
This jaw-dropper of a hard-to-believe book (also made into a movie starring George Clooney) is a non-fiction story. Based on material from declassified government documents, Ronson addresses the more sinister aspect of out-of-the-box military thinking.

Equally weird is a study by the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) that claim recruits who go through their Building Resilience in Individuals for Growth and Emotional Well-being programme (BRIDGE - even the acronym does not tally up)  out-jumped, out-ran, out-shot and out-performed those who did not. Add out-hype to those superlatives. Mindef spokesman Desmond Tan boasts that the programme focuses on imparting the knowledge and skills recruits need to control their thoughts and actions to overcome the adversities they face in physical or outfield training.

Stretched over the 10-week Basic Military Training (BMT), BRIDGE is supposed to teach recruits to:
Stop negative thought processes (and replace these with positive self-talk like HDB prices will come down);
Reflect and share thoughts with peers and commanders (keep the distance though, look what happened between teachers and students in schools);
Set individual targets for physical training (why 10 push-ups when one will do?)

Oh yeah, and recruits get to watch movies and are given handbooks, in addition to the laptops and iPads issued.

Makes one wonder when our young men in uniform will get to practise their marksmanship on the firing range, or learn to reverse a land rover without running over someone standing behind.

More White Lies

Can the Minister for Home Affairs, namely Teo Chee Hean, be probed by the CPIB for lying to the electorate?

In the latest MHA statement, Teo's ministry said it had planned to announce that Lim and Ng were investigated and suspended from duty on 25 Jan, one day after Lianhe Wanbao informed the public on 24 Jan. The MHA also said it was informed by CPIB on 20 Jan that there was "sufficient basis" to consider civil service disciplinary action for misconduct, resulting in the immediate appointment of their replacements.

Why is the MHA, Teo's ministry, still insisting that there was NO DELAY in releasing news of the CPIB probe of the allegations of misconduct against the two top men in his ministry?

The MHA, in an earlier press release, already stated for the record that both men were arrested on 14 Dec 2011 (Ng) and 4 Jan 2012 (Lim). Is the MHA saying that prior to these dates, investigative work had not yet commenced on both these black sheep? That, prior to these two dates, the Minister, namely Teo Chee Hean, was not clued in on the developments before his two top lieutenants were dragged into the police station to be handcuffed and finger printed for the arrest?

Hiding behind the "not in the position to comment as investigations are in progress" excuse, Teo said, "If I have more information , I'll be happy to provide it to my fellow Members of Parliament". That's his way of saying that lesser mortals will have to settle for scraps of flaky information from his MHA, to plaster over the truths being leaked from other sources.

Well, it looks like the MPs will have to ask the hard questions:
When was impropriety about the IT purchases first discovered;
When was suspicion first cast on the uniformed officers;
When was the female IT executive first identified and invited to assist in the investigations;
When were the collaborative pieces of evidence first assembled to pin point the targets;
When did the CPIB conclude it had "sufficient basis" to inform MHA;
When did they receive official permission to arrest Ng and Lim.

CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria interviewed PM Lee Hsien Loong at Davaos on Thursday 26 Jan, "People say the system is too closed you  need more political openness." Lee's response is telling, "If only it were so simple." We can understand why. The can of worms that is being opened confirms the ugly truth - white is the new colour for the rot within.

On Hidden Agendas

The broadside burst from his shotgun came out of nowhere. It was not clear who his bullets were targeting, the members of the audience at the "Young Guns" forum organised by the NUS political association, the journalists of MSM at large, or the bloggers of the new media.

Vikram Nair of the People's Action Party was obviously not within his element of boot-licking grassroots leaders and apple-polishers when he professed, "At every forum I've attended before this one, I have been misquoted."  Whining like a wounded puppy, he lamented, "That is because people have an  agenda to discredit us (presumably referring to his keechiu crowd)... I don't think (the misquoting) is accidental, I am quite sure they are deliberate."

Well, people, it looks like Nair is one card carrying member who fully subscribes to the "us" versus "them" mentality. Which means the political divide is here to stay, it seems to suit their agenda. On this, this Nair seems to have a head start.

Way back on 11th August 2009, the 93.8FM website quoted one of the editors of the lame P65 blog site, Mr Tang Ho Wan, as saying that none of the 8 new writers brought in to beef up the blog was affiliated to the Young PAP. He was also quoted by the Today newspaper as having said the same.  Young PAP Chairman, Mr Teo Ser Luck, as quoted in the Straits Times, had explained, “We have our own Young PAP website for the politically inclined… The P65 blog is to allow other young people to share their views, which are non-partisan, neutral and can be constructive criticism of policies.”

All too soon, it surfaced that one of the writers on the blog was indeed a Young PAP member travelling incognito. And Vikram Nair revealed it himself in a blog post titled, “I’m coming out”.

It looks like we have an expert practitioner on hidden agendas talking.

The Tin Pei Ling Defence

The two top uniformed officials, entrusted to protect life and property, have been finger printed and formally arrested, passports impounded. So why are they offered an escape clause? Specifically,
"The bureau (CPIB) said that in the case of public servants, and especially where there may be no criminal wrongdoings but serious misconduct, the matter may also be referred to the ministry or agency concerned for appropriate disciplinary action to be taken".

The Kate Spade MP from Marine Parade clearly violated the "Cooling Off Day" election law, but was let off with a teeny weeny smack on her dainty little hand. Even the shame of the official police warning was borne by a mysterious "administrator", whose identity was never declared in the election filings.

This "personal failing" of the civil service elites is rumoured to involve clandestine interactions with a certain female IT executive; does mean that the Clintonesque excuse ("define sex") will also be resorted to? And assuming a Monica Lewinsky type dress could be produced, the testimony of the DNA lab could also be stained - recall the senior employee of over 30 years experience at the Health Sciences Authority's DNA Profiling Laboratory who screwed up because he had "misread' the label of the EDTA reagent.

In the Lennick and Kiel book, "Moral Intelligence" (Wharton School Publishing, 2005), the authors wrote:

"Knowing who you want to be - an honest, responsible, and compassionate leader - is one thing. Knowing how to become your best self is another. Actually, doing what you know you should do is still another matter. That is the essence of alignment, a shorthand term that means "your goals and your behaviors are consistent with your moral compass."

Targeted at corporate governance, the authors could have easily written for politicians and elitist civil servants. Commented one reviewer, Paul Fribourg of Wharton Business School, "We live in an increasingly competitive and global world,. Increasingly, 'the end justifies the means'. This often results in the loss of our moral compass. Lennick and Kiel show us that the truly great business leaders never sacrifice moral integrity for financial goals and that maintaining the highest ethical standards is not only the 'right' thing to do, it also produces the best companies and the best results."

It makes one wonder if the Singapore elites read stuff besides their CPF statement which, according to Minister Lim Swee Say, makes him feel fabulously rich.