Saturday, January 28, 2012

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.

15 comments:

  1. Like the way you phrase the last paragraph. It makes a lot of sense.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Of course, it is not simple because it is unaccountable and transparent to the people.

    Tattler, save your breath to ask those questions. You will never get the answers to those questions because of Official Secret Act. The government is not accountable and transparent to its people. This will lead to mistrust of the people on this government. Wikileak is very important in this country.

    ReplyDelete
  3. When a person is found to speak
    irresponsibly, the mistrust on
    him/her will remain for a long
    time if not infinitely.
    And whence the same person keeps
    doing his/her duty with no respect
    for integrity, his/her name will
    stink forever.

    Thank You for doing Singaporeans
    a great favour with your blogging.
    Please keep writing for us.

    patriot

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks tattler for helping me to remain sane.

    Every time when the super white spew some twisted truth, I search desperately for bloggers who are able to discern the white from the black.


    Other wise, would have gone berserk long time ago !

    Keep up yoour good work !

    ReplyDelete
  5. You don’t simply arrest people without sufficient cause & proof right?

    The public prosecutor would advise CPIB when he thinks there is sufficient evidence and chance for a successful prosecution.

    So the logical date for making an announcement would be the date of the arrest.

    Date of CPIB arrests were:
    19 Dec 2011 for one and 4 Jan 2012 for the other.

    CPIB reports to the Prime Minister’s Office.

    How stupid do you think we are?

    ReplyDelete
  6. WHITE
    The colour of putrid pus.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Bravo, Sir Tattler, for once again distilling the truth for us!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Parents teach their children that if they tell a lie, they would need 10 more lies to cover up the initial lie. Perhaps Teo Chee Hean has forgotten this lesson.

    It would have been better if TCH just admit that MHA was waiting for the debate on ministerial salary to be over before announcing

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  9. How can an efficient, effective or transparent Govt like ours have 2 Chiefs of Departments arrested and yet manage to keep it under wraps from the public for a couple of weeks ?

    Looks like it was necessary to keep everyone in the dark so that they could defend their ministers' million-dollar sacrifices with greater ease without any adverse publicity.

    No matter how they wants to put it now, the fact remains they must have put in every effort to delay the announcement. Only God knows why they are so fearful of not being fair to these Chiefs if they are already arrested anyway.

    In the past when they arrested political dissidents like CSJ and others, were they ever fearful of not being fair to these people ?

    ReplyDelete
  10. It is reported in the media that the woman is currently working for an American multinational software company for about six months, after leaving her previous job in a Japanese multinational firm at the same time CPIB probe began. That means that CPIB had began investigation six months ago.

    After months of investigation, they proceeded to arrest both Lim and Ng on Jan 4 and Dec 19, which means that they must have concluded that there is enough cause to detain them. At that moment MHA should have inform the public about this instead of delaying until after the press broke the news.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Sweeping dirt under carpet
    to conceal them comes to
    mind.
    But, then there is a saying
    not to wash dirty linens in
    public.
    So long there is action
    taken against wrongdoing,
    it should suffice la!

    ReplyDelete
  12. MIW like to cover things up. Hence Kuan Yew's request to pull down his house after his death. Too many well hidden secrets??

    ReplyDelete
  13. I just hope Singaporeans won't take these two CPIB arrests as PAP is opening up, becoming more transparent. We are still far from that.

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  14. Opening up!? There must be tons of other ECA extramarital affairs and corruption cases going on in the civil service !

    Not to mention the numerous abuse of facilities in education institutes where teachers make use of school facilities for seeking sexual pleasures from students and women during office business hours.

    ReplyDelete