Why should Wong Kan Seng be fired…
Was just talking to Ben today and another fellow Singaporean yesterday about the incident of Mas Selemat. Lee Jr. gave his speech about how making heads roll when an incident sprouts would only deter people from taking up the job and doing it well. I beg to differ.
If this were the case, why are corporations still getting good Chief Executive Officers when their heads roll if they screw things up? Why do the CEOs still initiate plans to further innovate operations in their company? It is because of the salary involved. Being in the employee quadrant of the four quadrants set out by Robert Kiyosaki, CEOs or Ministers all make their lump sum of money from salaries. As long as the salary is there, they will take up the job.
Lee Jr. is making a ridiculously contradictory statement when he announced that Wong Kan Seng would stay because he does not want to see heads roll when a mistake is made. Yup, we shouldn’t be seeing that if it was a small mistake. CEOs do not lose their jobs just because the companies make a loss. CEOs lose their jobs in situations when their Research and Development division allowed a competitor to patent a product which they innovated before they could. The Mas Selamat case was a complete fluke. Why wasn’t a top terror suspect like him injected with GPS? Don’t give me the bull shit about human rights. I don’t think planting a tiny GPS chip is that much of human rights issue when MINDEF could have Officers who do not follow the law training recruits in Pulau Tekong. Don’t say it doesn’t exist because recruits have already died.
If Lee Jr. could say that a raise in Minister’s salary is to match that of the corporate sector, I believe that a Minister has the same liability to that of a CEO.
P.S. Adding on to what I said earlier, I wonder why is it that Wong Kan Seng is presenting a report in parliament of what went wrong? Shouldn’t he be the one being fired with the report like when a fraud is going on in a company, an external auditor would be required to audit accounts and fire questionable points at the executives? Isn’t this a conflict of interests on his part? And why is Wong Kan Seng punishing others when he himself should be punished? Is he saying that procedures for the detention of the number 1 wanted terrorist suspect in Singapore has not been discussed with him? And if it wasn’t why didn’t he show more concern for the detention of Mas Selamat being the Chief of the Ministry?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:21 am
On a weekday 6 May 2008 at around 10am, I happen to make a trip up North. The queue of cars stretched from the Customs to the BKE highway while the lorries stretched to Woodlands Road. And the officers are still searching every vehicle apparently for Mas Selamat.
So if they can never find Mas Selamat, does it mean that the search will go on indefinitely.
If they were to calculate the resultant costs of conducting the futiile search and the negative effects on the Singapore economy, I wonder what this figure will be.
Would it run into S$ millions in opportunity costs ?
Wouldn’t this be reason enough for sacking WKS ?
May 7th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Another PAP Minister had gone past expiry date.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:13 am
PAP’s are the elite of singapore. Of course, i’m sure lotsa heads rolled.. But just that those heads belonged to the ‘not so elite’ ppl over @ ISD. I just feel that we’re just watching a drama, real bad acting from the lead actors tho.. Thks to mas selamat, another ugly side of PAP’s poor governance was shown to the world..
May 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
if that somebody makes a serious mistake, he should be held responsible just like a CEO in a company. If he is still shamelessly sitting in his position, we can see the level of integrity he has.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
If haze affects singapore, they will calculate how much we lost in revenue due to less tourists coming in. But the traffic jam at causeway caused how much opportunity cost forgone, they never publish, why ? Just to cover up for Wong’s mistake. Typical pap culture !!!!!
May 8th, 2008 at 12:53 am
WKS should go, Lee related or not. Otherwise PM and cabinet lose all credibility……