Basket.

Been that long since I last posted? Well.

Anyway, the topic of the moment is, unless you've been living in self-contained seclusion (very difficult to do in a country with over 6,000 people per square kilometre), Singapore's favourite fugitive. It has been two months; I guess he's still hiding in our island's "sprawling" rainforests. I mean, what other explanation could there be?

With much uncomfortable explanation to do, instead, was the Government of the Republic of Singapore. Or that would have been the case, if this place was actually run like a Republic. Instead, the top personnel all got to keep their jobs - and very comfortably at that. No, I'm not surprised, obviously, but it's still extremely galling to see our premium-cost politicians brazen out this storm when any individuals in their position in a system operating like ours was designed should be squirming extremely uneasily in their comfortable leather-backed office chairs instead. Especially given how much taxpayer money they are receiving every year.

Instead, we had the Home Affairs Minister express only the least signs of contrition for failing to properly do his job, and his boss firmly in approval. While there is a case that he should not lose him job, at the very least more regret and solemn pledges of improvement, even an offer to resign, would have been more convincing that he was truly sorry. As it is he seems more resigned to present realities - the guy has got out and we still can't find him; oh well, what are you going to do? That's not the correct attitude to take at all.

His performance, or lack thereof, was however overshadowed by his boss, who gave us the hollowest soundbite to come out of Singaporean politics this year: "no witchhunt". In a sense he's right - no witchhunt of top officials who are all friends and acquaintances. No witchhunt of lower-ranking officials as scapegoats? Yeah, right. As everyone who has worked in any capacity for any length of time for the government, or simply served National Service, would know, in the case of any fuck-ups, lots of lesser mortals will be made to pay while their incompetent superiors look on with stern approval. That's probably happening in the ISD, MHA and WRDC this very moment. For the lucky ones, it'll be simple pay cuts, or early retirement. For the unlucky, they're likely to join the ranks of the unemployed with a black mark on their records, which here is a virtual sentence to menial labour. For the desperately unlucky... who knows, really? I don't. Maybe they make them dig their own shallow graves and put a single bullet through each spinal cord. With the amount of transparency there is, I wouldn't bet against it.

But the point is, top management gets away scot-free. Sure, it happens all over the world, but it's not so blatant and probably not at as high a level as here. The escape was a colossal fuck-up, and all the mistakes that led to it make for highly entertaining reading. And those are only the details they chose to release publicly. I bet even more laughable errors were made. And the people ultimately responsible? They'll continue running the country.

That's comforting.