Failing organs of govt and the SAF

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

We have seen a number of established organs of government fail dramatically in the last 2 years and. I wonder if the SAF which takes up the largest chunk of the budget year in and year out is actually functional.

Here is a summary of the recent significant failures that have no prior precedence since the PAP consolidated itself in the early 70s

1. The White Paper - seminal for all the wrong reasons. It caught everybody by surprise and the first clear sign that the leadership and the scholars were so far removed from reality. The chasm was tangible. Were there no views taken from the grassroots which are managed by PA. Baey's $2.50 nasi Padang and discounted Bandung further nailed the detached factor as an issue. So who the PAP talk to when they hold the meet the people sessions.

2. The PRC bus strike - the reason the union chief carries a cabinet rank is not to add to the decor. His single most important task is to keep the industrial peace, a attribute we sell to foreign investors. So what went wrong? NTUC has a long established intelligence arm which is not well known but it is there. The union reps are the best paid and those in NTUC admin grade mirror the Alpha salary scale. So what are they paid to do.

3. The SPF debacle in Little India - jammed radio communications is not going to cut the mustard. The senior commanders were there but either had no idea what to do and had no spine to move. Only a TP rider and Cisco officer showed courage. No leadership, no clue and no idea how to do crowd control - basic policing role. More concerning is their incoherent testimony at the COI giving credence that they are not up to the task.

4. SMRT Rolling Disasters - the lady was removed, they brought in an ex defence chief and PS. So we are looking at cream de la cream. There is nothing higher rank wise. He was given an open cheque book and he picked and chose presumably the best from SAF. And it got worse. And the only civilian local in the new team quit abruptly without a job. He then decided that semantics similar to VB ponding would be the way to go. A service disruption is when the train stops and not when it crawls????

5. Hospital beds under a makeshift tent. Personally I felt that this was indeed the shocker. Nobody ever imagined that we would ever come to this. We are now going into the realms of a field hospital. Gan's parliamentary responses was not only unacceptable but it was bordering on the ridiculous. When Andrew Chew as Head of the Civil. Service was tasked to defray the cost of the medical burden and to shift it to some extent to the patient, his initial 7 % decades ago must have conjured images of a modern and first world vision not beds under a tent which was never the case in the past.

That's begs the question is the SAF all that it made up to be. Like the SPF will it fail in its basic role. Will our jets fly, will our leaders and their families be around, will our commanders wait, will the communications fail, can the tanks be brought back in time, etc

SAF leaders cannot be far removed from those same scholars that went to the same school and did the white paper, managed labour relations, trained our Police officer etc. They are part of the same system or what makes them different. The transparency report on procurement is a worry and maybe symptomatic of the issues within.

Mind you all these after the PM apologised and promised to fix the shop.


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