Normally Singaporeans would be pleased to be praised by a business titan of the world but as they say, “timing is everything!” That’s the feeling I had when Rupert Murdoch praised Singapore for paying its ministers top dollar to avoid corruption.
Murdoch, 80, was giving evidence to a British parliamentary committee where he was defending his media company, News Corp, over a phone hacking scandal when he praised Singapore as "the cleanest society" in the world because of the high salaries paid to its members of parliament. Our Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is the world's highest paid political leader with an annual salary of over S$3 million.
Damming with faint praise is something everyone had heard of before but Rupert Murdoch managed to damm with great praise! The hacking scandal in the U.K. is so toxic that it closed down the News of the World, claimed the jobs of two of Murdoch’s top aides, and forced two senior British policemen to resign. And this is the person who is “praising” Singapore for paying top dollars.
As I said earlier, normally the Singapore government would be pleased (we are a people who love to blow our own horn) but at this point of time is it any surprise that the government (and Singaporeans) has kept uncharacteristically quiet about Murdoch's praise.
4 comments:
Under normal circumstance, he will not even touch on this topic. If he wants, he would have. But Murdoch is in a struggling situation, strangled by the people who are looking for answers to the evils he and his merry men and women had committed.
Suddenly, the obscenely high salary is a good enough issue for him to help him get out of the shit they were in. Or so he thought it will.
His statement is a very lame.
I don't know why Murdoch said that. There isn't a good reason for it and all he manged to do was to get the Singapore government in trouble.
HEY PAPAYAS, AREN'T YOU GOING TO REJOICE AND CELEBRATE, LOUDLY AND OBSCENELY?
Why, I think it was poetic!
One is known by the company he keeps. Need I say more?
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