Wednesday, January 28, 2015

No Winners, All Losers

For months, the Singapore government has been harping on the Worker’s Party (WP) administration of the Aljunied-Hougang-Punggol East Town Council (AHPETC). The main thrust of their attack has been on the S&CC arrears rate which went as high as 29.4% in April 2013.

Well, they are right. The WP has not been doing well because they just had a press release stating that their report in 2013 was wrong. The AHPETC has admitted that the arrears rate of 29.4% for April 2013 was an error. AHPETC said that it has erroneously double-counted some of the arrears of households and AHPETC Chairman Ms. Sylvia Lim apologized for the error.

I have one question. How is it that no one, the WP, the AHPETC, the HDB, the MND, managed to pick up on this error till now? The error occurred in April 2013, and it took all of them till Jan 2015 to figure out there was a problem with the figures?

I mean with the politicking around the case, between Lee Yock Suan, Desmond Lee, Lawrence Wong, Sylvia Lim, the WP, the PAP, HDB, MND, no one thought to double-check to see if the numbers were correct? It took everyone over a year before figuring it out? Somehow, all the whole incident did was to make me to worry about the state of politics in Singapore.  

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well the problem arises because of the AIMgate. So blame the PAP for trying very hard to fix the WP. ;-)

Anonymous said...

This just shows how mediocre the ministers are. Just waiting on the back wagon to "fix" the opposition. Honestly I have no respect for these people. Instead of proving through their work that they are the best try to make them selves look good by criticizing the work of others. The ultimate is the stupid paper general who questions why someone else is given more coverage in print. Well go screw a cow and you will have all the print space in the world

Anonymous said...

THere is an early computer language called GIGO - Garbage in garbage out. So what we have in the Ministries are robots. Feed them rubbish and they will spew the same out.

Ghost said...

Sorry people but all of you seem to be forgetting one important point; the WP made the first mistake. No one comes out of this smelling like flowers.

Gary said...

No, I disagree. It was the PAP who made the first mistake by sabotaging the incoming WP TC with AIMGate.

The sabotage worked, but it's a Pyrrhic victory when the fundamental cause is traced back to PAP placing party politics above the interest of the Aljunied GRC's residents, including PAP supporters, whose interest the PAP was more than willing to sacrifice for the sake of stabbing the WP in the back. Just remember, there is ABSOLUTELY NO DEFENSIBLE REASON to withdraw the financial package central to the running of the TC, of all TCs for that matter, except as a deliberate act of sabotage the incoming WP TC. This is a disgraceful, shameful and irresponsible act. As a perpetrator of such an act, what moral rights have the PAP to call upon Singaporeans to unite to face common challenges? LHL recently ask Singaporeans to help keep the country clean. On what moral authority is he saying this as the man ultimately responsible for such acts of sabotage by his party? Hypocrite.

Anonymous said...

And the PAP TCs are still using the "obsolete" software after 4 years. Sold to PAP-owned AIM using farcical excuse of maximizing remaining value of the software and claiming intent to develop new replacement software. Hope fewer TCs get to use this software after the coming elections.

Anonymous said...

Who started it first? MND and NEA have been collaborating the attack on opposition ward and spending so much time, fixing WP, they have happily overlooked the columbarium tender mistake and the whole island mice infestations. PAP has obviously got all the priority wrong by playing dirty politics above the interest of the people and running this country.

Ghost said...

First off, the columbarium tender was no mistake. They took the best offer on the table and honestly, they should have struck to their guns and not backtracked on their decision.
Secondly, AimGate was no mistake. The decision to make life difficult for the WP works, that's why there's such a mess now.
Thirdly, the WP cannot say they have no fault in this. They should have never got the figure wrong in the first place.
Lastly, anyone who thinks the PAP is just going to hand over the GRC to the WP without taking their pound of flesh is in dreamland. Politics is a dirty game, so both sides need to deal with it and thus far, in this case, both sides failed the test because both sides made some terrible mistakes.