My attention caught this view from a reader who was unhappy with the way netizens are reacting to the escape of Mas Selamat. Apparently in his eyes, we are mocking the incident.
This is an excerpt taken from The New Paper, page 24, on Monday, 31 March 2008:
“From Dominique Ong
… I am shocked to find that people are taking this matter lightly.
If Mas Selamat is a terrorist, it means he can kill many people.
Some people may be relaxing because there’s nothing happening at the moment.
But if such a man joins forces with others and plants a bomb in Singapore, there will be no time for jokes.
Why are people making light of an incident that is potentially deadly to the country and the region?
This is a serious issue and it is disappointing people don’t understand that or do not care.
This matter is also important as it concerns Singapore’s reputation.
If the fugitive is not caught, people will think Singapore’s security is poor.
It will leave a poor impression, and may even affect tourism and harm Singapore’s economy…”
***
My immediate reaction was “Shouldn’t this be diverted/CC-ed to the people in uniform too?”
If he poses such a huge danger, why is the security so lax here in Singapore? ’cause life has to go on no matter what huh? Even on the very day he escaped, the panic button wasn’t really activated to make the entire nation feel alarmed.
Now almost 1 month into the supposedly search-and-capture mission, we have seen so many reports related to Mas Selamat but nothing about his capture.
Illegal immigrants flushed out lah, intelligence showed that Mas Selamat is still in Singapore lah, the search now is more defined lah, high-tech gadgets used in the operations lah. You can flush out 40-odd illegal immigrants but you can’t even find a single person in this tiny island?
If Mas Selamat is indeed still alive, his survival skills are truly admirable. Perhaps he could teach Singaporeans a thing or two on surviving in the urban jungle.
I didn’t exactly make fun of this whole saga. Well maybe not as much TalkingCock.com. But then again, TalkingCock pokes fun into almost every single thing possible!
But to probably give a quick reply to Mr Dominique Ong, as a netizen I’d say that this should have never happened. I’m sorry that it has.
What? I was just following our leader’s example.
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Intelligence not intelligent enough. Government not governing enough.
We don’t have such “kancheong-ness” in us because our country has been living in way too much comfort. We don’t experience the tsunami, we don’t have to go thru Katrina, we don’t have our soldiers to go to war in Iraq. We don’t have twin towers smashed in the hearts of one of the most busiest cities in the world
Plus…our military and police department have never really experience this, what more our people. How prepared or concerned Singaporeans really are?
Most of us are only concern about the GSS, hike in GST and partying at the best clubs or whatsover, who actually cared about military security?
Finally, the government shouldn’t be sorry. They should be remorsing on how they have not manage to tackle their loopholes before apologising to the barely-concerned Singaporeans on such a catastrophe.
April 1st, 2008