Q: There was talk during and after the general election about how the PAP has to transform itself.
A: No, who's talk was it?
Q: George Yeo was one of those making the comment.
A: No, no. George Yeo lost. And every defeat must be accompanied by a thorough rethink. But it does not mean a change in your basic values and policies.
("One Man's View of the World", page 214, 215)
Instead of reflection and repentance, Major General "keechiu" Chan Chun Sing tuned up his rabble rousing rhetoric. Making mockery of Winston Churchill's famous war cry, Chan inveighed against the unconverted and unconvinced, "We will have to learn from the 1960 generation of PAP pioneers - to fight to get our message across at every corner - every street corner, every cyberspace corner, be it in the mass media or in the social media".
The key difference is that, as a young army officer, Churchill saw action in British India, The Sudan, and the Second Boer War. So his words had bite when he spoke at the darkest hour of the Battle of Britain, "... we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
And where were the rhetoric masters when Little India burst into flames? The carnage that started at 9.30 pm on Sunday night involved a mob of 400, damage to several private vehicles, 5 police cars and one ambulance set afire. The other general, Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan Jin, rushed to man his keyboard, probably contemplating choice of words: is this a real riot (first in Singapore in decades), or an illegal gathering exceeding 5 persons? Oh, they sent the Gurkha Contingent out to handle the unruly, our boys in blue are more acquainted with manhandling docile Singaporeans.
"They may throw stones at you, they may attack you, they may work against you but we stand firm." The speaker was obviously nowhere near the junction of Race Course Road and Hampshire Road where the projectiles were more deadly than alleged cyber attacks. If he was, he would have been crapping his lily white pants. Trust the Secretary General to cap it all with irony, "Don't worry, the PAP will take care of everything, quite safe."
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| Clearing vehicle blocking access of ambulance |