After being rebuked by Ng Eng Hen for jumping the gun, Inderjit Singh is now performing to script and doing what the natural aristocrats are demanding. The retiring People’s Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament (MP) is now talking up the calibre of his likely successor. Actually he is supposed to introduce the new candidate only after National Day, but even Ng can't have the cake and eat it too.
Deemed a maverick for speaking up against the Population White Paper (PWP) and then taking refuge in the toilet when the voting started - good reason not to elect politicians with weak bladders and weaker constitutions - he once catalogued the shortcomings of his party's record:
So why is he dancing again to the tune of our local variant of the Pied Piper of Hamelin? If he remembers the fable well, he should know the rats are led to a miserable end. It's not like he was sent off to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) to reflect and recant like a 16-year-old. The clue lies in his rebuttal of the “Inderjit Singh: Why I left the PAP” story. He says he remains a member of the PAP and will be assisting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his election campaign in Ang Mo Kio GRC.
For the favoured, stepping down from office is like the Japanese practice for retired bureaucrats to "descend from heaven" (amakudari) into a lucrative job in a public corporation or private industry, purportedly to create a strong bond between private and public sectors. Play the game well, and he could be a Chandra Das, with a free hand to set up $2 companies like Action Information Management (AIM). Far from being tainted by the town council affair, Chandra Das has just been appointed non-Resident High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. If Inderjit Singh knows when to take a leak while the PWP votes were being counted, he sure knows how to go with the flow.
Deemed a maverick for speaking up against the Population White Paper (PWP) and then taking refuge in the toilet when the voting started - good reason not to elect politicians with weak bladders and weaker constitutions - he once catalogued the shortcomings of his party's record:
"I suspect that there has been some amount of complacency that has crept into the system. Whether it is the MCE fiasco, or that of the lack of hospital beds or dealing with the Little India riot, the corruption cases in the many government agencies like The Singapore Civil Defense force, I detect a certain amount of complacency in our government agencies in dealing with these problems and the trend is not healthy and needs to be eradicated fast. If Singaporeans lose confidence in these key institutions, we will face greater problems in nation building in the future."
So why is he dancing again to the tune of our local variant of the Pied Piper of Hamelin? If he remembers the fable well, he should know the rats are led to a miserable end. It's not like he was sent off to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) to reflect and recant like a 16-year-old. The clue lies in his rebuttal of the “Inderjit Singh: Why I left the PAP” story. He says he remains a member of the PAP and will be assisting Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in his election campaign in Ang Mo Kio GRC.
For the favoured, stepping down from office is like the Japanese practice for retired bureaucrats to "descend from heaven" (amakudari) into a lucrative job in a public corporation or private industry, purportedly to create a strong bond between private and public sectors. Play the game well, and he could be a Chandra Das, with a free hand to set up $2 companies like Action Information Management (AIM). Far from being tainted by the town council affair, Chandra Das has just been appointed non-Resident High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. If Inderjit Singh knows when to take a leak while the PWP votes were being counted, he sure knows how to go with the flow.