Lim Wee Kiak couldn't be more wrong when he said that Singapore Airlines (SIA) has better media management than Malaysia's handling of the MH370 incident. A senior Yahoo executive was furious when SIA spokesman Rick Clements told CNN that there were no casualties after SQ006 turned into the wrong runway on the night of Oct 31, 2000, and crashed into a construction vehicle, killing 83 of 179 passengers aboard. Screaming his frustration on TV, he asked aloud how could that be when he personally saw a fellow passenger in his first class section burst into flames?
“Everyone here knows who the dead are but we were still crying back in Singapore and up till now, we know nothing. You owe us an explanation!” a Singaporean woman shouted at SIA CEO Cheong Choong Kong. The brother of a man who died in the crash was also not impressed by Cheong's lame excuses. “Tell the press the true story,” he said. “Don’t hide any more. Are people’s lives more important or SIA’s reputation?” It all sounds so familiar, only the angry voices were not PRC Chinese.
Lim had to eat humble pie - with a side order of grovel sauce - for different reasons. He dared suggest that the MH370 incident "revealed glaring gaps in communications among ASEAN countries". Foreign Minister K Shanmugam couldn't have been pleased. Lim didn't just stop at undoing regional relations, he ventured further into territorial security, "This episode into may give China a reason to say they should manage the airspace over South China Sea." This time it's the Defence Minister's turn to facepalm.
In a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Senior Parliamentary Secretary Sam Tan made the official position clear: the remarks by Lim, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Foreign Affairs, "do not represent the views of the Government".
The Nee Soon GRC Member of Parliament (MP) once told Workers’ Party (WP) chief Low Thia Khiang “I will quote (from your speech then) one more time. And maybe your hearing aid has to be (turned) up a little bit.” Maybe all of us, Lim included, need to have our hearing checked. How can the chair of the Government Parliamentary Committee on Defence and Foreign Affairs not speak for Defence and Foreign Affairs?
If there's one good reason to distance yourself from this controversial character, it should this defence of ministerial salaries by arguing that a reasonable payout helps maintain "dignity" for politicians dealing with media:
"If the annual salary of the Minister of Information, Communication and Arts is only $500,000, it may pose some problems when he discuss policies with media CEOs who earn millions of dollars because they need not listen to the minister's ideas and proposals. Hence, a reasonable payout will help to maintain a bit of dignity," Dr Lim told LianHe ZaoBao in Chinese.
Tattler
*The writer blogs at http://singaporedesk.blogspot.com/