From Zorro To Zero

Does it look like Lim Swee Sway was about to blow a raspberry? After all, it’s not every day that you have to surrender your job after a harried exchange of paper correspondence, via slow mail and not even electronic communication, and expeditiously effected within a single day. For sure, as Lim would say, he didn’t get the memo.

Whoever penned “Prime Minister” in the National Trade Union Congress (NTUC) letter of request was not using the same writing instrument or style of the two signatories, President Diana Chia or Secretary-General Lim Swee Say. The immediate same morning letter of response from the prime minister’s office also had the addressees scribbled on a blank space allocated, as if the letter was prepared in advance, before confirmed knowledge of who will be actually making the request. Picture a guy dragged off the stage, screaming and kicking, “No fair! I won’t sign! You can’t make me sign!” “Members of the NTUC Central Committee” were also included in the salutation, but none of them had signed off on the originating letter of request that kicked off a chain of flurried activity on Friday, 23 January 2015. The very same afternoon Chan Chun Sing shows up at the NTUC premises on cue, wearing the identical T-shirt as the gathered troops. Presumably, the choice of colour was based on his military background, and not allusion to greenhorns in general.

The National Delegates’ Conference is a long way off in October, so what was prompting the indecent haste for the installation of a new union chief? Surely the law can’t have caught up with Lim for the pilferage of half a box of designer toothpicks, and he couldn’t have been seen receiving mangoes from ardent grassroots leaders. Perhaps the court jester has finally run out of jokes or shaggy dog stories. You know the type of yarn, where the joker holds rapt attention of the listeners for a long time for no reason at all, and the end resolution is essentially meaningless. A national conversation running out of steam.

Don’t be sad Zorro is hanging up his cape, he still has his CPF statement to keep him enthralled with the magic of guaranteed returns. Like his nonsensical tale of a deaf frog who could take a verbal question about critics after concluding a race, he will always respond, “I’m deaf. I can’t hear them”. Here’s the ultimate shaggy dog story.