Sunday, February 15, 2009

The Seng Han Thong Conundrum

Any right-thinking Singaporean will sympathise with the burn sufferings endured by Mr. Seng Han Thong, arising out of his unfortunate fiery attack by an assailant.

From the government's standpoint, Senior Minister of State Lui Tuck Yew quite rightly condemned in Parliament what he described as adverse postings on Mr. Seng, calling them outrages. But he omitted, for probably some ethical reason, to give details of some of the so-called outraged postings which leave some independent-minded Singaporeans wondering if there was not substance to some of these postings.

If there had been only one or two postings, one could have safely dismissed them as ill-intentioned. But when you have a massive number of critics, is it not proper to look further into it? Also in the Chinese radio programmes where questions were invited from listeners, one could detect some rumblings about Mr. Seng's character.

In fairness to Mr. Seng, there is no doubt that he is an exemplary MP but there may have been some moments in his dealings with his constituents which may not have passed muster. There is a saying that to err is human, to forgive divine. It is not too late to re-examine and re-evaluate if there is any public relations problem in order to serve the constituents better.

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