Singapore makes the front page of the NYT

As sort of a follow up to Ziliang's post: here's the entire NYT article which deals in rather mocking tones with the whole incident while taking numerous side swipes at Singaporeans ...

Escapee Eludes Search Party of 4 Million

By SETH MYDANS

SINGAPORE — The big mistake, officials here say, was letting the terrorist suspect make a trip to the bathroom.

Mas Selamat bin Kastari, alleged by the government to be the leader of a terrorist group here, escaped from a high security prison two weeks ago, while taking a bathroom break, in a major embarrassment for this efficient, tightly battened city-state.

In a furious response, the government put the entire country on alert, setting up checkpoints, sealing its borders, patrolling its parks and its shores, even urging people to keep an eye on their bicycles in case the wanted man decided to pedal to freedom.

With each new empty-handed day the embarrassment deepens as Singapore confronts its Tora Bora moment, its most-wanted terrorist suspect melting into the urban terrain, as Osama bin Laden evaded American troops in Afghanistan.

For some people here, this noisy, flailing search — even more than the escape itself — has cast Singapore in an unfamiliar light of haplessness.

“We had all bought into the image of a well-organized government machinery,” wrote Alex Au, author of a popular political Web site called Yawning Bread. “Suddenly, our picture of Singapore as a kind of Big Brother state is, well, full of holes.” All around the city, police officers are on patrol and their checkpoints have delayed traffic for as much as 15 hours in some places, according to newspaper reports.

Security officers on boats and Jet Skis are patrolling the coastline and the police have removed keys from the ignitions of unattended motor boats.

In what one newspaper called “extensive land, sea and air searches,” military patrols in jungle fatigues and Nepalese Gurkha paramilitary forces have scoured the city for the runaway inmate.

Wanted posters are everywhere, mug shots have been transmitted to millions of cellphones and the entire nation of four million people has been deputized to look out for a round-faced man who is 5-foot-2, weighs 139 pounds and walks — or at least runs — with a limp.

Newspapers here say it is the biggest manhunt in Singapore’s history. Mr. Mas Selamat, 47, who is said to be the chief of operations in Singapore for the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network, is accused by the government of being the coordinator of a failed plot to bomb the United States Embassy and several other targets in Singapore. Officials also say he planned to crash an airplane into Singapore’s airport.

He had been in detention here since 2006 under the Internal Security Act, which allows the government to hold suspects without trial, and his escape shocked terrorism experts in the region.

“Everyone thought Singapore had the tightest security system of anyone around,” said Sidney Jones, a leading terrorism expert for the International Crisis Group.

As a nation, Singapore is as lean and mean and flexible as the rapid-response military the Pentagon dreams of, and it reacted with impressive speed and agility to recent Asian outbreaks of bird flu and SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome.

But for the moment it seems to have met its match in Mr. Mas Selamat. His disappearance challenges the government’s basic promise to its citizens that it will keep them safe and comfortable.

The authorities have released little information about his escape on Feb. 27, but they say that he acted alone and on the spur of the moment and that he is probably still in Singapore.

The official account is that the prisoner asked to go to the bathroom while waiting for family members to visit, then simply disappeared from the Whitley Road Detention Center.

If this is true, said Lee Kin Mun, a leading political blogger who calls himself Mr. Brown, the government should “take a leaf from school exams, where security seems to be tighter” and where students must be escorted to the bathroom.

The country’s founder and former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, boiled the whole debacle down to one word: complacency.

He used the episode to strike again with his frequent warning that Singaporeans must work hard to protect the modern but fragile country he created from a social or economic explosion.

“It shows that it is a fallacy, it is stupid, to believe we are infallible,” he said. “We are not infallible. One mistake and we’ve got a big explosive in our midst. So let’s not take this lightly. I think it’s a very severe lesson on complacency.”

His son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said, “It is definitely a setback, and it should never have happened.” And then, echoing his father: “It’s the danger of complacency, of thinking that everything is all right.”

In Singapore, words like that amount to marching orders, and government agencies seem to be rushing to demonstrate that whatever else they are, they are anything but complacent.

Wong Hong Kuan, the assistant police commissioner, is at the center of the storm, commanding both his security forces and the public response.

“He knows machines, so keep an eye on your car,” said the newspaper Today, reporting on a recent briefing by Mr. Wong. “Anyone who discovers their vehicles, including motorcycles and bicycles, missing, should make a police report immediately.”

“Err on the side of caution,” the paper quoted Mr. Wong as saying. “Every second counts.”

The public has swung into action, as it has with previous nationwide campaigns — to have fewer children, to have more children, to keep toilets clean, not to throw things off balconies, to speak good English, to smile and to commit “spontaneous acts of kindness.”

More than a thousand people have telephoned the police with tips. Concerned citizens are stopping people on the street who fit the fugitive’s description. This is not a good place to be a man with a limp.

“Mas Selamat” seems to be everywhere.

He has been seen running into a park wearing only a pair of shorts monogrammed with the initials of the detention center. He has been spotted at an outdoor food stall, “but it turned out to be the man is Chinese,” according to a witness quoted in the news media.

Someone followed his footprints up a flight of stairs to a rooftop, where the footprints disappeared. Someone else saw him running down a highway toward a causeway linking Singapore to Malaysia.

A comedian, Ahmad Stokin, 51, said he had been stopped eight times, but did not seem to find it funny. He said he might look a bit like the picture on the wanted posters and he may have a limp, but it is in his right leg, not his left.

Two weeks into the search, these fruitless sightings are about all the papers have to report about the biggest news story of the day.

The top headline on Thursday about the search in the country’s main newspaper, The Straits Times, read: “I Think I Saw Mas Selamat.”

An unidentified woman, the paper reported, had just recalled seeing someone who fit the description two weeks ago near the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped.

Pondering this report, the newspaper left its readers with what is now a pointless question.

“Was Fugitive Limping Along This Road?” it asked in a headline, and displayed a photograph of an empty, rain-slick road where the witness had been standing.

Only in Singapore…

… Can a dangerous terrorist escape from prison and a government not be held accountable for it.

Up till today, some two weeks after Mas Selamat’s great escape from Whitley Detention Centre, home of the ISA, the government’s official stance on how he escaped is: We don’t know.

Information that could very well aided in his speedy capture trickled agonisingly slowly from police only days after his escape. First they told us he has a limp. After a few days, his limp becomes one that is visible only when he walks fast. The police also deemed it necessary to let us know what he was wearing when he escaped only days after he could very well have gotten rid of the clothes, as the police themselves acknowledge.

Police incompetence aside, what more can we say of our government? A simple “sorry” from the Home Affairs Minister and he expects Singaporeans to be placated? Well, you better believe it. He even had the cheek to admonish us not to speculate on how Mas Selamat escaped but to concentrate on capturing him instead!

How are we going to do that if we had spent the crucial first few days after his escape looking for a man with a limp that didn’t exist, wearing clothes that we had no idea what they looked like.

Best of all, our meek media does not even dare us the question that everyone was asking – how he escaped – immediately after Mas Selamat disappeared like Houdini. Instead we had these grant reports on the country’s efforts to capture him. Cherian George, media expert of Singapore, puts the point across succinctly here.

Without the media, or anyone for that matter, questioning how all these oversights in the workings of our government and police force can happen, all these important points are not brought to public consciousness.

For one, do we deserve the reputation of good security in Singapore if something like this can happen. Are our leaders held accountable when something goes wrong, are they getting away too easily when things don’t go the way they normally do in this supposedly clean and efficient country.

People may argue that our leaders have got it down right most of the time and we should give them a break when once in while something goes wrong. Well, I would say that our leaders, having grown accustomed to being immune to public opinion and having grown complacent that everything goes well, failed to react decisively when Mas Selamat waltzed out of Whitley.

If giving out information freely and quickly had been the government’s way of doing things, we might have gotten privy to his escape and crucial clues that may have led to his capture. instead, the government predictably closed ranks, grew their hide thick enough to withstand all public opinion and proceeded to exclude the citizenry in the hunt for Mas Selamat, only giving details when it became clear the trail had gone cold.

So, when MM Lee spoke of the complacency that led to Selamat’s escape, he forgot to mention the complacency that came out after the escape as well.

Obama? More of the Same

So -- Barack Obama's impact on young people is clearly evident in the posts preceding this one. Sure, he inspires (through a very talented speech-writer ... which explains why he does better in set-piece speeches than in debates), represents something "new" (though to get to this stage of his political career one wonders how many favors he's promised), and portends to give historic representation to traditionally marginalized groups (in spite of his penchant for pandering after the 'white' vote). But the fact is, even if Barack Obama wins the nomination and defeats McCain in November, it will be business as usual in Washington. Different sections of the immense political establishment will benefit but no real change will occur.

So -- instead of pulling for Barack Obama, I think the candidate that best represents genuine political will and dedication to public service is Ralph Nader. This sounds silly as most people know him as the narcissistic spoiler of the 2000 Elections, as the man who robbed Al Gore of victory and the villan who sent Bush into the White House. But what fewer Singaporeans (I'm assuming we've heard of the man to begin with) realize is that Ralph Nader has been a tireless public advocate on a range of issues that are bound up with our daily lives since the early 1960s. One example: Seat belts in cars and all-around safety in automobiles? It was Nader's land-mark investigations into the dishonest profit making short-cuts of the automobile industry that have made safety features the norm in our world. Forty years before Al Gore, Nader was already talking about the environment and how corporations need to be accountable for their industrial practices. Nader has an amazing list of accomplishments that look out for the little guy, from airline policy to nutritional labels on food; but more profoundly, he's demonstrated that more can be achieved if non-partisan citizens take an interest in politics and challenge the Corporate-Government complex. It is a sad thing that the two-party system (much like the PAP's stranglehold on political discourse) has essentially kept Nader out of any kind of meaningful political debate. There's an excellent film that documents Nader's career: An Unreasonable Man which would inspire anyone, regardless of political persuasion.

In an ideal world, I would root for the party (and by default, that Party's nominee) that has a socialist bent. But "The Government", so crucial in effecting key legislative reform that straightened out inequalities in an earlier time, has allied itself with corporate interests at the expense of taking proper care of ordinary citizens. And this is pretty much a global phenomenon. The fact that "Singapore, Inc." is touted as an excellent model of government is a sad case in point. Perhaps the best way to BE political is to cultivate small victories in local ways - for instance, getting individuals interested in issues to begin with, as this blog tries to do - rather than rally around the most fashionable icon of the political establishment.

Why I Unreservedly Endorse Barack Obama

For the past few months, I have been unable to make up my mind between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But my choice was made when it dawned upon me how Clinton is a symbol of the establishment and Obama is the call for change.

For Hillary Clinton, she has time and again emphasised her ability to be “commander in chief from day one” and often cites her experience in the government as a plus point. I must admit I found that argument pretty convincing.

However, as I listened to her speak after winning Ohio last night in the presidential primary, I felt a haunting sense of déjà vu. Her promises of being the best-prepared candidate are exactly the kinds of argument that the ruling party in Singapore uses every single time there is an election.

Deriding her opponent as nothing but an empty call for change is the same as how Lee Kuan Yew described opposition rallies as nothing but cheap entertainment that Singaporeans go to.

Declaring that Barack Obama will not be prepared to take the reins of the government is also akin to the scare tactic that the PAP often uses. Vote the opposition in and they will bring Singapore into ruin they say.

I have often told my friends to get real, that a few opposition members in the parliament will not cause Singapore’s economy to collapse overnight. Why did it take me so long to see through Clinton’s attacks?

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both promise a change in the way government functions. But the fact is Clinton is simply too entrenched in the political system, having been in Washington so long. With someone owing so many favours to politicians and donors alike, how much can she possibly venture off the beaten track?

As for Obama, having not much experience might really work against him. But if we don’t give him the chance to prove himself, where is that experience going to come from. Just like if we never give the opposition in Singapore the chance to appear in parliament, where are they going to get the opportunity to speak up for Singaporeans?

Listen to Obama and you will know that his calls for change are not empty. Just be glad that we get to hear him on TV. To hear a proper opposition standpoint, one has to go stand in an opposition rally. The press rarely, if ever, reports it.

And so as a person who finds much reason to support the opposition I cannot but feel a need to support Obama. As a person who feels the establishment is so arrogant they think they have a god-given right to rule, I cannot but feel Clinton’s current fall from grace is a kick up her ass that she needs.

One can only hope the people of Singapore gets the guts to kick our government up its ass soon.