It was good and elegant for the PM to have let on publicly that this waterway was Mah's idea.
Average people can go very far with only a little luck needed if they are good at not allowing their liabilities to trip them up.
Even as we invest in our strengths, keep a watchful eye of our weaknesses that is always waiting to sabotage us. Indeed the wise have recognized that often our worst enemies are ourselves. No need to worry too much about external enemies.
I am glad for Mah Bow Tan what his boss had just done for him. Proverbially, he had been pelted with rotten eggs by many of us. It is time to recognize him for the positives we have ignored. If he was that incompetent in his job, we would have been much worse off. Succinctly put, he was a prisoner of an outdated paradigm. Thomas Kuhn had eloquently explained that even very smart people aren't immune to this trap. We have smart people only, and not geniuses running this place.
Very smart people even if they make serious honest mistakes must take the fall. Playing it differently will cause us imperceptibly to rot into mediocrity.
I think the people in Enron and Lehman Brothers weren't that bad too. Sometimes, the consequences of incompetence takes time to be shown in their fully glory.
ReplyDeleteI don't see anything wrong with MBT. He protected and enhanced our assets. Given tume, he could have worked out some side problems but generally, homes are still affordable to first timers.
ReplyDeleteHis only failure was that he was too frank.
PAP looks after its own people. That's why you see so many ex-ministers and ex-civil servants being given high-level retirement jobs in GLCs. That's why Lim Kim San (1st MND minister) was frank enough to tell ST reporter "If not for PAP, I would be sleeping on the streets". That's why now so many professionals invest much time & money in YPAP. Better than the bank.
ReplyDeleteBury PAP and come up with a fairer political model then.
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ReplyDeleteMBT was a victim of the "Teh Cheang Wan Syndrome" which is valuing the land according to market price after acquiring it cheaply.
ReplyDeleteFor this the whole PAP govt should be responsible. MBT, being the ND Minister was unfortunately the fall guy.
Let's see who else they will bury in the next GE...
Cash and cpf savings "converted" into cold hard bricks (Mah Bow Tan's affordable public housing). Don't worry, we can't monetize our flats when we retire, according to him. In his dying breath, he defended the affordability of HDB flats. To date, some blindly follow his lead.
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