CHC: Won the legal but lost the moral case

I went over the five points, reviewed the comments and obviously we have to agree with the judges judgement on this matter. Now Parliament must act to update the law on this matter. The public will ask why just like the floods, we are being reactive and not proactive. That it is very hard to be proactive and easy to be reactive is not an argument many people here are willing to accept when government leaders are so highly paid.

Shanmugam and his ministerial colleagues should not have bothered to appeal and instead should have gone ahead to change the law through parliamentary action. That would be the takeaway for any reasonable person reading how the five judges thought.

In this town people think the government is proactive about protecting and promoting wealth and the rich but reactive about our needs and worries. This is but only the latest in a long line of examples. Think MRT, floodings, pedophilia, human trafficking, road accidents and hospital beds.

We are not lawyers and why should we be? At the end of the day lots of people go away with the perception albeit unfairly that there is one law for the rich and another for the rest of us. This is bad and clumsy politics. The lack of accountability creates falling standards.

Sure the government will fix this one between section 406 and 409. What about other laws? That we would get to learn about another time when the moral equivalent of the CHC case appears.

Khong Hee and gang now serve a much shorter sentence. They will worship and praise God in their huge cavern over this. That is the second insult.

Update: Feb 6 8:20 am

For 40 years, the law was that directors will face severe penalties for Criminal Breach of Trust (CBT). There were several cases where this was confirmed.

That is practically alluding to had the case been not a church but a business organization, the five would have been sentenced differently. The government expected that but it did not happen. Why? Well what is the difference between a church and a company which caused the judges to view this differently. On the other hand the public by and large is with the government on this matter.