The white elephants case ended with a whimper.
(See the article Hate speech and seditious white elephants
where some background is available).
The police in their media release of 6
Oct 2005 said they had identified the person who put up the posters, but since these did not cause any public nuisance, they,
in consultation with the Attorney-General's Chambers decided not to prosecute. Instead, the person responsible was given a
written warning.
The police refused to name him.
This case resulted from a flash
appearance of placards, in the form of white elephants, at the mothballed
Buangkok metro station on the day a minister came visiting the district.
This station had been ready since the Northeast Line
(NEL) was opened in mid 2004, but SBS Transit (the NEL operator and a government-linked company) refused to open it on the grounds that it was uneconomic. Instead, residents, some of whom bought their homes in Buangkok on the expectation that it would be a convenient locality transport-wise, have been putting up with the hassle of buses to the next metro station further along the
NEL.
They saw the station as a white elephant,
but more than that, as a serious failure of the government to deliver
promised transport services.
While the police refused to name the culprit (or hero, depending on your
point of view) the Straits Times came close to doing so. See the article on the right. And that's the twist in the tale. If the Straits Times was right, it was a
grassroots leader (a kind of volunteer who helps out with neighbourhood matters, usually working in close co-ordination with the Member of Parliament for the district).
And as you can see from the article too, the People's Action Party (PAP) MP for the area, Charles Chong, took a stand to defend those who felt aggrieved by the failure to open Buangkok metro station.
The Straits Times quoted him as saying, "'We got a few toes blown off but we're not dead yet and I think we'll
recover." Now, why did he use the pronoun "we"?
So, to some embarrassment to the government, it would seem the mini-rebellion was from
some of their own.
Strangely, nobody has been asking, is that the real reason why the police chose not to prosecute? Is that the reason why they won't disclose who he was?
If the police said that people who aren't prosecuted deserve their privacy, and that it is standing policy not to disclose their identities, perhaps that is
understandable. But they didn't say that, leaving people to wonder whether perhaps there is no such policy, and that there is some other reason not to name him.
If the police chose not to name him in
order to protect the PAP from embarrassment, we will want to ask what
business is it of the police to protect the PAP?
Yet, you would also think this person, now that the case is closed, would feel he can and indeed may want to own up to it publicly. Surely, public acclaim awaits him for an act of creative bravery, for standing up for the little guy sick of being pushed around by government-linked corporate interests.
Any ordinary person would love to bask in glory.
But no, he isn't identifying himself either. Strange, don't you think?
Something tells me, he has been told not to identify himself. Maybe it was a condition in the police warning given to him. Maybe it was an instruction from the MP.
If indeed it was a PAP-linked grassroots leader, then disclosure can only suggest disarray in their ranks.
Some will also assume that the anonymous
person who made the complaint to the police was likely to be another PAP
guy, perhaps over-protective of the visiting Minister, Vivian Balakrishnan.
In calling the police, the complainant could have been hoping to
"get" whoever it was who put up the placards to embarrass the
minister on his rounds. In that case what we have is a keystone cops
affair, with PAP using the police to bash PAP.
If that is anyway near the truth, then it seems to me to serve the PAP very well to keep it a secret.
* * * * *
This kind of opacity does Singapore no good. People can now wonder whether the police are an even-handed lot. If the culprit was from the opposition, would he be
facing charges today? [1]
The veil of silence allows many questions to fester. I have asked some of
them above. Others may have more. It allows people to think that these
decisions are self-serving for some reason.
On 6 October 2005, at a luncheon organised by the Foreign Correspondents Association, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he expected Singapore to have a system marked by openness and transparency (Straits Times, 7 Oct 2005,
'Singapore will set its own political model: PM').
So why is the elephant mahout playing hide and seek? 
© Yawning Bread
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10 Oct
2005
Straits Times
Fight' to open Buangkok MRT station goes on
by Lydia Lim
Grassroots leaders of Punggol South will fight on to get Buangkok MRT station opened. And they will come up with more unusual ways to get the message across.
Grassroots leader Sunny Leow told reporters yesterday: 'We'll still be very creative, but within the law.'
Mr Leow, 54, chairs the Punggol South Citizens' Consultative Committee.
The businessman is believed to be the one who received a police warning after an investigation into the placing of eight white-elephant placards on the road divider outside the station. The incident became a national talking point.
It culminated in a stern warning from the police to the culprit, who was not named.
Yesterday, Mr Leow urged the 999-caller who complained about the cut-outs to come forward. 'We want to know why he was offended and say sorry,' he said, tongue firmly in cheek.
After the complaint, the police questioned grassroots leaders and the ward's MP, Mr Charles
Chong. The authorities said last Thursday that a law requiring people to apply for permits before putting up exhibits for public display had been infringed. But as the event did not cause a public annoyance, they issued a warning instead of prosecuting the culprit.
More than one person was probably involved in placing the placards.
They went up just before a visit by Dr Vivian
Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, which had coincided with the second anniversary of the opening of the North-East MRT line
(NEL). The elephant cut-outs were removed very quickly and the police have yet to track them down.
Yesterday, Mr Chong said he hoped the case would not have a chilling effect on grassroots activists. 'We got a few toes blown off but we're not dead yet and I think we'll recover,' he said.
He and his team need to fight like 'insurgents' because his ward is at the political frontlines, he said. It sits next to the 'enemy territory' of opposition-held
Hougang.
Residents find SBS Transit's refusal to open the station and the Land Transport Authority's support for it 'disheartening', he added.
Some 961 new flats near Buangkok station have been completed and are now occupied. But the NEL operator said only half of these flats are within a 400m radius of the station. It refuses to open the station because of its stand that commuters are unlikely to walk more than 400m to take a train.
Still, the battle is far from over. Mr Chong and his so-called insurgents are set to regroup when they gather for their annual retreat later this month. It will be held in Bangkok, where, as he quipped, white elephants are revered.
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