The great hunt: One year on

One year ago, on 27 February 2008, Mas Selamat Kastari escaped from the Whitley Road Detention Centre where he had been detained without trial for being an alleged terrorist. Soon after his escape, a bomb exploded.

The week following the breakout, Singapore saw the biggest manhunt in living memory. Whole parts of the city were cordoned off. Soldiers and tracker dogs were sent into the secondary forest around the detention centre. Posters bearing Mas Selamat's visage were plastered and littered all over the city. The road links to Malaysia were locked down and Coast Guard patrol boats circled the island.

Inter-racial harmony events were quickly organised to waste everybody's time.

The mainstream press went into overdrive in an attempt to portray the government as being on top of the situation despite the setback. Daily, pages were devoted to demonstrating, for the edification of the public, how impossible it would be for Mas Selamat to remain at large for long. There was no way he could stay in the jungle for more than a week, the media said. He would have to break cover for food. Nor would it be possible for him to slip out of Singapore, with all eyes on our land and sea borders. The Internal Security Department was also keeping a close watch on his family and known contacts; he would not be able to contact anyone for assistance.

One year on, the government admits they have "no credible information" about his whereabouts.

6 February 2009
Channel NewsAsia 

No credible information of whereabouts of Mas Selamat Kastari

Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said his ministry also has no credible information on the whereabouts of Mas Selamat Kestari, the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) leader who escaped last year.

Giving Parliament this update on Thursday, Mr Wong added there are currently 20 persons detained for terrorist activities by Singapore’s Internal Security Department.

The Whitley Road Detention Centre was where the authorities last saw Mas Selamat Kastari in February 2008.

He has been at large for nearly a year, leading one MP to ask what the current status is.

"I noticed that many Singaporeans have simply forgotten about Mas Selamat, and our community engagement of the public with regard to terrorism seems to have slackened," said Dr Teo Ho Pin, MP for Bukit Panjang.

"We have no credible information on Mas Selamat’s whereabouts to share at this point in time. But let me assure Dr Teo that we have not slackened in our search. Whether Mas Selamat is in Singapore or he has fled our country, we will hunt him down as we did before," said Mr Wong, who is also deputy PM.

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Nobody seriously believes Mas Selamat is in Singapore. In all probability, he got out within a few days of the breakout.

Without any money, how could he have managed it? Especially as he had an identifiable limp.

Everything points to a theory that he had help. Either someone was waiting for him outside the detention centre, or he soon managed to contact a Jemaah Islamiyah associate.

If, as the government now admits, they have no credible information, it can only mean there is a sleeper cell of the network still able to function. Which says a lot about how good the Ministry of Home Affairs really is with respect to their job of national security. 

Holding an enquiry and assigning blame to the junior officers escorting Mas Selamat Kastari to the toilet enroute to the visitor's block to meet his family on the day he escaped now looks like a sideshow compared to the real failures.

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The bomb that exploded was a cyber bomb.

When, after a week, it became obvious that the government's prediction that he'd be caught within a few days since he'd have to surface for food, was nothing more than false optimism, the mainstream media promptly shut down further coverage of the escape and manhunt.

But cyber talk, which had gone into a feeding frenzy from the day he escaped, continued. In fact, it escalated as more and more people saw not just what a bungle the manhunt was -– delayed and conflicting information about his clothes, the direction he took and even the limp -– but also how, at every step of the way, there was more propaganda than real information.

When Lee Kuan Yew said such escapes were the result of "complacency", netizens took it as an attempt to deflect responsibility from the government. Naturally, it incensed them greatly.

For two months, internet criticism roared on, morphing into sarcasm. When Wong Kan Seng presented the findings of his "independent" commission of inquiry in late April, it just provided more fuel to the fire.

What the bomb shattered was the ability of the government to "set the agenda" hitherto one of the pillars of "the Singapore way".

It wasn't that long ago that in response to the low ranking given to Singapore's media in Reporters Sans Frontieres' Index, the government's response was that media in Singapore should serve Singapore's interests. On 9 November 2005, Stanley Loh, the Press Secretary to Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, in a letter to the Straits Times, wrote:

in some Western countries, the media sets the agenda for the nation, and forces elected governments to react to its agenda. This would be against Singaporeans' interest as the media, unlike an elected government, is not accountable to the people.

That was just another way of saying what Goh himself said in 1999:

If you want to set a political agenda, then you have to be in the political arena. Otherwise you don't have the accountability and the responsibility of looking after the place. [1]

In other words, only the elected government can set the agenda. Media is supposed to take its cue from the former. Indeed, our mainstream media knows full well its place, but not the enfant terrible that is new media. As the Mas Selamat case showed, it can keep talking about a subject long after ministers wished it be closed.

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A variation of this kind of damage can be seen in the case of the unlocking of state reserves by the President, to support the 2009 budget. Against a backdrop of blog commentary about how easy it seemed for the elected government to get the president's "second key" to turn on command, some members of parliament raised this point during the budget debate.

President Nathan then gave a press interview, which was published on 18 February 2009. He told the media that the interview was organised because some MPs had raised the subject in Parliament. Perhaps so. Perhaps if the MPs had not raised it, cybertalk alone would not have moved him to speak.

The press behaved as expected. They published his interview and then a couple of opinions and letters to the editor saying what a good thing it was that the President spoke and aren't we all relieved he had exercised his discretion wisely?

Normally, that would be closure. The press would then put a lid on the subject and let that be the last word. And in the old days, it would indeed have been so. But not anymore. Cyber chatter continued, criticising Nathan for a poor show. Netizens felt his "explanation" of his decision less than informative.

The government and its media no longer have the last word.

© Yawning Bread 

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