Alex Au headbutts stupid Calvin Cheng

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

But either way, the official explanation of “planned maintenance” just didn’t ring true.

It reminded me of the Chinese government’s initial response when cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) first appeared ten years ago in the spring of 2003. The authorities denied that a contagious disease was spreading. Officials were not telling their citizens anything and were lying to the World Health Organisation about the death toll. According to Bloomberg, in first weeks of the outbreak, 774 persons died.

Here in Singapore too, we have a government that is so paranoid about being seen to have lost control of events, that it uses the same playbook: clam up, deny, use whatever excuse it can rummage up from a near-empty drawer.

The thing about governments obsessed about appearing invincible is that they also tend to believe that they have more credibility and enjoy more trust than they actually do. The two are linked. Governments that first begin by wanting to cement their control through appearing invincible quickly see that getting people to take seriously and believe their threats and pronouncements is a key step toward that goal of control. But human ego being what it is, the arrow of instrumentality is quickly reversed. Governments soon take for granted that they enjoy trust and credibility, and think that is why they remain in power.

It is therefore not surprising that governments which are blind and deaf to public opinion attempt to get away with bald denials and incredible excuses. A good part of our government actually thinks people believe them.

The irony then is that in refusing to say anything more than “scheduled maintenance”, this curt handling of the incident only slashed its credibility. The tiny hack also pricked the government’s aura of invincibility, even though it broke into just an inconsequential part of government mouthpiece Straits Times’ blogsite – with a readership of what? thirty-four? — yet by doing so, provoked the outsized, panicky response that it did.

And doubling the irony, the hacker didn’t even need to follow up and fell government websites. The government did it for him/her, in the most public way possible.

* * * * *

One panicked response came from a a former Nominated Member of Parliament, Calvin Cheng. Although supposed to be unaffiliated to any political party, Calvin Cheng had a Young People’s Action Party history, the subject of an article by Ng E-Jay on July 2009.

In a furious response to my previous post, which he labelled a “repulsive article”, he said I was “encouraging acts of violence and criminality”.

One particular line from his short Facebook post was this:

- http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/20...tizens-part-2/


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