Thursday, May 24, 2012

Politician or civil servant

Dear Mr. Tan

I understand you are keeping a close eye on the BE in Hougang.
 
I find it a little strange and wonder whether you can clear my doubt or share your view on this. Our DPM is a civil servant. He is also the Minister in charge of the Civil Service of Singapore including the Election Department. For him to openly endorse and campaign for a candidate and party even if it is permissable, does not seem good or right. There will no doubt be a clear conflict of interest issue to grapple with. This is a not a GE (whereby Parliament is dissolved) but a BE. And in this case he seem to be campaigning and working harder than the candidate.
What is your view?

REPLY
He is a politician and not a civil servant. He is the minister (political appointment) in charge of the civil service.

1 comment:

yujuan said...

Uncle Teo is still sticking to PAP's old strategy of attacking the opponent by, as one blogger said, "character assassination". It had worked very well in the past, starting from LKY's era, and Hougang is a testing ground to gauge whether this time old strategy would continue to work in PAP's favour.
Looking from another perspective, PM Lee may be making use of his Deputy to mount the attack on Png, so that if PAP dun do well in this BE, criticisms would be deflected away from the PM, all fingers wound point at Uncle Teo, and if voting result turns out this way, Teo would be the second sacrificial lamb after Georggie Boy.
Maybe, this " character assasination" ploy may pull the rabbit out of the hat once again, as PAP is adamantly sure it can't fail them this time.

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