Saturday, August 20, 2011

Un-Presidential

'Crowd control is a function of the police, it is not the function of the President', Mr Tan Jee Say reportedly said in response to a question from a member of the Hainan Tan clan association on his inability to control his supporters when they jeered at his rival, Dr Tony Tan, during Nomination day on Wednesday. The member questioned his ability to control a country if he cannot control his own supporters.

And Mr Tan's answer? It is not the job of a President to do so, that this job belonged to the Police. So he thinks that he is already the President? I am very concerned. What if he really became President? He would be shirking responsibility left, right, up, down, centre and just about anywhere else except himself on anything he wishes to avoid responsibility. Does he not know that as the big boss, the buck, as the Americans say, should stop with him?

I will be concerned, nay, very concerned if Singapore chooses him as President. The last thing Singapore needs is Emperor Tan Jee Say.

5 comments :

Anonymous said...

Now that the REAL TJS has stood up, who are you gonna vote??

Anonymous said...

Hello,
you have been selective in your comment on this incident.

You have conveniently left out the fact that TJS was the first to comment that he does not support the booing.

Furthermore, I strongly question your convenient definition of leadership - the a leader must be able to completely control and keep in check his followers and supporters. This is definitely flawed for a couple of reasons:

1. The context is not as if TJS is a military commander. He is not. Even a military commander do sometimes have trouble controlling
his soldiers for various reasons.

2. The following and support for TJS is completely informal and voluntary, so in that sense he does not have a formal responsibility for 'command and control' over them. For example, some of those who booed TT could have just walked into the PA compound from anywhere, including being plants of TT's.

3. There is inherently nothing wrong with a spontaneous booing of an object who you believe is the cause of some of your misery.

4. Although a first report claimed that the crowd that booed ostensibly was his supporter, BUT in subsequent reports it was also stated that supporters of the other candidates could also have been involved.

Really, to make an issue of this really exposes the desperation of the TT camp. You would cluth at every pathetic straw.

IMO, TT deserves even more 'boos' for those rather unethical tactics of getting associations and unions to 'endorse' him. This is a blatant and unjustified attempt at influencing public opinion and represent a completely untrue context of the EP election. It is not an election by affiliates of groups, the EP election is in effect a referendum of sort for and by individual Singaporeans to choose who they want as their president. If it is the other 3 candidates doing this, I would bet my last dollar that the govt would jump in to intervene and call foul.

Epilogos said...

Who am I going to vote for? Stay tuned to this blog. All will be revealed, eventually.

Epilogos said...

If, upon noticing that his supporters were booing a candidate, and he had taken to the stage again to reprimand the booing and heckling, and admonished the perpetrators to respect all candidates, then his stature would have grown an order of magnitude. For me, he could have won the election there and then. Unfortunately he missed this golden opportunity to appear Presidential.

Soojenn said...

It will be useful not to be picky.... People are ONLY booing TT not any other candidates... TT is worse looking at the debate by TOC where he was rudely interrupting and making a threat!!