A Mess Gone Wrong

But this may be turning out to be not the only shock. It's now been six days, and they're no nearer to catching him. The possibility is beginning to dawn on people that he may never be caught. Suddenly, our picture of Singapore as a kind of big brother state is, well, full of holes. A determined person may be able to disappear despite a dragnet involving thousands of uniformed personnel and all the technology being deployed. He's vanished for six days already.

And since we're not even sure whether he has managed to escape to a neighbouring country, we are now confronted with the question: How secure are our borders?

This is a very different Singapore compared to the one we've become accustomed to.

Through all this, the only constant has been an all-too-predictable tendency of our government to adopt what P N Balji, a very senior journalist, called a "bunker mentality" [1]. Information about the man released so far has been patchy to the point of incoherence. Information about how he escaped has been virtually nil.

First we heard that Mas Selamat Kastari had a limp, and everybody was asked to look out for someone with one. It was the next day before two very basic pieces of information were released: his height (1.58m) and weight (63 kg) -- information that anywhere else would be released promptly once the public is asked to help.

Then some 36 hours later, almost like a joke, the police said, oh, his limp is not actually perceptible if he walks at a normal pace. It becomes noticeable only when he tries to walk fast or runs. Have the thousands of policemen and soldiers wasted the first 36 hours looking for a feature that isn't necessarily obvious?

But the biggest stonewall -– so big, it resembled the Great Wall of China –- has been the refusal to say anything about how Mas Selamat escaped. We've only been told that it happened at 4.05 pm on Wednesday, 27 February 2008, while he was being led to meet his family. He asked to use the toilet and disappeared after that.

Apparently, reported the Straits Times, "during family visits, it is understood that detainees are allowed to change out of their usual prison garb -- white shirt and brown shorts -- into civilian clothes" [2]. However, the government has not said whether this in fact was so in this case, and if he had changed, what clothes he had changed into.

Only 4 days later did Home Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister say that the escape was a result of a "physical breach". What does that mean? An inadvertently open door or window? A hole in the ceiling and the roof? But isn't there a fence outside, ringing the entire complex? The press said the minister refused to elaborate. So we're none the wiser.

From: Yawning Bread (link)
Read the whole thing if you may, I think you should.