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Singapore
reels over a missing fugitive
Asia
Sentinel
6 Mar
08
http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option...
The
Island Republic’s fugitive terrorist runs circles around
authorities
"Did
you ever hear the story of Long John Dean,
A bold bank robber
from Bowling Green,
Sent to the jailhouse yesterday,
Late
last night he made his getaway."
Missing 170 hours …
and counting. If this were the US TV series Without a Trace, the
FBI sleuths would long ago have been sacked and replaced over the
astonishing disappearance of Mas Selamat Kastari, the putative
jihadi terrorist. But this is the hermetically sealed island of
Singapore, where leaders take much credit and little blame and
where no one likes to question official versions of events –
which as in other closed systems causes people to harbour inner
doubts about the truth of anything they are told.
A full
week after Kastari limped out at 4pm from its most closely
guarded prison, the Whitley Road Detention Centre, via a toilet
window during a family visit, he is still at large. Is he hiding
out among accomplices in Singapore itself? Has he made it across
the straits to Indonesia and the safety of fellow Jemaah
Islamiyah activists? Or across the Causeway, evading the dogs and
dragnets the Malaysians set for him? Could it be that despite his
limp he managed to swim the Johor Strait?
Although the
Whitley centre is replete with cameras recording every movement
inside and out, there is no explanation of how he could have
escaped from under the noses of the Gurkha guards during a brief
toilet visit, and then got hastily away from the jail. It is not
in teeming downtown Singapore, where even a Malay with a limp
might vanish into the crowds. Even that seems unlikely, since
Malays make up only 13 percent of the Singaporean population, and
they are not exactly hard to spot among the majority Chinese.
Was this a stunning solo effort worthy of Houdini
himself? Or did the impoverished JI, which had only a few
thousand dollars for the Bali bombing in 2002, have enough cash
to bribe squeaky-clean Singaporeans or the Gurkha protectors of
their top leaders and prisoners?
Or maybe he is not
hiding out anywhere but dead already, having been encouraged to
escape into the hands of persons unknown who were only too happy
to see him "disappeared." Or could he have been
dispatched to Guantanamo for further processing at the hands of
the experts at waterboarding and other forms of non-torture? Or
been "rendered" to some other jurisdiction –
though who would want him, given that he is a Singaporean citizen
and thus the city-state’s ultimate responsibility and not
known to have committed crimes elsewhere?
Or maybe he was
a US agent all along and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who
visited Indonesia last week, decided he had served his purpose
and he could be returned to society with a new identity.
Or
maybe the Singaporeans have taken a leaf out of the British book
when they were dealing with communist insurgency in the 1950s.
Did he sing enough about his JI pals that he has earned his
release, a new identity and a fat bank account to start a new
life, as did some former communist terrorists who acquired new
names and became respected, wealthy businessmen? Or was he
allowed to escape so that he could rejoin his JI colleagues with
the promise that he would be a mole inside the organization –
assuming anyone believed his escape story.
Or maybe he is
The Man Who Never Was, a bogeyman dreamed up by Singaporean
intelligence to frighten the population into believing that JI
plots were all around. There have been enough other invented
plots to give some plausibility to such creations. But in that
case, why the public "escape," which has caused such
loss of face, rather than letting the mirage die a natural death?
In the absence of facts, any number of theories,
conspiratorial or not, is being bandied about in an amazing
outpouring on the Internet, which the authorities appear
powerless to stem.
But the most common sentiment appears
to be not that lives are in danger because a dangerous terrorist
has escaped and may yet manage to blow up Singaporean buildings.
It is growing derision at the sheer apparent incompetence of
authorities usually so keen to praise their own efficiency,
particularly in matters of security.
"Toilet Break,
based on a true story starring Mas Selamat Kastari," read
one weblog in reference to another US TV drama, Prison Break.
Another satirical blog, Talkingcock, had a hilarious set of 13
photographs of Kastari taken from a wanted poster and showing the
fugitive in a variety of disguises including a massive
1960s-style Afro, various mustaches, sunglasses and a
blonde-female wig. Other bloggers poured scorn on the competence
of the world’s highest-salaried ministers and senior
bureaucrats.
Whatever else can be said about Singapore,
its government has long regarded itself as the most grimly
efficient and accomplished in Asia, and it does not brook any
nonsense. Kastari’s escape and the subsequent inability of
authorities to find him have called that into question.
Singapore’s most prized asset is competence and the
willingness to pay for it with taxpayer funds. Ministers and
civil servants, already by far the highest-paid public servants
in the world, received a round of pay raises starting on January
1 ranging from 4 percent to 21 percent, driving Prime Minister
Lee Hsien Loong’s salary to S$3.7 million (US$2.55
million), more than six times that of US President George W.
Bush. Cabinet ministers, including Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan
Seng, apologizing while under intense fire for Kastari’s
escape, receive S$1.9 million (US$1.37 million).
Its
civil servants are among the highest paid in the world. The
government has long taken the stance that public officials should
receive pay commensurate with the top of the country’s
business elite, both to attract top talent and to forestall any
temptation toward corruption.
Thus the ability of a
crippled ethnic Malay to walk away from the most securely guarded
prison on an island of only 700 square kilometers, and to remain
on the loose since February 27, has not only generated a huge
amount of controversy, but a growing amount of ridicule of the
government, which is being recycled endlessly in cyberspace,
often in the form of jokes. This is not something a government as
humorless as Singapore’s is finding funny.
Whatever
the truth about the escape of Mat Selamat Kastari, whether or not
he is recaptured alive, this saga has all the signs of a Black
Swan event – that totally unpredictable occurrence that
makes nonsense of rational predictions and in the process
destroys a myth. This time the myth is competence.
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