Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam and historian Thum Ping Tjin debate historical accounts leading up to Operation Coldstore on the last day of public hearings on deliberate online falsehoods.
They never discussed anything that Thum wanted to talk about or referred back to any of the documents he mentioned. They spent 6 hours talking about why Shanmugan thinks Coldstore was justified and not once actually talked about Operation Coldstore which is what this hearing is supposed to be about. Complete waste of time.
there is no debate. this is a cross examination. when we watched this, it looked to us that PJ Thum was invited to be part of a select committtee, and was simply being brought there to be bullied. and bullied for hours and hours. by people who had an agenda and way less qualified than he is.
In the end, they want "impartiality" but ownself judged/examined ownself. So many against 1 person, and still dared ask Thum "Are you interrogating me?" - this word should be used on themselves. And why were they seated higher? We all see the word "debate" but what was he doing to poor Dr Thum (also a Singaporean individual)? Why didn't they do anything in the end? The public thinks the panel (which represented the Ministries and then Govt) wanted to find away to get at Dr Thum, of cos.....Thank God, we are slowly see the real picture, after all the smoke, and the people are changing......still alas... the 2G and 3G do not get to be cross-examined.
What is this experienced Singapore Minister trying to prove in this instant inquiry? That it enjoys a monopoly of knowledge and even wisdom? That it knows how to nurture and empower talent? The use of a mix of open and closed questions is clever but "just too clever by half," use Lee Kuan Yew's favourite quotation. The repeated attempts to limit the time of Dr Thum to respond also inhibits communication, if that is the objective of the inquiry. Even the setting where a panel of assistants on the Minister's side is ranged against the one and only Dr Thum smacks of bullying. Where does this contribute to communication? Is the politically savvy Minister telling us this is how Singapore intends to nurture and empower talent? If so, it fails and fails abysmally. I wonder if Sir Lee Kuan Yew were alive, he would have allowed one of his leaders to go on such a frolic of his own where aspersions can be freely and repeatedly cast on the integrity of the subject? Where is the respect for scholarship. Dissertation are sometimes executed in the pressure of time. The Minister can be a first class honours student, but in the Singapore University context, such pressures are never very common. My score: Dr Thum 1, Shanmugam 0.
