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April 9, 2008 JI DETAINEE'S ESCAPE Govt has to take some responsibility too I REFER to last Saturday's article 'Guards were negligent, says MM'. Like MM Lee, I very much agree that the Government is not to be blamed for the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari. The good track record of the Singapore Government should not be diminished by this unfortunate incident. However, there should be some level of accountability by the Home Affairs Ministry and not only by the guards who were in charge of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) detainee who had once planned to crash a plane into Changi Airport. The ministry had a role to play in ensuring all this did not happen in the first place. But none of the statements from the ministry suggested that it was apologetic over the incident and there was no admission that there could have been an oversight on its part. Ironically, an Insight report in The Straits Times on the same day cited Dr Michael Benoliel, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at the Singapore Management University, as saying 'All the great corporations collapsed because they underestimated the competition'. Is it fair that accountability lies only with certain strata of staff members of a corporation? Let us all ponder this since we have often compared our Government to a large corporation. Mohd Rashed Badarudin http://www.straitstimes.com/ST%2BFor...ry_225194.html the all peasants god what is responsibility it's not even in the L337 dictionary... how can peasants get.

http://www.straitstimes.com/Free/Sto...ry_223845.html JI MAN MAS SELAMAT'S ESCAPE Guards were negligent, says MM His message: Those who think nothing can go wrong are being complacent By Sue-Ann Chia & Goh Chin Lian FUGITIVE Mas Selamat Kastari was 'an escape artist' who had evaded arrest many times, and Singapore's security officers knew this, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday. Yet, the Jemaah Islamiah terrorist leader was able to lull his minders at the Whitley Road Detention Centre into believing that they had him under control, before he gave them the slip. 'When you are complacent in handling a wily detainee, then you have been negligent,' Mr Lee told The Straits Times in an e-mail interview. He responded to questions on the issue of complacency for today's Insight feature which takes off from his earlier comments on Mas Selamat's disappearance. He said last month that the break-out was a 'very severe lesson in complacency'. Mas Selamat, 47, who had planned to crash a plane into Changi Airport, escaped from Internal Security Department custody on Feb 27. He is still on the run. The Government has promised a full account of how he escaped, after a three-member panel completes its investigations. In answering questions posed by The Straits Times, Mr Lee addressed the issue of complacency among citizens, saying: 'Anyone who believes nothing can or will go wrong in Singapore is living in a make-believe world.' He said Singaporeans are being complacent when they believe that the Government will take care of all security matters. MPs and political observers interviewed for the Insight feature said decades of peace and prosperity could have caused some Singaporeans to believe the Government had everything under control and nothing could go wrong. How did complacency creep in? Some observers like former MP Augustine Tan blamed indifference or lack of understanding of the Government's workings. Others felt the Government was partly to blame. People's Action Party MP Lim Wee Kiak called complacency a 'side-effect' of an overly successful Government and civil service. 'This has bred a dependency mentality in our population who will blame the civil service and Government if any of their needs are not met,' he noted. But MM Lee disagreed that the Government deserved to be blamed. He said: 'Complacency sets in when a people have not suffered any shock or setback for a long time.' Hence, his warnings against complacency over the years, 'because most people believe that bad things will happen to others, not to themselves'. [email protected] so does the MM believe bad things may happen to him also?