Serious One Canberra AGM - Worrying lack of logic and decision making in Minister Sha

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Is this symptomatic of PAP cabinet Ministers? As you all know, the saga of the One Canberra AGM reads like a slow motion bad traffic accident for Minister Shan. I mean, what was he thinking?

Firstly, a constituent complains to him that his condo management is holding their first AGM at a country club and will cost $19,000. Said complainant thought this was excessive and unwarranted. And that the management company was fiscally irresponsible for spending this kind of money.I don't know who this constituent was, but he must have been pretty persuasive, because Shan swallows this story hook line and sinker. Shan that gets on his high horse and berates the management company with a letter saying that "they have a duty to make sure the resident's money is properly spend".

However, Shan is also a multimillion $ Minister. He also has a duty to make sure that the citizens of singapore has their money properly spend by him. Is the involvement of his time and effort into a paltry $19,000 private meeting an indication that he has properly spend the citizen's salary to him? Definitely not. After all, he runs a Ministry with a budget of millions and millions of dollars. If he has so much time, I would rather he spend it on streamlining his Ministry's operations, or maybe cut some of the red tape and dead wood staff there. Surely, that would be easily more then $19K in savings.

Worrying too is the fact that Shan does not seem to realize that this is a private matter between residents and their management company. If they don't like the cost of the AGM, they can always hire a new company to manage their condo. This does not involve any HDB town council that Shan might be on. If all cabinet ministers were to involve themselves in all the condo AGMs in their constituency, no work will be done. Why is One Canberra so special? Shan's time is taxpayer's money. he should be spending it on running the Law Ministry. If he is concerned about making sure that money is properly spend, he should look into the AGO's annual reports and start files on all the over spending that is mentioned in there.

Worse off is that it appears the Management company RIA has snookered Shan. Imagine being made a fool by Jackson Ong. Mr. Ong has disclosed that the developer was willing to foot the cost of the rental, while the condo paid for the food. Jackson even broke down the cost of the AGM at the country club to be $15,600. So, Shan's $19K was inaccurate. Jackson even said that they would move the AGM now to the free Chong Pang CC facility. But the cost to the residents ends up being $200 more, then if it was held and subsidized at the country club. How stupid must Shan feel now? Not having verified the facts independently with RIA? Is he crazy? At the very least, he should have a junior secretary call RIA and confirm all the numbers given him by the resident of One Canberra. Then he would not have send the letter out to them. I don't know whether the developer was ever planning to subsidize the country club location, but Jackson by claiming that They were going to so, has made Shan look like a fool. Shan was not in complete possession of all the facts nor was he doing any due diligence to ensure that the info given him was accurate. How did he even become a lawyer in the first place.

I think that all Cabinet Ministers and Perm Secs and Minister of States are cut from the same cloth as he is. Shoot first, and don't bother asking questions later. This is why in the international arena, we have our lunch handed to us. If jackson Ong can snooker a PAP cabinet minister in this way, Far smarter and experienced international diplomats and businessmen are eating our lunch. This comes on the heels of the NOL $86 million USD profit one year after Temasek sold it to the French after years of losses. Really pathetic performance by Shan and not worthy of his time and effort.


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