The elaborate statement by Dr. Teo Ho Pin, Coordinating Chairman of the PAP Town Councils, in response to Workers'' Party (WP) chairman Sylvia Lim's questioning of the sale of the computer software rights to Action Information Management (AIM), when she asked if it was in the public interest, cuts no ice with the public, especially the netizens. His statement has been published on the TR Emeritus website which elicited no less than 218 responses from netizens criticising or condemning Dr. Teo for his disingenuous statement designed to cover up the questionable sale of the PAP Town Councils' computer software system to a PAP-owned AIM with a paid up capital of $2 whose three directors are former PAP MPs.
Dr Teo attempted to justify the sale of the computer software by quoting for the first time that a consultancy firm Deloitte and Touche Enterprise Risk Services Pte Ltd had been engaged to review the system and had found the system, built in 2003, was becoming obsolete and impossible to maintain. Deloitte and Touche had suggested centralising the software ownership with a third party taking over the software rights. A commentator with computer software expertise has commented that unlike a real machine, a computer software cannot get outdated. It is just a series of instructions to an operating system to perform a task. There are no rotating gears or other moving parts in a software which can suffer from wear and tear. So Singaporeans can draw their conclusion whether the sale of the computer software to a third party which turned out to be none other than the PAP-owned AIM, a $2 shell company, was in the public interest.
In this controversy, the WP started as an underdog but it has justice on its side. The way Ms Sylvia Lim has stood up to the political onslaught of Dr. Teo Ho Pin and his cohort is a credit to the indomitable character of the WP chairman. Dr Teo, with due respect to him, emerges out of this controversy as not so adept in trying to force through his arguments, probably by sheer display of PAP's superiority. He has no answer to the public perception of the impropriety of the sale of the computer software system to AIM, a $2 capital shell company with a skeleton staff and no computer software expertise. Ms Sylvia Lim suspected that AIM was exercising the rights of termination of the lease if there was a "material change" in the composition of the Town Council when it terminated the software lease to Aljunied-Hougang Town Council.
It is as clear as daylight that Dr. Teo's elaborate statement lacks conviction and cogency. He has to try harder to convince Singaporeans of his ingenuousness in wanting to resolve this controversy equitably, especially to the WP. This controversy has been festering for some time now and it could not be beneficial to the PAP with an eye to the possible Punggol East by-election if it is allowed to drag on indefinitely. What seems to be drawing public attention is the reticence of the PAP leadership on this controversy.
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4 comments:
What can the leadership of the party do when they have been caught with the smoking gun in hand or to use a description very apt for the Palmergate affair - caught with its pants down!
There is simply no earthly reason for anyone with any cow sense to go to the elaborate length that Teo HP and company did to spin a yarn that ended up tying themselves up like what a spider does to its prey. Probably, because they are all clones?
Pay And Profit (PAP) reticence = "I dunno want to say" a la Ting Pei Ling sans her kawai hand gesture.
"His statement has been published on the TR Emeritus website which elicited no less than 218 responses from netizens criticising or condemning Dr. Teo..."
Yoong, you mean you actually assign some intellectual value to the kind of comments that appear on TRE?
You have either set standards low, or you have sunk to those levels. Or both :)
"A commentator with computer software expertise has commented that unlike a real machine, a computer software cannot get outdated".
Sorry, but your so-called computer expert is either not an expert or just not very bright.
I would think that it's bloody obvious that software can get outdated. After all, which software are we using now that is still from the 1980s? As technology improves, there are always newer and more efficient ways of doing things which necessitates writing newer software.
Also one of the reasons why it gets progressively harder to maintain old/obsolete software is that the skillsets needed to understand and fix such archaic systems become even rarer. For example, many legacy banking systems are written in COBOL, but how many modern developers are proficient enough in it? (This is one reason why experienced COBOL developers are so highly paid).
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