The great hunt: bunker chaos?

Speaking to reporters in Bahrain, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew offered a couple more hints as how Mas Selamat Kastari escaped. Only hints, nothing definitive, but, as I will suggest below, enough to sketch a very unflattering picture of what might have happened.

'We should have known that here is a man who has had several escapes,' [Lee Kuan Yew] said at his wrap-up media interview here after a week-long visit to three Gulf nations.

'But obviously, he is a very wily sort of person and must have won the confidence of whoever were his custodians.

'So when he said he wanted to go to the toilet, they allowed him to go to the toilet. Whether the toilet had bars and there was no exit from the windows, that has to be explained.

'I give him full marks for having won the confidence of his custodians - that he's completely docile, completely passive and he's going to remain in captivity.'

[snip]

[Lee] called it a 'very severe lesson of complacency' - the authorities had been confident that they had their prisoner 'sized up', but he had sized up his custodians in turn.

'But he had the custodian sized up, he had the custodian feeling comfortable that he can go to the toilet where there are no bars in the windows, and he got through. Very smart fellow. So we are dealing with a smart man.'

-- Straits Times, 8 March 2008, MM blames
complacency for JI leader's escape

With that, Lee filled in a bit more than what Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng had been prepared to say to date -- that there had been a "physical breach". Lee made reference to a window in the toilet and suggested that it had no bars, and that it was the route Mas Selamat took.

You can surmise from those cryptic words that the toilet was not one approved for detainees' use, but somehow, en route to the visitor's centre to meet his family, Mas Selamat asked the escorting officer(s) if he could use it and they okayed it.

This still leaves many questions. For example, why wasn't the visitor's block and the toilet ring-fenced outside, so that even if he climbed out, he'd be stopped by a fence? Secondly, did Mas Selamat merely seize an unexpected opportunity, seeing a window without bars, or had he known beforehand it didn't have bars and planned to flee via it? If the latter, then he must have used that unauthorised toilet before and noticed that it was openable.

If he had planned it ahead, was there someone waiting outside to help him? How did he communicate the plan to an outsider?

As I mentioned in my previous article, the fact that he managed to disappear so quickly argues against the "lone runner" theory, unless....  unless it took a very long time before the detention centre realised he was missing, so long that one could stroll away without being missed.

Thus, what is beginning to come into view is a picture of sloppiness and massive confusion at the start of events. I can imagine people pointing fingers at each other; superiors unable to tell what is true from what is false.

* * * * *

 
This provides another possible explanation for the way information to the public came out in dribs and drabs. While netizens have generally accused the government of being tight-lipped and P N Balji wrote in his column in 'Today' of a "bunker mentality", the alternative explanation that is emerging is that the government itself wasn't sure of the facts from the start and it took them days to piece together the most basic of information.

In other words, it might not have been a case of the government knowing, but refusing to tell, but one of not knowing and refusing to admit it.

Take the question of what Mas Selamat was wearing. Information was not released until 6 days later. Many people, including myself, have accused the government of deliberately holding back information. I had suggested that one reason they might have chosen to do so was to use information about Mas Selamat's attire as a confidential check to assess which lead provided by the public was worth following up and which wasn't.

But that is not the only possible explanation. There could be others. For instance, if you look closely at the Straits Times report that eventually emerged about his attire, it said he had two shirts with him.

Besides the standard attire of a beige T-shirt, brown drawstring pants and black rubber slippers which all detainees wear, he was also wearing a greenish-grey baju kurung, a long-sleeved, hip-length shirt.

The police said he was last seen in the baju kurung.

No explanation was given for why he had two sets of clothes on him, although detainees at the Whitley Road Detention Centre are allowed to change into civilian clothes when their families visit to 'facilitate interaction', the police said.

--- Straits Times, 5 march 2008, Have you
seen these clothes discarded anywhere?

As the newspaper pointed out, it wasn't explained why he had two shirts. The fact that this information finally came out in the ambiguous way it did suggests that the government still does not know.

This is what I mean by the possibility that, frustrating though it may be for the public not to be given answers, it might not have been bunker mentality that held the government back, but bunker chaos.

* * * * *

 
Yet, even if there was utter chaos in the background, it does not excuse the government from the way the crisis was managed, information-wise.

As KiWeTo said in a comment to the earlier article, "Shit happens. It's what an organization does in response to the shit happening that shows us whether it can be depended on or not."

It was entirely possible, and is in fact highly recommended in crisis management manuals, for the government to be transparent from the first hour, informing the public what they knew, what they didn't know and why they didn't know what they didn't know, even if the situation was confused.

People are not stupid. Most people are reasonable and they can be very understanding if they feel they are being taken on board. Every one of us in our daily lives cope with uncertain and changing information. Nobody who is reasonable is going to fault the government for providing fresh information that may contradict old news, provided the old news had been appropriately bracketed as tentative at the time it was released.

Instead, the government seemed always to prefer to say nothing at all, a pattern that reveals a mindset stuck in old ways -– that of an authority with the mandate of heaven that dispenses Truths, and whose ego is entirely wrapped up with its sense of omniscience and infallibility. That being the case, how could they be seen to admit they didn't know, or that the earlier information had been inaccurate and had to be changed?

The instinctive habit of such an organisation is therefore never to admit they don't know, but to insist that you plebeans do not need to know. "Things are under control; we'll tell you what you need to know when you need to know," is the easy cover for not knowing themselves.

* * * * *

 
Instead of being honest and responsive, the government went on the offensive. A big song and dance was performed about Malay Singaporeans helping to hand out posters, assisting in the effort to find the escapee. Just look at the first three days of media coverage and you will see what I mean.

This is a classic example of generals re-fighting the last war. Indeed, after the alleged plot by Jemaah Islamiyah to bomb a number of targets here was revealed in December 2001, non-Muslim Singaporeans harboured all sorts of suspicions about our fellow Muslim citizens, but this has not happened this time. There's no indication that ordinary Singaporeans reacted this way following Mas Selamat's escape.

Even if a handful of wilder ones posted crazy comments in some bulletin boards, what makes anyone think that other netizens would not speak up against such mischief?

The high-profile government-mounted campaign to publicise Muslims helping in the search for Mas Selamat discredited only themselves. It showed a government that didn't trust the people to be sensible in a moment of uncertainty. It showed the readiness of the government to manipulate its own people... for the wrong reasons, addressing the wrong question.

The question on everyone's mind was: How did the shit happen? Not: Why are the Muslims doing this? Nobody asked the latter question. Staging the big song and dance made the latter a question when it never was. It made the escape somehow the responsibility of Muslim citizens when it was not.

Others might say it was a useful, if cynical, diversionary tactic to mask the fact that the government had no leads and no grip on the problem. But that is precisely it -- why a need for a diversionary tactic?

What is so difficult about displaying humility and treating your own citizens with some respect for their intelligence? People may be get upset with a bungling government, but they get irate when they see the government trying to manipulate them.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

None

Addenda

None