Mas Selamat Tinggal (and Ah Meng gets post mortem sex change)

It was a scene almost any movie goer knows by heart. Escorted by guards, the prisoner requests for a little visit to the boy's room, and we all know an escape is imminent. This scene has been replayed in myriad forms and scripts, while we groan at the utter stupidity of the guards at hand.

One almost wonders how writers could even think that guards this stupid could exist or be employed as one. Then we see the exact scene replayed in Singapore. Mas Selamat (the country’s most wanted man) takes a leak and dumps his guards into new jobs as warehouse (empty ones) security guards.

It’s just amazing. We groan when we see onscreen, some young silly girl enter a dark building by herself. We groan when the villain (or sometimes hero) asks to free his willie. We all know what’s going to happen. But Mr Wong Kan Seng’s Home Team apparently wasn’t trained for daring toilet escapes.

In fact the almost sternly embarrassingly arrogant faced Wong said in parliament, “This should never have happened. I am sorry that it has.” One can almost detect from his tone of voice, as he raised his tone at the end of the sentence, he was pissed it happened. Not exactly sorry, but pissed. Well, perhaps sorry for what he will do to the day’s duty guards and their abilities to sit properly or defecate. For letting Mas Selamat Kastari say selamat tinggal (“goodbye” for those not familiar with the terrorist’s native tongue) to our inescapably tight security forces. We all know a contrite apology is spoken in lower tones. But obviously the minister for home affairs wasn’t very at home with admission of his ministry’s ineptitude. It was apparent, no matter how tight you squeeze your ass, a turd still can manage to slip out if you lose a moment's focus.

After successful riot police deployments against peaceful gathering of people in similar teeshirts, or elderly people holding placards, I guess they were unable to comprehend the audacity of such a daring escape. I forgot, he is after all a deputy prime minister too. And we all know why a sheriff is a sheriff and why the deputy is the deputy, don’t we?

Why the fuck do toilets in detention centres for terrorists have escape possibilities anyway? Shouldn’t there be no windows or exit alternatives? Anyway, it’s not my place to question the expert and elite guards of my country, is it? We apparently have to wait for some independent inquiry into the escape. I wonder if they’re going to get our “independent” President to do it. It should give him something to do.

Of course our media went out of its way (as always) to ensure we all think or know that it was an apology.

Andre Yeo from The New Paper even decided he should help our esteemed well-fed minister’s grammar and sentence construction.

Andre wrote, “Mas Selamat's escape should not have happened. But it did. And for that, I am sorry.

Those were the words of Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng in Parliament yesterday.”

This is what Wong really said. “This should never have happened. I am sorry that it has.”

Read both and tell me they mean the same. If you do think they mean the same, you’re well qualified to be working for the official mediacocks and news publications in Singapore.

Oh and of course the entire government went into damage control overtime. Just look at the massive manhunt island-wide and the massive deployment of forces. Personally, the entire show doesn’t exactly bolster their competence and would probably worsen public perceptions of them if the limping terrorist (whom they tell us, has no money, no food and resources to leave the country) is not captured soon. The fact that he still remains at large is bad enough.

On a side note, since I did mention our media’s knack for correcting our elite leaders’ words, I thought I’d mention the not too recent death of Singapore Zoo’s matron orang utan, Ah Meng. Tagged as an icon, it’s not hard for any Singaporean to know something about her.

But our country’s highest paid political mime, (non)Elected President SR Nathan, made a monkey of himself yet again. Broadcast on TV, we can hear him say, "Ah Meng has been so much of a symbol of the Zoo. A lot of people – locals and foreigners – have enjoyed his company. I'm sure the patrons of the Zoo will miss him a great deal. But that's life."

Amazingly the person in the highest office of Singapore calls the monkey a symbol and well recognised symbol and then goes on to verbally change the gender history of the dead ape.

Of course the captions on TV, repeating his words, corrected the gender. As did every media report after that. Not much accuracy in our reporters or journalists, is there? Then again, I wonder if Mediacock was subtly making a fool out of him, since they could after all get the newscaster to read the lines over Nathan’s interview. Haha… who knows?

They should ambush this fella for more impromptu interviews and get him to make more unscripted comments. He is one amazingly hilariously overpaid fucker, and its only right that we taxpayers get to laugh at his fucking idiocy.

Hey, maybe we can televise Nathan making an effort to hunt down the terrorist. Seriously I doubt he can do much worse that the guards who lost him at the toilet. Except maybe perhaps proclaim Mas Selamat an escaped stingray from the Underwater World in Sentosa. Nathan vs Mas Selamat. The makings of a straight-to-video comedy.