An “appalling” year for Minister Tan Chuan-Jin

So, he has done it again – expressing how he is taken aback once more about something.

I am referring to the Minister of Manpower, Tan Chuan-Jin, relatively newly-minted Member of Parliament for Marine Parade GRC.

Mr Tan’s latest outburst stems from the Sim Lim Square incident where errant retailers allegedly scammed their customers. In particular, the shop Mobile Air which has been in the news in recent days.

Here’re the headlines in TODAY:

Here’s Mr Tan’s Facebook post where he expressed his indignation – “I’m shocked at the behaviour shown,” he says.

Mr Tan’s penchant for being alarmed and expressing this online started in 2011, apparently – in fact, just some 6 months after he was voted into Parliament in May, he found the practice by some bosses to send their foreign workers to gamble as their proxies “appalling”.

On 21 September 2013, Mr Tan was again “appalled” – this time by how a dog owner had treated his dog.

He called it “abysmal” too.

4 months later, Mr Tan had occasion to feel “appalled” yet again – after witnessing reports of a series of deaths of workers at construction sites around Singapore.

2 months later, Mr Tan was appalled once more – at how Indonesian marines had posed as the MacDonald House bombers at the Jakarta International Defence Dialogue (JIDD) exhibition on 19 March 2014.

And the very next month, Mr Tan expressed how he was “somewhat startled” by a Straits Times’ report of objections by some Singaporeans to the plans by some Filipinos to hold their independence day celebrations at Orchard.

After a 5-month respite from being upset by something, Mr Tan – unfortunately – was once again “appalled” by what had transpired at Hong Lim Park on 27 September.

This time, however, Mr Tan did not just feel “appalled” by the incident but also felt it “vile” and an “absolute disgrace”.

Here was what he posted on his Facebook page:

Funny thing is: the so-called “heckling” incident which virtually made Mr Tan foam at the mouth did not actually happen, as far as current evidence suggests.

But Mr Tan was not alone in jumping to conclusion about the so-called incident. He was among a bandwagon of PAP MPs who had made the unsubstantiated “heckling” accusation. (See here.)

And 2 months later, Mr Tan expressed how he was “shocked” by the Sim Lim Square episode.

So, seems that 2014 especially was a very “appalling” and “shocking” year for Mr Tan.

He had felt “appalled”, “shocked”, “startled” by events and incidents.

We hope he will have a better 2015, but we can’t guarantee if he will feel less appalled in 2016, though.

Incidentally, no PAP MP has expressed any shock or being appalled by what Chinese national Yang Yin has allegedly done, even though he has been in the news for several months now.

Now, that is appalling and shocking.