Landscape of Singapore city in day morning time from Shutterstock.com

by Brad Bowyer

Never before in 34 years have I seen a 1-week Island wide live firing exercise involving all our services. There is nothing “routine” about it and certainly has nothing to do with any “National Day Parade” rehearsal as claimed given its scope and timing. This is extremely dangerous posturing and leaves plenty of time and room for an “incident” to happen under the flimsiest of excuses and certainly the Malaysian are not dumb enough to buy it, nobody is.

What we have seen develop so rapidly is our Government apparently gambling with national security and safety to shore up their weakening position. The propaganda, the calls for national unity behind them and all the scaremongering are symptomatic of a distraction tactic as more people question their policies like HDB ownership, CPF, loses by our GIC’s, loss of jobs, failing economy, rich poor divide, elitism etc etc the list is endless and the ground moves against them.

The propaganda going around to justify the actions over a few hundred square meters of water that we claimed control of when the Najib government was in power and looked the other way and triggered by our unilateral changes to airspace control for our expansion of Seletar Airport is incredibly misleading indeed. None of which incidentally were ever agreed to by the current Malaysian government and to which they are currently reacting.

I am not siding with them in this just pointing out the obvious and of course the vast difference in the reactions to the dispute, one side asking for a calming and discussions while staying firm and the other trying to dictate, talking up negatives and running live fire exercises.

I fully agree that all Singaporeans should stand united against a real national threat, but this is a politized dispute that is being blown out of all proportion. There is no “invasion”, the Malaysians are not going to “attack anyone” and we are certainly not an “innocent” party defending themselves, but the Malaysians will respond if we do something stupid, and this 1-week exercise fits the bill for a stupid action to happen for sure.

It seems our rulers are so weak in their position and fearful of the people that they appear to be gambling with all our lives and futures to try and distract and unite us behind them while playing with fire.

Again, I ask that all rational heads left in our government and related parties and those around them to reach out to the hotheads leading these actions and try and talk some sense in to them. If the worst happens of course we will all unite and defend our country, but you have to ask, surely a few should not be able to put an entire country at risk so easily and for all the wrong reasons? How did we get to this position?

This first appeared as a Facebook post and reproduced with permission from Mr Bowyer

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