The Escape

Marking is hard enough, but the thing that really takes the ticket is marking again. If it needs to be done, then it needs to be done, and how much you'd like to grumble about it, you'll still need to finish the job. But you need to do it for a good reason. Today's episode...there's been enough said about it, and it's kind of sickeningly amusing to see the kind of political parrying revealed in all its demented poetry. I'll only say this - if teachers and the school were allowed to admit when they got it wrong, then there will not be a need to cover up, and we'll be acting far more professionally and ethically as well. The problem, like most of the time, is that it's so hard for people within a system to put the system in its proper perspective. You stay in one place long enough, and your perception narrows, until the tedious details that make up the daily grind become mistaken for the underlying philosophies and impetuses and patterns, and are not taken to be the superficial effervescent froth that they really are.

All this gets in the way of the actual teaching. We agree that the students' interests should be paramount. But I think that principle should be the guide to our actions, rather than a mere justification to tag onto our actions once their impacts have become de facto.

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I guess I should also say a word or two about the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari. It's kind of surreal, really; one cannot really believe that the most important detainee of the ISD just slipped out of their hands and is now on the run. The mere idea of this clashes so starkly with the usual image of efficiency and effectiveness that the authorities project, and one cannot really shake the feeling that this is just some elaborate hoax or exercise, and the real Mas Selamat is in custody, indeed has already been dealt with summarily.

Herein lies a real problem, I think. Singaporeans are so complacent in the effectiveness of their system that they cannot conceive of an instance in which it will fail, and thus cannot adequately prepare themselves for the eventuality that it actually does fail. Definitely, we can and should take as many justifiable material and professional precautions as we can, but when it comes to psychological preparedness, the perceived infallibility of the system becomes a real liability. And when the crunch comes, when the threat is not only real (as it is now) but also clearly imminent, this disjoint between expectations and reality can prove fatal. And the clincher is that there is no immediately apparent way to get rid of this false assumption of infallibility. The authorities have a vested interest in keeping this assumption alive, because it is the main selling point of the system. Without it, there is not enough faith and trust in the system to keep the general public confident in the system's ability to protect them. And I trust that the supreme difficulty of transmuting expectations engendered by past experiences of success into irrational trust in the continued viability of the status quo will be plain for all to see.

That being said, it does impress me somewhat to see the reaction of the general public. Which is, frankly, negligible. The media reporting has the effect of rendering this event in dull colours - or perhaps it is just that I expect Singapore media only to report on the dullest events with the dullest style, and this preconception colours the current coverage. Mas Selamat's face appears on ever street corner, but one would pay these posters as much attention as any random shop window. For a couple of days, Guardsmen and MPs formed a ridiculously dense cordon along Dunearn Road, which encompassed SCGS and the Chinese International School and stretched on to CJC, and we would remark on this unprecedented sight whenever we passed it on the bus ride home. But SCGS students still walked in and out of the school, parents in tow, intrigued but not panicked by the sight. Cars still drove past, and residents of the area still ran the fearsome gauntlet with much aplomb. And everywhere else, only the faintest ripples can be perceived.

This kind of indifference, even apathy, though unhelpful to the general manhunt, can be seen as a sign of resilience, in that even the escape of the JI leader would not ruffle the feathers of the stoic Singaporeans. Or, perhaps, it is yet another manifestation of complacency, or the product of a (rational?) evaluation that reveals that it is not worth panicking or even remaining more alert because the odds of making a difference are so slim. Perhaps it is evidence of a certain fatalism; something like this has to happen sooner or later, and why cry over spilled milk? Whatever the case, though, this dullness and (at least superficial) normalcy is preferable to any sort of general frenzy or xenophobic pogrom. You can at least trust Singaporeans to carry on as usual and try not to make any waves.

It must be hell, though, to be in the uniformed services now. I presume that my people in the Army would be working at least doubly hard to secure their various objectives. And their irritation, I guess, illustrates the upper limit of the general reaction here. To them, as to many people, the escape of Mas Selamat Kastari is measured in terms that are most immediate to them: not in terms of a possible catastrophic bomb blast in the centre of the city with fatalities unimaginable, but in terms of more hours put into guarding a place, more duties to attend to, a general and indistinct increase in an abstract sort of tension, and annoyance at the added inconvenience of living life around the additional security.