Self-Inflicted Damage?
Self-Inflicted Damage?
siew91
19 Sep 2006, sintercom
The rich and powerful World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz has spoken. He said Singapore had self-inflicted enormous damage to its reputation by refusing entry to accredited activists who had been invited to attend the IMF/WB conference in Singapore from 13 to 20 Sep 2006.
Predictably, the following days many media, mainstream or otherwise, who are less than enamored with the Singapore government picked up the news and publicized it.
But is the damage really self-inflicted? I seriously doubt it.
Firstly, Singapore is placing utmost importance to the conference. It views the conference as an opportunity for it to project itself as an efficient and vibrant global city for business as well as work. It has spent some $135 millions organizing the meeting. It is therefore not logical for it to want to ruin its own reputation or image.
Secondly, Singapore is a tiny nation and it is unlikely to have the audacity to renege on any agreement with powerful and global institutions like World Bank and IMF.
Thirdly, I have my reservations on Paul Wolfowitz. Before he becomes the President of World Bank, he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush’s administration. He was reportedly a neo-con willing to use dishonesty to reach his ideological ends. An example was his use of unsubstantiated and even fabricated evidences to advocate the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Wolfowitz is also not known to be very concerned about democracy or human rights. He was the US Ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989 when Suharto was still the dictator of Indonesia. The head of Indonesian Human Rights Commission Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara once said “of all former US Ambassadors, he (Wolfowitz) was considered closest to and most influential with Suharto and his family, but he never showed interest in issues regarding democratization or respect of human rights.”
But after Suharto stood down in 1998 Wolfowitz said that Suharto was guilty “of suppressing political dissents, of weakening alternative leaders and of showing favoritism to his children’s business deals, frequently at the expense of sound economic policy.”
Wolfowitz should be well aware of Singapore’s hard line stance with protests and could have manipulated that to his advantage. He could be offering Singapore as a punching bag to those troublesome civil society organization activists.
yes, I don't trust Wolfowitz at all or anyone who can advocate war based on fabricated evidences!
I also don't like his manipulative way of fuelling the CSOs' fire at Singapore. He told the CSOs that "Enormous damage has been done... A lot of that damage has been to Singapore and it's self-inflicted," when he should have raised his concerns with Singapore government.
siew91
19 Sep 2006, sintercom
The rich and powerful World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz has spoken. He said Singapore had self-inflicted enormous damage to its reputation by refusing entry to accredited activists who had been invited to attend the IMF/WB conference in Singapore from 13 to 20 Sep 2006.
Predictably, the following days many media, mainstream or otherwise, who are less than enamored with the Singapore government picked up the news and publicized it.
But is the damage really self-inflicted? I seriously doubt it.
Firstly, Singapore is placing utmost importance to the conference. It views the conference as an opportunity for it to project itself as an efficient and vibrant global city for business as well as work. It has spent some $135 millions organizing the meeting. It is therefore not logical for it to want to ruin its own reputation or image.
Secondly, Singapore is a tiny nation and it is unlikely to have the audacity to renege on any agreement with powerful and global institutions like World Bank and IMF.
Thirdly, I have my reservations on Paul Wolfowitz. Before he becomes the President of World Bank, he was the Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bush’s administration. He was reportedly a neo-con willing to use dishonesty to reach his ideological ends. An example was his use of unsubstantiated and even fabricated evidences to advocate the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Wolfowitz is also not known to be very concerned about democracy or human rights. He was the US Ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989 when Suharto was still the dictator of Indonesia. The head of Indonesian Human Rights Commission Abdul Hakim Garuda Nusantara once said “of all former US Ambassadors, he (Wolfowitz) was considered closest to and most influential with Suharto and his family, but he never showed interest in issues regarding democratization or respect of human rights.”
But after Suharto stood down in 1998 Wolfowitz said that Suharto was guilty “of suppressing political dissents, of weakening alternative leaders and of showing favoritism to his children’s business deals, frequently at the expense of sound economic policy.”
Wolfowitz should be well aware of Singapore’s hard line stance with protests and could have manipulated that to his advantage. He could be offering Singapore as a punching bag to those troublesome civil society organization activists.
yes, I don't trust Wolfowitz at all or anyone who can advocate war based on fabricated evidences!
I also don't like his manipulative way of fuelling the CSOs' fire at Singapore. He told the CSOs that "Enormous damage has been done... A lot of that damage has been to Singapore and it's self-inflicted," when he should have raised his concerns with Singapore government.
posted by locky2ky at 4:33 PM
1 Comments:
fabricated evidences
Yet more evidence that [some] Singaporeans do not understand the subtleties of the English language ...
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