Volunteer soldiers in SAF

A lot of fanfare and publicity have been given to this new animal called SAF Volunteer Corp. Someone must be congratulating himself or themselves that they are able to think out new ideas in the vein of innovative and creative solutions to a non existing problem.  And they must be saying how clever to get non citizens to the defence of the country.  Really, so good ah? The Alternative View, a blog site has an article on the foolishness of this scheme in the TRE and I quote a paragraph from the article here.

‘However, the fate of Singaporeans now lies in the hand of these newbies and volunteers because they are assigned “to one of 17 vocations …. to pick up rifles and patrol KEY installations like Changi Airport’.

Need we say more? With the spate of fake degree foreign talents slipping through, the security breaches at our entry points, the threats of terrorism, the pillar of our security system is already in tatters. (We are like walking naked with MERS in the island).  Yet, we are placing our lives in the hands of people who are trying to integrate – foreigners who step forward to volunteer to help protect our land.’

There are many valid points of concern raised in the article about security of our country. Presumably all the concerns must have been thought through and nothing to be alarmed, a kind of unnecessary fear mongering. Everything is well and fine. The volunteers will be a good thing for nation building and integration of foreigners.

Have we learnt anything yet? Many of the new citizens or PRs are unknown unknowns. Can anyone remember the new citizen who was given a SAF scholarship to study in Australia and ended up being charged for clobbering two SAF scholars to death? He was acquitted after an appeal, after serving several years in prison, for insufficient evidence.

Are we so naïve to trust foreigners in the defence of our nation? There is a saying, 来者不善，善者不来。The volunteers all look so nice, so innocent, so enthusiastic and so good. We are inviting them into our security organizations, train them to fight!

Not to worry, we have many good experience in the industries that foreigners are trustworthy and would not do harm to our people and country. We even have so many foreigners running out IT systems, exposed to all the confidential data and information especially in the finance and banking industries. If they wanted to, they will have all the information on the wealth of every citizen here.  But see, after so many years, no problem. Nothing bad happens. Trust the policy, trust the foreigners, they are very nice people. Everything has been thought out.

The Japanese also thought out everything about nuclear safety before they built all their nuclear power stations. Think Fukushima. Think Murphy!

Do not wait until some ugly incident happens to regret and call for a review, call for a BOI. We can’t allow our national security to go blowing in the wind. Anyone in the security business interested in such matters? Anyone think this is not suicidal, not idiocy? Maybe our super talents know better, like the millions of fakes and cheats that they think are genuine here. What security do you need for a hotel? A hotel is for hotel guests from all over the world. We need to treat hotel guests well or they would not come.

Open the legs. Oops, I mean open the immigration doors. Open up the SAF for more volunteers and new citizens and PRs. They are assets to our national defence.

Dum da da dum dum, dum dum.