Looking at some old news, I recalled I wanted to write something about this for more than a month.
Oct 22, 2008
…The guest of honour at Monday’s ceremony was MP for Joo Chiat Chan Soo Sen, who delivered a speech in Mandarin and English.
Contacted afterwards, he said he had been invited by a grassroots leader and accepted as he wanted to encourage the habit of life-long learning.
Told that WCU* was unaccredited, he said he had not been given any information about it. ‘If my presence there had given the university credibility, that was not my intention,’ he said.
* WCU: The unaccredited Panama based university West Coast University – a dubious outfit that sells degrees with little or no corresponding obligation on its students to clock class time.
Chan Soo Sen… This would have been one guy I would have swept into the rubbish bin of history. I remembered just how he failed to put an end to the Everitt Road neighbourhood dispute, which was full blown in 2002, and how Joo Chiat turned into Little Saigon – full of Vietnamese call girls. That’s not mentioning the bloom of sleazy 28-dollar massage parlours that sprouted along Joo Chiat Road for a brief period before the 2006 General Elections. All of these happened during his tenure as MP of Joo Chiat and it would appear to me he either never walk the ground, or he placed no effort whatsoever in solving the problems of his ward.
Nevertheless, I would not have paid more attention to him since he will be the problem of the people of Joo Chiat, who re-elected him as their MP with 65.01% of the votes. It was however no surprise that his votes were lower than the national average of 66.6% and also that of the 2001 elections (83.5%).
If I were him, I would have wonder whether that 18.49% which now voted for the opponent were not merely just votes showing their displeasure with my dismal performance. However, I recalled when Chan was asked about his shrinking majority, he showed no sign of reflecting upon his performance. In fact, if I recalled correctly, he said something about the people turning to the TaliPAP when the going gets tough, and how they felt more comfortable to give the opposition some opportunities when times are better. There was no self reflection on what had gone wrong and no talk about how he could serve his constituents better. If one often read between the lines, it would even seem like the voters are simply… being ungrateful!
I began to have a very bad impression him, and yet when I thought this is the last I will hear of him, I read about eastcoastlife‘s case (which was first mentioned on this blog here) almost a year later.
Eastcoastlife’s encounter adds yet another record to my bad impression of Chan. And just as I thought 2008 could be just another year without another fxxk-up for my record book, Chan managed to meet my expectations again with this WCU fiasco.
Does he actually believe his presence does not lending some credibility to the shady university? Even if that is true, is he not even concerned that by being at this event, there will be some damage done to his own reputation? After all, when someone put his own squeaky clean compatriots together with anything that might even hint of any improper behaviour, that poor bastard is sued in a court of law til bankruptcy even if he hadn’t meant anything insidious! Simply put, is Chan not aware that ‘I don’t know’ is just not good enough to explain this fiasco?
Anyway, it’s time for some accounting, Mr Chan. It’s has been more than two years since the last election. That means more than two years since he promised to clean up Joo Chiat. Since I did not read anymore about the prostitution problem in Joo Chiat anymore, I had thought Chan has eliminated the problem completely and restore some wholesomeness to Joo Chiat over the past 2 years. On top of that, I recalled some measures put into place to stop new pubs from obtaining licenses and lease in that area.
Sadly, I was terribly wrong because only last week (Nov 17) I read about the new measure that will only take effect on Jan 1, 2009. The measure bans all hotels in the Joo Chiat area from offering hourly rates. In simpler terms, it will now be more costly for anyone to take a prostitute to any of these hotels for a quick bang. A few friends who frequent the place tells me that while it appeared to them no new pubs have sprung up in the area, there are a few still operating there probably because their lease are still running. If I am not wrong, either Eastcoastlife or an old friend mentioned to me that the Hotel 81s and Fragrance hotels sprouting up in the area have done wonders to wreck the property prices as no one would like to own a property in an area known as a de-facto red light district.
I won’t ask why it took Chan so long to get this implemented. But the real question here is, how are they going to enforce this? Are they going to spot check the hotels frequently to ensure that none of them are offering rooms at hourly rate? If so, what impact will it have on the hotels and their true guests? And what measures will be taken against violators?
But again, the wise crack who came up with this idea may have thought it unnecessary to conduct any checks at all. All they need is to spot check the pubs to catch desperate customers getting their rocks off within the pub premises, and then they can legally force the pubs to close for license violations.
For Chan’s sake, I hope it won’t take too long for this to happen. Otherwise we would be reading about hotel owners in Joo Chiat complaining about the checks causing an impact on their business, or residents themselves writing in to the Straits Stooge Times Forum about the lack of action in removing the cancer / eyesore in their neighbourhood.
And if that happens, it’s definitely time for them to vote Chan Soo Sen out once and for all, provided that Joo Chiat SMC doesn’t suddenly disappear into Hong Kah GRC just like how Braddell Heights disappeared into Marine Parade GRC.
For those who are scratching their heads… I do know Hong Kah GRC is nowhere near Joo Chiat. Just don’t worry because the brainiacs at the Electoral Department or something will find a way to make it fit in there.
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