Serious Crack Train Fiasco, The Political revelations from it.

Now that the SMRT Crack Train fiasco has almost run its course, it’s time to sit back and analyze the behind the scenes political machinations and revelations by all the parties involved and by other parties that we thought were not involved.
Revelation number 1.
The PRC govt is involved in this. Some people like Scroobal thought that it took 7 days for Penang Khaw to get the facts from all the departments and get the facts before making a public statement. This is not true. The facts could be ascertained after 2 days. There are cracks in the aluminum of the trains and they have to be send back to china for fixing because it was so bad, it could not be repaired here on site. How hard is that to figure out? More then likely, when Penang Khaw took over as transport minister, he was already briefed on the crack train situation and how they had to be shipped back. So, the long delay of 7 days was obviously not for fact gathering, and could not have been a surprise to him. What then was it for? It was for consultation and advice from the PRC central govt.
The first thing that happened when the news broke, was that the PAP asked who the hell is Factwire? I asked myself the same question. I can guarantee you that they called the China govt to ask them about Factwire, how to shut them down, how to put pressure on them and how to whack them. They were probably told by the PRC govt that Factwire was also a torn in their sides, and being crowd funded and largely anonymous, they were having a hard time containing them too. This made sense to me when part of Penang Khaw’s public statement blamed Factwire as a political agitator, when he said “We are caught in a crossfire and there are factions in Hong Kong who wanted to cause some difficulties for mainland China. I have no inside information on whether that is true or not, but it’s possible. Unfortunately, we become a convenient bullet and collateral damage.”
Boy, what a shock, you would expect to hear those same words from a Politburo member in the PRC CEC. Not from the mouth of a Singaporean politician. When the Crack Train news broke, Penang Khaw must have called his China counterpart and said something like “KNN, I thought we had an agreement to keep this train exchange secret. Now one of your news outlet come out with the scoop?” And was then told that Factwire also did other exposes on the PRC govt and the HKG govt. And that they could not control them and that they trying to embarrass the HLG and China govt by digging the MSRT train incident up. Hence Penang Khaw ended up echoing China’s claims that these guys are trouble makers, and just want to create trouble for China. By making references to a crossfire, Khaw implies that this is an internal matter between Factwire and the China govt. Completely ignoring the fact that everything reported by Factwire was fact and that the trains were very defective and being shipped back in secrecy to China. So, there was an element of Chinese govt involvement in this as far as I can tell.
Revelation 2
Boy oh Boy, SAF ex scholar generals are really untouchable. When Factwire broke the news, who would speak to the public must have been like a hot potato bouncing between SMRT, LTA and MOT. Each of them must have been pointing the finger at the other one to explain to the public what was happening. Maybe Lee Hsien Loong had to play referee to all 3 parties. SMRT had a strong case for being arrowed to face the public music because after all, they operated the trains. LTA also had a strong case because they actually owned the trains and were the ones that signed the contracts to buy them. The entity with the least exposure was MOT, and but they ended sacrificing themselves and make Penang Khaw face the public. And not only face the public, but face the public with a stupid explanation.
My bet was that they would have used LTA Chief Chew Men Leong to face the music and take the public outcry. But I was wrong. They put Penang Khaw up there to do the impossible. i.e. spin the Crack Train affair in a positive light. Do you think Penang Khaw was a happy camper? Damn right he was not. He must have appealed to LHL not to be made the scapegoat over this. But too bad. It turns out that the Head of SMRT is former RSAF scholar general Desmond Quek, and the LTA is headed by former RSN scholar Admiral Chew Men Leong. I believe the debate ended being that since the SAF scholar general club sacrificed Lui Tuck Yew the last time, this time it has to be some one from the PSC side. Still this is very powerful that these 2 ex scholars did not take the fall, so I think the implication here is that in the future, all SAF scholar generals and admirals in high positions in the civil and stat board field will be untouchable. Also, this could mean that Penang Khaw is now officially on the political hotseat. His Predecessor Lui Tuck Yew was "retired" after all the train disruption screw ups, and its fair to say that Penang Khaw has gone through even bigger screws ups (deaths on the rail line of 2 workers, cracktraingate, and continued disruptions) and must be watching his backside very carefully. Lui's retirement was so complete the he was blacklisted and to this day does not serve on the BOD of any stat board or GLCs as PAP Ministers are apt to do after politics. Khaw must be watching nervously.
Political Implication 3
The Chinese and the PAP now have a joint common enemy, Factwire. My enemy’s enemy is my friend. Will this result in closer co-operation between the Chinese security apparatus and the ISD? You better believe it. Right now, the ISD is going crazy trying to figure out who are the Factwire operatives in Singapore. Someone in Singapore took those photos of the covered train being shipped off under cover and police escort. Are there Singaporeans working with Factwire to do their groundwork in Singapore? Or did Factwire operatives fly into Singapore and take the pictures? Who tip off Factwire as to the shipping date, time and location? The Chinese certainly want to know the same answers too. So, each is going to scratch the other’s back.
Who will this make nervous? Uncle Sam, of course. Any closer co-operation between China and Singapore in the field of internal security is a worry for them. They do not want the PAP to shift out of the American orbit even slightly. Only time will tell what level of increase will take place.
That concludes my 2 cents.

Take it from me. Khaw, the Perm Sec and MOT had no idea about the cracks or that trains were being shipped back until Factwire was carried the story. LTA did not even report this in their annual report for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. LTA CEO who was at same press conference with Khaw told the press that they were looking at "further compensation" which is new development. In fact no compensation was ever paid. There is no such things as trains lying idle. If that was the case we then ordered excess stock and wasted out money. Clearly the train being away for 4 months means it cannot earn revenue - opportunity cost. The reduction of of fixing period for the entire batch at 2 trains at a time was reduced from 7 years to 5 years within 24 hrs. Kawasaki readily agreed when the expose went viral.

Because of this incident, 2 new things came out - fix period reduced from 7 to 5 and they are now looking for "further compensation. The latter because they know that the Auditor General will want to know why there is no compensation when 26 trains x 4 mths were not in service.

Heads are going to roll but as usual, it will done to later to avoid admitting a major mistake.

scroobal said:

Take it from me. Khaw, the Perm Sec and MOT had no idea about the cracks or that trains were being shipped back until Factwire was carried the story. LTA did not even report this in their annual report for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. LTA CEO who was at same press conference with Khaw told the press that they looking at "further compensation" which is new development. In fact no compensation was ever paid. There is no such things as trains lying idle. If that was the case either we then ordered excess stock and wasted out money. Clearly the train being away for 4 months means it cannot earn revenue - opportunity cost. The reduction of of fixing period for the entire batch at 2 trains at a time was reduced from 7 years to 5 years within 24 hrs. Kawasaki readily agreed when the expose went viral.

Because of this incident, 2 things came out - fix period reduced from 7 to 5 and they are now looking for "further compensation. The latter because they know that the Auditor General will want to know why there is no compensation as have effectively taken out 26 trains x 4 mths.

Heads are going to roll but as usual, it will done to later to avoid admitting a major mistake.

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U sounding more and more absurd. You seriously expect me to believe that the current CEO of LTA and previous one, Chew Hock Yong, conspired to hide this from MOT? The same MOT that created the LTA as a stat board? Oh please. MOT has its people all over LTA, they are one and the same organization. To expect me believe that for the last couple of years, LTA has been loading trains out of a SMRT yard, transporting them under police escort to the docks and loading it on to a ship for China, all without informing their parent org MOT boggles the mind. Which one of the Chews got a pair of balls that big? That is just ridiculous.

By the way, not showing on the annual reports means nothing. On the annual report, its not necessary to indicate the trains are being send back for repairs for the simple reason that the trains are still being depreciated as per the allowed schedule and the revenues earned by LTA for leasing the trains to SMRT have already been booked. Therefore, all appears to be normal even though the trains are not in service. It does not show up on the SMRT books either as the trains do not belong to them. Maybe a small decline in revenues due to the lost opportunity cost and the higher maintenance required for these cracked trains.

Papsmearer said:

U sounding more and more absurd. You seriously expect me to believe that the current CEO of LTA and previous one, Chew Hock Yong, conspired to hide this from MOT? The same MOT that created the LTA as a stat board? Oh please. MOT has its people all over LTA, they are one and the same organization. To expect me believe that for the last couple of years, LTA has been loading trains out of a SMRT yard, transporting them under police escort to the docks and loading it on to a ship for China, all without informing their parent org MOT boggles the mind. Which one of the Chews got a pair of balls that big? That is just ridiculous.

By the way, not showing on the annual reports means nothing. On the annual report, its not necessary to indicate the trains are being send back for repairs for the simple reason that the trains are still being depreciated as per the allowed schedule and the revenues earned by LTA for leasing the trains to SMRT have already been booked. Therefore, all appears to be normal even though the trains are not in service. It does not show up on the SMRT books either as the trains do not belong to them. Maybe a small decline in revenues due to the lost opportunity cost and the higher maintenance required for these cracked trains.

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Some people are better at fairy tales than looking at numbers. 1.2 billion company with pathetic millions in profit cannot hope to pay off principle and interest for multiple billion infrastructure. It is a joke that SAW did anything substantial to boost SMRT revenues and profits. Machiam like that follow Mediacorpse and develop condos lor.

LTA pays for the trains not SMRT. One is a Stat board and an arm of the public service and the other is a public listed company albeit GLC which is the PTO (public transport operator) which was given the concession to operate the service.

The money for the trains came from the public purse. Its a grant from the government and considered plant infrastructure. There is no P&L in then public service. That is why these things get hidden away conveniently

If SMRT paid for trains, and 26 trains out of 35 of a total contract value of $360m is found defective, Company Law and SGX provisions require SMRT to disclose to all shareholders and potential shareholders by filing with SGX. It would automatically become public. LTA and MOT does not have this requirement

If you cannot figure why this elephant could be hidden so conveniently you obviously have no idea what is going on. SMRT does not own the trains, it just operates them. The revenue collected by SMRT must be split with LTA.

Bigfuck said:

Some people are better at fairy tales than looking at numbers. 1.2 billion company with pathetic millions in profit cannot hope to pay off principle and interest for multiple billion infrastructure. It is a joke that SAW did anything substantial to boost SMRT revenues and profits. Machiam like that follow Mediacorpse and develop condos lor.

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Bigfuck said:

Some people are better at fairy tales than looking at numbers. 1.2 billion company with pathetic millions in profit cannot hope to pay off principle and interest for multiple billion infrastructure. It is a joke that SAW did anything substantial to boost SMRT revenues and profits. Machiam like that follow Mediacorpse and develop condos lor.

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even with billions of taxpayers subsidies for the mrt infrastructure and sbs buses,smrt can barely show a tiny profit on its balance sheet.....less than 100 million a year.....i wonder why is SMRT and comfortdelgro even allowed to stay as private companies while taxpayers are subsidizing them out of the ass,not like privatization has improved their efficiency as SMRT is run by paper generals who clearly have zero clue how to run a transportation company.if we are subsidizing billions for all their trains and buses might as well just make the damn thing free already,whats another 1 or 2 billion a year?

smrt should follow hong kong mtr style,develop shopping malls around their train stations and push human traffic thru the malls and make money off the rents.although many of the mrt stations already have malls around them,there is still some opportunities they can grab if they are fast enough.ultimately the goal is to have a minimall outside every mrt station,as long as theres traffic coming out of the station theres money to be made.saw piak hwa took a step in the right direction,i think MTR's business model is genius,the symbiosis is nearly perfect.one day im going to start a transportation/real estate/retail company too.every passenger that walks by a old chang kee or a takoyaki or koi bubble tea shop or toast box is an opportunity to make a couple of extra bucks from them,lots of mrt stations have huge cavernous empty space in them that requires huge amounts of expensive air conditioning,i dont understand why they arent utilized as retail space.pop in a garrette's popcorn,a swissbake or a breadtalk and watch the profits on the balance sheet go up up up!!!!!

Papsmearer said:

U sounding more and more absurd.

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the same moron who claimed a couple of days ago that google servers cannot cope with the launch of pokemon go. google engineers are laughing their arses off. meanwhile, google server farms all over the world are serving over a billion users simultaneously doing multiple searches on google search on android, ios, chrome and windows platforms and hundreds of millions of android and ios users simultaneously running google maps, turn by turn navigation and streetview. pokemon just signed up 22 million last night and adding 1 million a day. it's a drop in the bucket. sbf peeps need to critically think. don't believe the bs from this tpx. half will be right, the other half will be pure bs - just like any casino punter.

scroobal said:

LTA pays for the trains not SMRT. One is a Stat board and an arm of the public service and the other is a public listed company albeit GLC which is the PTO (public transport operator) which was given the concession to operate the service.

The money for the trains came from the public purse. Its a grant from the government and considered plant infrastructure. There is no P&L in then public service. That is why these things get hidden away conveniently

.

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Stop mouthing your shit. In the stat boards there is a P & L every year and its found in the annual report. Therefore, LTA has a P & L, just like HDB, etc. U don't believe, just go and look up their annual report. LTA is a stat board 100% operated and owned by MOT. MOT staff are seconded to it when it was first started up. money for capital purchases and infrastructure construction and maintenance comes in part from any revenues raised by the stat board, and from its own parent Ministry.

eatshitndie said:

the same moron who claimed a couple of days ago that google servers cannot cope with the launch of pokemon go. google engineers are laughing their arses off. meanwhile, google server farms all over the world are serving over a billion users simultaneously doing multiple searches on google search on android, ios, chrome and windows platforms and hundreds of millions of android and ios users simultaneously running google maps, turn by turn navigation and streetview. pokemon just signed up 22 million last night and adding 1 million a day. it's a drop in the bucket. sbf peeps need to critically think. don't believe the bs from this tpx. half will be right, the other half will be pure bs - just like any casino punter.

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Did scroobal claim that, I did not know.

It called the income or comprehensive income statement for obvious reasons. They are like the various ministries including SAF operate along the same accounting lines. They are usually in deficit including HDB and have to be topped up by grants from the govt. Their role is not to make a profit. Its quite basic accounting. If you have a surplus and you are the head of stat board or a govt department you have to explain why your programmes have not been completed or why your financials projections are out of whack.

Papsmearer said:

Stop mouthing your shit. In the stat boards there is a P & L every year and its found in the annual report. Therefore, LTA has a P & L, just like HDB, etc. U don't believe, just go and look up their annual report. LTA is a stat board 100% operated and owned by MOT. MOT staff are seconded to it when it was first started up. money for capital purchases and infrastructure construction and maintenance comes in part from any revenues raised by the stat board, and from its own parent Ministry.

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@ Frenchbriefs.

SMRT cannot duplicate what MTR does in HKG for many reasons. So, forget about, its just wishful thinking. The PAP had a different agenda for SMRT right from the word go.

The PAP was looking to privatize the mass transit system here and pump money into Stomachsick Holdings to make it look larger and hence con the voters into thinking they are making money. If SMRT were burdened with having to pay for the capital equipment like trains and infrastructure, they would never be profitable, and hence no one would want to buy the stock. By rights, the PAP are not supposed to privatize and sell a company containing assets paid by the people, and owned by the national sovereign wealth fund. MTR is funded and own by the HKG govt. They know they will lose money from mass transit operations, just like every where else in the world.

Because land near the MTR stations are also owned and controlled by the govt, they could be developed into retail enterprises and use the rent to defray the cost of operating the trains. This is where everything is all fractured in singapore. The land surrounding the MRT stations are owned by URA or some other organization, and they have no interest in helping to defray the train costs. They rather sell to the highes bidder and let them build condos or shopping centres. SMRT also does not care about defraying the cost of mass transit because the are not burden with having to pay and finance the capital costs and can subsequently concentrate on making money from the fares and from what ever retail they have. LTA is caught with the biggest liability because they build the tracks, infrastructure, and own the trains, but cannot demand enough rents and fees from SMRT and SBS Transit to come even close to breaking even. They don;t care because they are owned by the MOT and its a govt stat board. Any losses are absorbed by the taxpayers.

In the last analysis, the people in charge of LTA, SMRT, and MOT are just not as entreprenuerial, smart, or as business savvy as the ones running MTR. You have 2 ex SAF general rank officers and Penangite running them. They are not even close in business acumen and mass transit experience to the ones that HKG MTR has.

@Scroobal. So, you admit now there is financials income statements involved, versus what you said as no P & L.

Bigfuck said:

Some people are better at fairy tales than looking at numbers. 1.2 billion company with pathetic millions in profit cannot hope to pay off principle and interest for multiple billion infrastructure. It is a joke that SAW did anything substantial to boost SMRT revenues and profits. Machiam like that follow Mediacorpse and develop condos lor.

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She managed to maximise retail space.

You need to brush up on your comprehension. There is no P&L in any Govt department or Stat Board. If you can find one, I will graciously concede. You claim that HBD has one, you might want to show the link. Not fuzzy about year. The words income and profit are not interchangeable in the legal, accounting and layman's term.

Papsmearer said:

@Scroobal. So, you admit now there is financials income statements involved, versus what you said as no P & L.

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for a sinkie stat board much like a non-profit organization they need to run a surplus, not a "profit", although they seem similar on a balance sheet but are treated differently for accounting and tax purposes. utility commissions, civil authorities, political campaign organizations and churches in the u.s. have been using this ruse to keep surpluses from being taxed although we know they are extremely "profitable" enterprises and fund raisers disguised as npo's.

Take female as a similar example, you could called it opposite sex, baby, babe, girl, lady, woman, bitch, etc.

scroobal said:

....The words income and profit are not interchangeable in the legal, accounting and layman's term.

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scroobal said:

LTA pays for the trains not SMRT. One is a Stat board and an arm of the public service and the other is a public listed company albeit GLC which is the PTO (public transport operator) which was given the concession to operate the service.

The money for the trains came from the public purse. Its a grant from the government and considered plant infrastructure. There is no P&L in then public service. That is why these things get hidden away conveniently

If SMRT paid for trains, and 26 trains out of 35 of a total contract value of $360m is found defective, Company Law and SGX provisions require SMRT to disclose to all shareholders and potential shareholders by filing with SGX. It would automatically become public. LTA and MOT does not have this requirement

If you cannot figure why this elephant could be hidden so conveniently you obviously have no idea what is going on. SMRT does not own the trains, it just operates them. The revenue collected by SMRT must be split with LTA.

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Both, you mentioned are owned by the government, one way or the other. All the laws, regulations are just "punch & judy" shows...who controls SGX? Who pays for all these, directly or indirectly out of their pockets? the sick to their senses of Sinkingtothecore...

The short of all these...... all of these people in charge have no accountability , for they hide behind "smoke & mirrors"...so it is hard to pin down their faults...& at the same time collecting fat salaries, again, directly & indirectly who pays...

the fools are paying....no need the percentage!....well known fact!