The Cabinet Omerta - The Changi Airport story

[scroobal]

Here is a phenomenon that has held very strong over 5 decades. It is even more interesting that even the top ranks of civil servants are not aware why Changi Airport was built and put it down to the exceptional visionary powers of the old man.

Sometime in 73 -74, Min of Comunication and Min Of Finance realised that Paya Lebar airport could not cope with increasing traffic and looked into it. The final decision was to build further facilities and after 15 years or so consider Changi as the British had handed over their airbase and huge facilities. Went to cabinet, done and dusted. A billion dollars was committed to expand Paya Lebar. There was no dissension and it was unanimous even among the civil servants in the Ministry. The man who was running Ministry of Communication was Yong Nyuk Lin. The minister, a key man of the old man had only recently done the controversial but successful traffic management changes such as fringe carparks and carpools etc. He was also the brother in law of Old man's wife. Both sisters married these 2 ministers. Yong was also the business partner of old man in their gum business during the Japanese Occupation and during one of the visits over gum making, old man met his wife. So you can appreciate the bond. Business partner, brother-in-law, founding cabinet members etc.

In 1976, the PAP was in the midst of the elections husting and old man was on stage speaking at a rally near where Tanjung Rhu , Kampung Arang area is. It is also on the flight path of Paya Lebar airport. In the course of his legendary oratory, a plane was beginning it approach and the sound drowned out old man's speech for a good few minutes with the audience making handsignals that they can't hear. Old man lost his cool and snapped. When the sound dissipated, he blurted out to the audience that the Govt will build a new airport in Changi if the PAP gets a strong mandate and they will not have live with the noise.

That comment became headlines the next day in the Straits Times. That is the first time any member of the cabinet or the civil service heard of it. Yong immediately called the MP of the area who was at the rally and he relayed what had happened, not realising what had taken place earlier with the airport discussions.

To cut a long story short, Yong resigned for undermining his authority and he was followed by the Head of Civil Aviation who left for Montreal. After cooling down, Yong accepted the post of High Commissioner to UK.

Ministry of Finance immediately questioned the decision as more than a billion dollars had been suck including a new passenger terminal. Old man than drove the entire agenda andas he put the Comms Ministry offside, he used PSA to build the airport. That is how PSA chief engineer Vijaretnam and Howe Yoong Chong got roped in.

Till today none of this people have a clue why this happened and assumed that old man was visionary. Even the cabinet ministers did not reveal to the civil service that it went against the cabinet decision and no discussion had taken place until it appeared in the Straits Times. It also explains why the only Singaporean civil servant and longest serving Cabinet Secretary the late Wong Chooi Sen continued to hold the position of cabinet secretary even when he went past the age of 70. All the secrets went with him to the grave.

To the credit of the Cabinet, none of them broke the Omerta over this or any other decison. The closest was when Dhanabalan revealed why he left the cabinet but his was cryptic and GCT filled the blanks.

A billion dollar written off on a wimp. To his credit, he made sure that Changi Airport was exceptional though 15 years of its time.

 

[Debonerman]

Pure speculation and conjecture. A good fairy tale tho! LKY must be laughing his old balls off. Changi Airport opened in 1981 with just one passenger terminal. Think about the time frame of 1976 to 1981. 5 years to plan and execute this mammoth project? Lee Kuan Yew makes spot decisions that makes or breaks a nation just because he couldn't make himself heard?

As for the claimed $1 billion spent. Note the initial cost of the first MRT network was $5 billion! Paya Lebar then needed upgrading for the increased traffic till the opening of Changi.

Never mind. We all need entertaintment on lazy weekends. Indians are good at that!

 

[seiyup warrior]

Are u talking about the Minister who is notoriously known as THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN,responsible for erecting manually-operated gantries near Restricted
Zones.
SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN is a popular TV show in the 70s,starring Lee Majors whose ex-wife is Farrah Fawcett of the famed Charlie,s Angels.

 

[kukubird58]

hahahaha.....i didn't know the whole government and civil service consists of 1 person.....Wong CS.

 

[Cruxx]

Pure speculation and conjecture. A good fairy tale tho! LKY must be laughing his old balls off. Changi Airport opened in 1981 with just one passenger terminal. Think about the time frame of 1976 to 1981. 5 years to plan and execute this mammoth project? Lee Kuan Yew makes spot decisions that makes or breaks a nation just because he couldn't make himself heard?

As for the claimed $1 billion spent. Note the initial cost of the first MRT network was $5 billion! Paya Lebar then needed upgrading for the increased traffic till the opening of Changi.

Never mind. We all need entertaintment on lazy weekends. Indians are good at that!

Why do so many samsters accord so much credence to the "inside info" of scroobal?

 

[Narong Wongwan]

Till today this area still plagued by noise from overhead aircrafts.
The military ones training for NDP.

 

[scroobal]

Glad you spotted the irony. He did not keep the election promise. Mindef took over and Finance was pacified. The plan to move things to Tengah and expand fell thru.

Till today this area still plagued by noise from overhead aircrafts.
The military ones training for NDP.

 

[lianbeng]

Here is a phenomenon that has held very strong over 5 decades. It is even more interesting that even the top ranks of civil servants are not aware why Changi Airport was built and put it down to the exceptional visionary powers of the old man...


.

lianbeng thanks scroobal for this interesting part of airport history unknown to our younger generations.

 

[Papsmearer]

Excuse me Scroobal, I donch think it happened like that lah. My father knew Chooi Sen for many years, I neber heard this story. Fact of the matter is that Paya Lebar's writing on the wall was very plain to see. There is only so much you can expand there, without demolishing all the residential areas nearby. Everyone knew that air travel was going to take off, and with larger planes and bigger volumes, there was limitations to what u can do with PY. Changi was the only real option, via land reclamation. The original Changi airbase was not even big enough, but they were next to the sea, so expansion was possible. As for the airplane noise drowning out Old Goat's speech, yes, I heard that one, and yes he was peeved. But many things smaller than that peeved him, like a dirty coffee cup will do the same. LOL.

 

[scroobal]

Everyone who saw the headlines on ST that morning got a shock of their life. This includes Ministry of Communication and Ministry of Finance and the entire Cabinet. That is the first time that they knew Changi will go 15 years ahead. 2 people resigned over the affair. The minister and the Director of Civil Aviation. This is in the mid 70s when life was slower and the growth was good but not spectacular.

There is no doubt that Changi was in the plan but the decision to build was put off for 15 years as the volumes were projected like all normal.

ps. was your Dad into radio model planes.

The point that I am making is that the Cabinet never revealed what happened including WKS. Even the head of Civil Service and the perm secs have no clue.

 

[Windsor]

Everyone who saw the headlines on ST that morning got a shock of their life. This includes Ministry of Communication and Ministry of Finance and the entire Cabinet. That is the first time that they knew Changi will go 15 years ahead. 2 people resigned over the affair. The minister and the Director of Civil Aviation. This is in the mid 70s when life was slower and the growth was good but not spectacular.

There is no doubt that Changi was in the plan but the decision to build was put off for 15 years as the volumes were projected like all normal.

ps. was your Dad into radio model planes.

The point that I am making is that the Cabinet never revealed what happened including WKS. Even the head of Civil Service and the perm secs have no clue.

It is possible they had to leave not because of disagreement but due possibly to lack of foresight as had been proven that moving to Changi was the best decision. Remember too that the decision was made in the midst of the Paya Lebar Airport expansion. That such a hasty decision was made could be due to not forecasting correctly.

I was also cursing driving along ECP just after they widened it the 2nd time and was wondering why expand another lane just after they had widened it. Bad planning?

 

[Papsmearer]

It is possible they had to leave not because of disagreement but due possibly to lack of foresight as had been proven that moving to Changi was the best decision. Remember too that the decision was made in the midst of the Paya Lebar Airport expansion. That such a hasty decision was made could be due to not forecasting correctly.

I was also cursing driving along ECP just after they widened it the 2nd time and was wondering why expand another lane just after they had widened it. Bad planning?

Singapore is full of bad planning decision. The decision to sanitize the old Chinatown was bad, now URA rushing to restore the old style shophouses and all that. The decision to allow en bloc is also bad. Tearing down perfectly good 20 year old condos to build new ones is just saying your planner could have allowed higher density originally. many more poor planning decisions around.

 

[Papsmearer]

Everyone who saw the headlines on ST that morning got a shock of their life. This includes Ministry of Communication and Ministry of Finance and the entire Cabinet. That is the first time that they knew Changi will go 15 years ahead. 2 people resigned over the affair. The minister and the Director of Civil Aviation. This is in the mid 70s when life was slower and the growth was good but not spectacular.

There is no doubt that Changi was in the plan but the decision to build was put off for 15 years as the volumes were projected like all normal.

ps. was your Dad into radio model planes.

The point that I am making is that the Cabinet never revealed what happened including WKS. Even the head of Civil Service and the perm secs have no clue.

If that is the case, u will have a long wait. Only Francis revealed things, even Devan took many secrets to his grave, and he actually hated Old Goat! No my dad was not into radio model planes, that is basically Chooi Sen's hobby and passion. But they address each other by the last 2 chinese names. My dad addressed him as Chooi Sen. He is a little bit of a terror, being Old Goat's loyal PAPpy lapdog, and civil service enforcer. LOL.

 

[kingrant]

He never wrote all that in his two volumes of his memoirs. He also purposely left out:

1. How during his voyage by steamship to Cambridge as a young cocky student, he circumvented the water rationing onboard by waking up an hr earlier and stole 2 other persons' ration to wash his face.

2. How he suffered insomnia in his early PM years and made HDB engineers go to the Istana to "silence" the toilet bowl noisy discharge by improvising a suction pump instead of the normal flush system.

3. How he refused to to drink a glass of water during a school surprise visit not because "the PUB water from the tap was dirty, but the glass had stains all over". The acting Principal was sentenced to eternal damnation in his acting capacity who later resigned as he was not going anywhere.

 

[Bigfuck]

If what you write is true, I can safely declare that LKY was mad a few decades ago, but the old guard made sure his madness was contained to some extent. I think his madness may have developed from the time he was held by his ear by his old man when young and something that may have happened during the Kempeitai days. That explains everything

 

[scroobal]

In 73/74 the oil crisis hit the world and in 76, the world finally went into recession, travel dipped badly. The decision by Min of Comms and Finance was also on the back of an extensive report by a British Civil Aviation Consultant.

This was done on a wimp but when things began to pick up, it was ready in 1981. In the meantime a brand new passenger terminal in Paya Lebar when into the dumbs.

It is possible they had to leave not because of disagreement but due possibly to lack of foresight as had been proven that moving to Changi was the best decision. Remember too that the decision was made in the midst of the Paya Lebar Airport expansion. That such a hasty decision was made could be due to not forecasting correctly.

I was also cursing driving along ECP just after they widened it the 2nd time and was wondering why expand another lane just after they had widened it. Bad planning?

 

[Bigfuck]

He never wrote all that in his two volumes of his memoirs. He also purposely left out:
1. How during his voyage by steamship to Cambridge as a young cocky student, he circumvented the water rationing onboard by waking up an hr earlier and stole 2 other persons' ration to wash his face.

2. How he suffered insomnia in his early PM years and made HDB engineers go to the Istana to "silence" the toilet bowl noisy discharge by improvising a suction pump instead of the normal flush system.

3. How he refused to to drink a glass of water during a school surprise visit not because "the PUB water from the tap was dirty, but the glass had stains all over". The acting Principal was sentenced to eternal damnation in his acting capacity who later resigned as he was not going anywhere.

Do tell. We must compile all of this and keep it in cyberspace. It will be more effective than his books written by ISD dogs.

 

[scroobal]

He was certainly exceptional both in the positive and negative sense. Not many people are aware that he skillfully manipulated Fong Swee Suan and Lim Chin Siong to agitate the bus workesr until the Hock Lee Bus riots occurred. Once it started, he took off that very night to Fraser's Hill and had a good break for 3 weeks. That is why the civil servants and the English speaking hated the PAP.

If what you write is true, I can safely declare that LKY was mad a few decades ago, but the old guard made sure his madness was contained to some extent. I think his madness may have developed from the time he was held by his ear by his old man when young and something that may have happened during the Kempeitai days. That explains everything

 

[scroobal]

Here is one for the road, trivial but tells you the man and his methods. I gave this out years ago in SBF but it is one my favovrite story. People who worked in Singtel would know of the yellow ferrari parked in the basement of Singtel. When old man found out that he is youngest boy bought a ferrai, he called up the GM of the dealership. He told the chap to bring the spare key. In the Istana, the chap was given a long winded lecture and then told him to pick up the car at the basement without the knowledge of the son.

Remember at that time LHY was the CEO of the number 1 capitalised company in SGX.

 

[Bigfuck]

Here is one for the road, trivial but tells you the man and his methods. I gave this out years ago in SBF but it is one my favovrite story. People who worked in Singtel would know of the yellow ferrari parked in the basement of Singtel. When old man found out that he is youngest boy bought a ferrai, he called up the GM of the dealership. He told the chap to bring the spare key. In the Istana, the chap was given a long winded lecture and then told him to pick up the car at the basement without the knowledge of the son.

Remember at that time LHY was the CEO of the number 1 capitalised company in SGX.

Geeze, if one the sons or grandson kept a mistress,would the old man send a gigolo and poke her out of the country? Oh well, socially and mentally dysfunctional people here.