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- Sep 29, 2024
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Whatever your views about the sudden resignation of Acting Minister for Muslim Affairs Faishal Ibrahim, you have to feel for the man.
It is a huge personal tragedy to lose your job as a minister and sitting Member of Parliament in such a public manner, amid so much speculation about what was done and said in private messages to a woman.
The man was, by many accounts, a decent person performing a creditable job and had recently been promoted to acting minister. It is not hard to imagine what he and his family are going through now.
But the thing is that we cannot say whether he deserved such an outcome because we do not really know what happened.
That is a major problem. When you can’t form a view about it because of a dearth of information, there is no proper closure for the public.
In its place, all sorts of speculation and ill-informed judgment have taken root, many of which might be completely off the mark and unfair to the man or the woman involved.
These wild guesses include not just what he did but the decision made by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to accept Assoc Prof Faishal's resignation.
While Mr Wong has made clear that the outcome would have been the same regardless of which minister had been in Assoc Prof Faishal's shoes, several questions remain unanswered: Where did he cross the line and fall short of the standards expected? What are these standards anyway? Has the bar been set too high for public officers in matters concerning personal conduct that are not related to the job they perform?
More at https://url1.io/ZMjBa
It is a huge personal tragedy to lose your job as a minister and sitting Member of Parliament in such a public manner, amid so much speculation about what was done and said in private messages to a woman.
The man was, by many accounts, a decent person performing a creditable job and had recently been promoted to acting minister. It is not hard to imagine what he and his family are going through now.
But the thing is that we cannot say whether he deserved such an outcome because we do not really know what happened.
That is a major problem. When you can’t form a view about it because of a dearth of information, there is no proper closure for the public.
In its place, all sorts of speculation and ill-informed judgment have taken root, many of which might be completely off the mark and unfair to the man or the woman involved.
These wild guesses include not just what he did but the decision made by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to accept Assoc Prof Faishal's resignation.
While Mr Wong has made clear that the outcome would have been the same regardless of which minister had been in Assoc Prof Faishal's shoes, several questions remain unanswered: Where did he cross the line and fall short of the standards expected? What are these standards anyway? Has the bar been set too high for public officers in matters concerning personal conduct that are not related to the job they perform?
More at https://url1.io/ZMjBa
