The National Kidding Foundation and the Cheating Priest
A battle royale is shaping up in Singapore as the NKF shapes up
with a legal slugfest with our national controlled newspaper the
Straits Times. What's the problem ... well, for once the
asia-pacific newspaper actually printed something somewhat
controversial as it obtained a mysterious source Mr Tan who happily
divulged details of the construction of SG's 9TH Wonder of the
World, the gold plated celestial palace for pissing and shitting
that has been retrofitted into the swanky top floor penthouse of
the NKF foundation. I remember not too long ago that there were
also some murmurings in our forums about NKF execs flying business
class to other countries in their bid to get more moola for their
beneficiaries. My point is this: if you are the owner of a charity
and you are indulging in such excesses and not expecting it to one
day blow up in the public domain, than you are either stupid or you
think Singaporeans are blind. Yep that rhetorical question was
directed at Mr Durai. Somehow the images of suffering NKF patients
that were flashed ad nauseum in the past two weekends clashed
vigorously with simultaneous visions of an ass comfortably sitting
on gold and other asses comfortably reclining in a SQ business
class motorized chair.
As the National Kidding Foundation starts waving lawyer letters to
pulverize all the nay-sayers into kidney pies, one kinda wonders
whether they are gonna pay the power lawyers they got with some of
the spare change they earned from our oh-so-poor Pastor Sun's
bloodied back ... I sincerely hope that this lawsuit will not be
settled out of court. I sincerely hope that SPH will produce its Mr
X, with all the invoices and bills to show that yeah ... the 9th
Wonder does indeed exist in the Kidding Foundation's royal
level.
While there is no law to say that a charity cannot use the money
they obtain to survive, there is a slight difference when you are
serving suffering people and than living the high life however
discreet it may be. To put bluntly : exploitation means using the
suffering of people to get $1,000 and than feeding $300 bucks to
them, putting $300 bucks into a piggy bank, using $200 to pay for
maintenance and than using $200 to build gold-plated taps. That's
all. A very simple story.
Now let's look at the one that did not get away with excesses. Our
dear Father Kang, the image of the benevolent father-figure. Like
the Kidding Foundation, let's not be obscured by the notions of
suffering kidney patients and in this case, the notion of a
religious figure of benevolence and care. This is a simple and
clear-cut case. Parishioners give money probably to secure the
goodwill of God, help out the religious cause, buy a couple of
stained glass windows etc etc ... but than the person collecting
the money uses it for personal investment and gain. There is a
breach of trust regardless where the person is an paragon of faith
in the public eye. If Father Kang takes the moola and helps other
churches and other charities, ohh well, there's no crime ... even
if the intent of the moola is not for that, the underlying spirit
is the same. But in this case, the moola was for PERSONAL gain. So
to put it bluntly: Exploitation lor.
The point of this long ramble: well if you wanna exploit make sure
you don't get caught. And if you get caught, don't start appealing
to your records of benevolence cause it stinks even more.
Lau Ah Pek
19.04.04
