Reading from a file, Mr Lee pulled out the following facts about
Captain Goh.
A Malaysian with permanent residence
status here, he had accepted Australian PR in 2002, moved his wife
and children to Perth, shipped his car and sold his
flat.
You told someone from IE Singapore that the grass had stopped
growing in Singapore, did you not, he asked.
He turned to one of the pilots and asked if he knew the Malaysian
had bought a house in Australia and had this option to bail
out.
No, the person answered.
'No?' repeated Mr Lee.
'That's deception, isn't it?' he asked Capt Goh.
The pilot in the hot seat tried to defend himself but it was too
late. The line in the sand between him and the Singaporeans had
been drawn for him.
'My daughter is still in school here,' he
tried saying, adding this showed he still had roots in
Singapore.
But wasn't that because she did not like school in Australia and
came back, Mr Lee shot back calmly.
Silence.
The castigation, no doubt a tactic of divide-and-rule, also
established a more significant point: It is not up to PRs or other
foreigners to get into union matters and play around with decisions
that affect the rest of Singaporeans.
[color=#444444]Capt Goh had tried to
undermine the interests of SIA and Singapore, he said. 'If
Singapore goes down, you go down,' he told the Singaporeans across
the table. 'He doesn't go down.'[/color]
