[Sentinel]

You naive Sinkies fell for the oldest trick in a lawyer's book. Set up a straw man and then knock it down. Shan as a skilled lawyer is perfectly adept at that. Being in charge of clearing conflicts for major financial institutions for the last 30 years, I can assure you that what he did would not have been allowed in the private sector. The issue is not that we perceive him to have been in conflict. He was in ACTUAL conflict.

And no, you can't get away from conflict by just saying you recuse yourself from this decision. You still wield the power of your position over minions for the rest of their careers if they decide against you, and there were many discretionary decisions made by his minions on this case. That's conflict, pure and simple.

Shan well knows that. He's too brilliant a lawyer not to know that. But he can pull the wool over those who are not legally trained but not those who live and breath conflicts clearance every day of their careers. Every banker who wants to put themselves in a conflict position for some benefit always proposes to delegate their responsibility to someone else. That's not enough. Their staff who make the decision are still their staff after the decision, for whom they wield hire and fire power over.

All his examples of water and hospitals are just ludicrous and insulting of intelligence. So no, even his definition of conflicts is wrong wrong wrong. And living in Black and White Houses for so long, I well know from the facts adduced SLA went over and above for him. They did things they would never ever do for us mere mortals. An outright 9 year lease? Unheard of. Not only the optics are bad, the reality is bad too.

Ironically, if PM came out to rap Shan's knuckles, I may still have a modicum of hope that an effectively one party state can still check and balance itself, against my better instincts and knowledge.

But this instance has just hardened my stance that whether we like Oppo or not, we need more not less of them in Parliament cos we can so easily slide into corruption with a ''you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours” culture. And that starts when time and again the citizenry are forced to accept whitewash.