Next Do A Barrel Roll Please!

Put on the defensive, Mr Pua admits his lack of knowledge military and therefore I can safely say that he would have just been shooting in the dark with his previous comment but tries to spin out by now demanding the Navy or Government to reveal the SGPV design/details. To those who don't believe me, read it here while I paste the specific paragraph here.

"Pua today admitted to a lack of military knowledge and said he was eager to meet the navy chief for a briefing."

Well since you admit your ignorance, let me try to add to your knowledge.

First, buying a warship is not like buying a car out of a showroom or whatever out of a brochure. Tick your requirrements and what you want will be delivered the next day or next month. Buying a warship is an engineering project and as in developing any engineering project, a design will be developed and negotiated until final agreement is achieved. How long this takes, depends on the urgency and the budget may be revised based on the final agreement. A LOI if you still plead ignorance of its nature but this would surprise me since you are supposed to be a businessman, is just a letter given to a potential supplier to indicate your INTENT to start negotiating on the project. Both parties can still walk away from the negotiations if agreement is not achievement. However, if agreement is achieved, then a Letter of Award would be given as all the design and specifications would be have been agreed to. My tip to you; at this stage if its achieved, then you can start asking for facts and criticise to your heart content. Otherwise be patient.

Second, you are demanding all these details to be made public. Nonetheless there is one little detail, no country reveals all its defence secret and I dare you to name one. The public will only be shown snippets but you as a member of the Government by being a Member of Parliament, you can request for such briefing. Nonetheless such information would be given to you are under Parliamentary privelege so don't go revealing it to the public. Remember of a small detail of Secrecy Oath you took when entering the August Chambers eh.

Your statement in Malay is quite revealing " Betulkah pengkritik tidak adil kerana tidak membandingkan produk yang sama dan bagaimanakah hendak ditentukan dakwaan ini salah semcama membanding apel dan oren, sekiranya specifikasi tidak didedahkan pihak TLDM?" It seems despite your acknowledgement of your lack of knowledge in this matter, you still want to spin yourself out of this 'mistake'. I would advise you in military terms that if you want to spin, make sure that the deck is sufficiently far away and there are no obstacles in the way, or make sure you have a parachute ready.

I trust those who read up on the referenced article and press statement can make their own rational judgement. Cheers!