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
Shotgun
Excellent post. But I won't drill into resolved issues anymore. It shakes public confidence in charity organisations.
oldbreadstinks
i don't get this at all, do they really have a "golden tap"? if they do, why are they suing ST?