‘shifting goalposts’ - Given the honest idiots and clever plunderers, can the public ever win?

Why the public lost: ‘shifting goalposts’ and the ‘good intention’ of bad goalkeepers

IDEOTIQUE

 

Datuk Seri Azmi refered to the problem of ‘shifting goalpost’. He explains the problem as one in which obligations and things to be done under the contract keeps changing. If before the agreement was to do such and such, in the end they become different things altogether! Wow…this is dead serious for the nation. Small wonder why many mega projects went haywire and down the drain. It explains the ‘blunders’, ‘bad planning’ and the whole complex of ‘bad management’, ‘misspending’, or ‘non deliveries’. Once payment had been secured prior to agreement, of course obligations and accountability would be weakened or subject to renegotiation. Hence the ‘shifting goalpost’ and ‘changing targets’ lamented by the Chairman of PAC.