Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

The title for the forum organised by the Democratic Socialist Club of NUS was pretty catchy, and I didn’t think that the forum disappointed. I would give it an 8 or 9 out of 10. The only reason why I didn’t give it a full 10 is because I thought we lacked someone from the PAP, since we had someone from the WP (Dr Thio doesn’t count. As an NMP, I think she’s not supposed to be affiliated with any party. I could be wrong, though.)

Anyhow, if you need minutes of the forum discussion, please visit Agagooga’s blog. He did an excellent job of what Bernard Leong calls “blogging on the fly”. It appears that he was furiously typing away during the session to bring updates to blogosphere in the quickest time possible. Kudos to him for taking the initiative.

Since Agagooga has done such a good job of transcribing the proceedings, I won’t go too much into details. I’m going to discuss the forum via some of what I think are interesting themes that were brought up by the speakers.

Perry Tong talked about freedom of speech in the public arena, and he was highlighting how difficult it is to raise some issues without fearing being sued for defamation in return simply because some information is not available. Without the availability of information, it is very easy to be sued for defamation because the defendant would be hard-pressed to prove the truth of his words. While I did wonder if Perry Tong’s point was a classic rhetoric of the minority parties in Singapore, nonetheless, I agree with him that we need to make information more public. To the best of my knowledge, we have no public records law in Singapore, unlike that of the United States. Without public record laws, there is no way to force the government to release important information that is deem sensitive for one reason or another, even though the release of the information might be in the public’s interest. Perhaps the WP can study public access laws in the United States as a model and push for Singapore’s version. I have no doubt that such a proposal would be a politically popular move.

Tan Tarn How talked about the idea of “sustainable authoritarianism”. Implicit in this term is that Singapore is an authoritarian government, and not a democracy, or at least, not a democracy along the lines of the so-called “western” model of liberal democracy. Whether you think Singapore is a democracy or an authoritarian regime, I leave it up to you. Anyway, Tan Tarn How’s point is that history has shown that authoritarian regimes have never been sustainable. He points to the former Soviet Union as the classic example, and of course, some of the former communist Eastern European states would probably qualify as examples too. Those that are sustainable are what he called “basket cases”, such as Cuba and North Korea (I think North Korea is really more totalitarian than authoritarian). It would be interesting to see if Singapore can actually buck the trend, and perhaps it can, because of the “golden handcuffs”. As long as people are economically well-off, there is no impetus for them to disrupt the status quo. Singapore has consistently defied the odds in many areas, so maybe it can defy the odds and become the world’s first sustainable authoritarian regime? :p

Cherian George brought out what I think is a very important point, that is, the odds of the government taking any form of punitive measure to shut up an individual is very unlikely. The Singapore government prides itself for being rational and efficient. Therefore, I don’t think they are going to waste time investigating blogs like Singapore Election Watch and Singabloodypore. If the government is going to chase after every single individual who expressed some anti-government sentiments, they might have to lock half of Singapore up. This same point was echoed by Mr Wang, who was relating his experience as a deputy public prosecutor. There are more important things for the police and the Attorney-General Office than to investigate and prosecute individual bloggers for posting something that’s less than savoury to the ears of the government. Of course, action will be taken against things that the government deemed to be out of bounds, such as race and religion. Therefore, if anyone wants to write about race and religion, it’s better to do some homework and check if your entry might cause you to be arrested under the Sedition Act.

Moving on, Cherian talked about how the ISA has not been used in 20 years. Yes, the tool may be there, but the condition isn’t conducive for using such a tool now. Imagine if some blogger (especially a more well-known one) is arrested under the ISA today. It will not sit down well with Singaporeans. The blogosphere will explode with criticisms of the government (and by extension, the PAP) and guess what? The other political parties will jump into the fray and profit at the expense of the PAP. It’s strategically unwise at all. Cherian said that apparently, MM Lee (back then he was SM Lee) went to ask the then PM of Malaysia Mahathir why he invoked the ISA against Anwar. Civil proceedings would have been more than enough. I concur that there is no evidence of the ISA being invoked against bloggers, but the threat of civil action is still there.

Mr Wang discussed about the threat and fear of civil action as being more effective than the law of defamation. More often than not, it’s much easier to say sorry and pay up rather than to contest a defamation suit. That was how the former NKF managed to shut up two individuals who said things that were probably true, but didn’t have enough evidence to prove it back then. Of course, there are ways to possibly get away with making dematory remarks, and is through satire and comedy. Mr Wang raised the famous “bak chor mee” podcast as an example. It would look exceedingly silly to try and explain what is defamatory about the insistence of a wrong order of “tur gua”. In such instances, it would be wiser to ignore the issue because any further action will simple just increase the publicity and drag things deeper into the muck.

Another interesting point that Mr Wang brought out was that of public opinion. If one is able to sense where the prevailing winds of public opinion are blowing, it is safe to write. If the government has a certain take on an issue and public opinion is the exact opposite, just write about it freely. The more the number of people that write about it, the safer it is. It is called “safety in numbers”. It would not make sense for the government (especially such a rational one as Singapore’s) to take one person to task without punishing others. The double standard would be a political nightmare. However, to round up a few thousand people expressing the same opinions is not practical. However, I do wonder if that will diminish the value of blogging. If everyone blogs about the same thing, isn’t it boring?

The last speaker which I have yet to mention is Dr Thio Li-Ann. She spoke on the importance of law, and I have to agree with her. We need to know the law in order not to run afoul of it. Singapore’s constitution protects the freedom of speech, but the protection is not as strong as that of the First Amendment in the United States. Our freedom of speech is subjected to several restrictions, and we should know what these are. Her admonition on doing one’s homework is perhaps the best thing that all who attended the forum should take away with.

I think I’ve more or less covered what I think were the important points in the forum. I believe that there are other bloggers who wrote about their experience too (Charissa is one of them). I would recommend reading the entries of all bloggers who attended the forum because there is no single person who can capture everything. However, the beauty of the cyberspace (including blogosphere) is the power of collective wisdom. If we read bits and pieces of everything, they somewhat can help paint a bigger picture. The biggest danger is to rely on only one source. Tan Tarn How alluded to this using the analogy of the blind men and the elephant. Every blind man that touched a different part of an elephant will individually have a different idea of what an elephant is. However, if we gather all the blind men together and they share their observations, they would probably have a better understanding of what an elephant really is. So, do not just read the Straits Times.

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