TR EMERITUS

By Fang Zhi Yuan, Senior writer

In an extensive interview given to The Straits Times last Saturday, Home Affairs Minister Mr Wong Kan Seng revealed that his ministry is currently reviewing public order laws to give the police greater powers to enforce them. (read the full article here).

According to Mr Wong, Singapore’s security forces need the powers to deal with such potential security situations pre-emptively on the ground and not let them occur and then deal with the consequences and perpetrators later.

Though he did not explicitly outline the possible changes to the existing laws, my hunch is that a new law will be legislated to deal specifically with ‘civil disobedience’.

Under the present circumstance, processions and assemblies are regulated under the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act (MOA) in which the police is unable to prevent the assembly from taking place and can only follow up with investigation after the show is over.

Activists from the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) had made used of this loophole in the law to stage protests against the government notably at the IMF-WB meeting in 2007 and the Tak Boleh Tahan protest outside Parliament House in 2008.

The events were filmed, including the sight of police manhandling and arresting the protestors at the scene. The recorded clips were subsequently uploaded to Youtube where it was viewed by thousands of Singaporeans who were both stunned and disgusted by the excessive use of force by the police against unarmed, peaceful fellow Singaporeans thereby exerting the maximum possible impact and blow to the government’s image.

In fact, this has been a recurring theme in the SDP’s standard modus operandi to generate awareness about their cause and to shame the Singapore government via the sympathatic international press covering their activities who seldom writes in favor of the government.

The government is acutely aware of the damage these fiascos have done to Singapore’s reputation as a modern democracy in the eyes of the world and hence the urgent need to revamp the current legislation to prevent history from repeating itself in this year’s APEC summit.

Under the proposed public order laws, the police now has the power to remove anybody they suspect to be holding an illegal rally or demonstration immediately from the scene before they are allowed to stage their show.

Civil activists will not even have the time to reveal their placards, let alone film the non-event before they find themselves being handcuffed and whiskered away in police vans with the end result that their intended message never quite get across to the outside world.

In Singapore’s conservative political climate where protests and rallies are frowned upon by many, civil activists are walking a lonely road fraught with unseen dangers and pitfalls.

Ironically, the greatest threat to their existence and effectiveness does not lie in the impending law to pre-empt them from striking, but with a range of “liberalizing” measures the government introduced last year including allowing outdoor protests at Hong Lim Park which has since proved to be a red herring.

In the past, the government is often rapped for draconian laws curtailing the civil rights of citizens by outlawing outdoor assemblies and protests.

Civil activists no longer have any grounds now to cry foul against unfair laws to draw public attention to the repression they have suffered at the hands of the government.

Rather than keeping the momentum going, they would have to be on the defensive now, being stuck in a quagmire between making use of the little space granted to them or to continue to defy the existing laws.

Public protests draw the most attention when they are held at appropriate venues. Restricting them to an unimportant corner of the island will reduce their significance and impact.

On the other hand, certain groups have shown that in spite of the limitations and disadvantages put in place, clever and skillful use of Hong Lim Park can achieve a desirable outcome as illustrated by Mr Tan Kin Lian’s minibond rallies at Hong Lim Park which drew record crowds of over 1,000 and exerted indirect pressure on MAS and the financial institutions to offer more investors compensation.

With the economy being the most pertinent issue on the minds of most Singaporeans and an administration bent on stifling dissent, is there still a place for ‘civil disobedience’ in Singapore ? Or has its death knell been sounded ? Should SDP continue to adopt a hardline stance against the government by openly flouting its laws in public or is it more practical for it to accept its erstwhile adversary’s offer of a token ‘olive branch’ by limiting its political activities at Hong Lim Park from now onwards ?

Unless SDP is able to attract a crowd of at least the size of Mr Tan Kin Lian’s rallies, its political forays, however heroic and meaningful, are unlikely to effect a significant change in the political status quo in the near future.

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