the week: lie hard 3 - this time it's personal
The week starts with Parliament sitting to decide if it would accept the Committee of Privileges (COP) findings. The proceedings went exactly as expected:
On the Motion that Raeesah Khan is guilty of an untruth and would be fined $25,000 for that stating that untruth not just once but twice on the 3rd of August, there was a unanimous agreement by all Members of Parliament;
On the Motion that Raeesah Khan should be fined $10,000 for repeating the untruth on the 4th of October, the WP dissented on the grounds that the lower quantum was predicated on the alleged guidance that was given by Pritam Singh, Faisal Manap and Sylvia Lim;
On the Motion that Mr Singh and Mr Faisal were to be recommended to the Public Prosecutor, the WP dissented as the recommendation was made on the basis that the offences had been committed by them, and the WP rejected these claims. Mr Singh did mention that he was willing to clear his name in court should the Motion be adopted by Parliament.
Perhaps the only noteworthy thing about this is that the Progress Singapore Party's Non-Constituency Members of Parliament did not dissent to any of the Motions (though this is not to suggest that opposition MPs must vote the same way or in solidarity, just an interesting observation). It is strange that the quantum had been lowered on the basis of the alleged guidance by the WP senior leadership, given that this was one area of contention in the COP, and should have been clarified in the court of law by the Public Prosecutor. This seems like putting the cart before the horse, and perhaps should have been decided pending the decision by the courts.
I have already said most of what I wanted to about the COP and its findings. The only other interesting thing about the session was Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's speech.
PM Lee Makes a Speech
From the outset PM Lee talked1 about values and ideals that must be upheld for a democracy to function. It is pretty difficult to disagree with most of what PM Lee was speaking about, given the backdrop of the speech: that Ms Khan, a Member of Parliament, and a Member of the Opposition, had lied in Parliament. Lying is bad, and lying in Parliament is very very bad is a difficult premise to dispute. But the PAP is simply unable to take easy W's. One can only surmise that the PAP is imbued with the irresistible urge to hammer every talking point, to flog every dead horse they come across. Perhaps this is just a part of their DNA, after all the party was forged from the fires of a different age, where browbeating opponents into submission was not only effective, but the norm. Time will tell if the hatchet is still an effective weapon, or if the Singapore people have since grown tired of such tactics and strategy.
Clear norms and incorruptible values are essential to protecting the dignity and standing of Parliament
I actually agree with what is said here: pretty straightforward stuff, a country is only as strong as the values of the citizens, and the values of the people they vote in. Trust in our institutions are incredibly important, as evinced in the USA when trust in the institutions are at an all time low. The Trump administration, the CDC and the Biden administration have spent any and all goodwill that their government had, and trust in their mainstream media institutions are also at an all time low.
While there have been no polls to base this on, my gut feel is that a sizable portion of the Singaporean populace still by and large trust our institutions. Still, I suspect that a growing number of Singaporeans have begun to lose trust after the handling of the COVID 19 pandemic. From the mishandling of the pandemic in general, to the misuse of TraceTogether data in criminal investigations, to the constant gaslighting of the populace. This is combined with somewhat blatant meddling of institutions like the elected presidency, undermining the function of the legislature by announcing that s377a of the penal code would not be enforced by the AGC, passing the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) and the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA) with powers which far exceed their purpose.
If PM Lee does not see the irony in speaking about values and trust in our institutions when his party has done its fair share of damage to them, I do.
And if I were Mr Singh, I would vote in favour of both Motions
I agree with this part of the speech. There is a growing narrative amongst opposition supporters that this is yet another instance where the PAP is trying to "fix" the opposition again. While the optics of the Committee of Privileges were not great, the committee sitting on a panel looming over the witness, the entire process was at least transparent. There have also been aspersions cast on the COP and its processes, which were raised by Sylvia Lim in her speech which she framed as "observations". And as Leader Indranee Rajah points out later in the proceedings, the time to complain about the composition of the COP has long past. There are opposition members who sit on the Committees which deal with the revision of the rules of the COP. Understandably, the COP has not been invoked in 25 years, and it could very well be the case of being out of sight, and out of mind. But if you do not deal with the rules of the Committee where there are appropriate and available avenues to challenge them, then complaining about it after the fact, when it does not work out in your favour comes off very poorly.
When I first entered this House 37 years ago, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Mr S Rajaratnam, Dr Toh Chin Chye, Mr Ong Pang Boon, Mr EW Barker and Mr Jek Yeun Thong were still Members
Once again, PM Lee evokes the Ghosts of Parliaments past to make a point. This is not the first time he has done it. I dislike this tactic of his, I understand why he does it. He is milking the goodwill of the PAP of the past, in order to secure the future of his party. But past performance is not the guarantee of future success, and the PAP of today is no longer the party of Lee Kuan Yew. "Many political systems today would be quite unrecognisable to their founding leaders." Well said, Prime Minister. Well said.
$900m for SPH Media Trust
Is there a Minister who gaffes on a more consistent basis and says things which are more out of touch with reality than Josephine Teo? My guess is there isn't, though Chan Chun Sing comes in as a close second.
The Ministry of Communications and Information is giving the SPH Media Trust (SMT) up to S$180m a year for five years to sustain their digitalisation. The WP posed two very relevant questions to Minister Teo, unfortunately garnering two very irrelevant answers. The first question came from Mr Singh, who asked "with close to $1 billion of Government funding for SMT committed over the next five years, how will the Government assure Singaporeans that SMT's content will not be tainted by allegations of political interference?" which to any reasonable person would be a very reasonable question.
NOT SO, to Minister Teo, who did not find it a reasonable question. She immediately goes on the defensive, accusing Mr Singh of his lack of trust in our media. If large sums of money coming from the government which is contingent on them giving "progress updates" to said government does not raise the question of conflict, I don't know what will. Is it not a reasonable concern that SMT would be incentivised not to report the government in a bad light? This has happened in the past, where the mainstream media in Singapore has been accused of bias in their reporting. What more if the government is directly funding SMT?
According to Minister Teo, the "true test" for whether a media outlet is trustworthy is how many people consume it. This is of course incredibly stupid. I understand the crux of her logic: 1) if the media is trustworthy, people will continue to support it; and 2) since people support the media, it is trustworthy. All this relies on the people's abilities to discern falsehood, which her own party does not even think possible, judging by them passing POFMA and FICA into law. Further, people believe false stories all the time. Just look at the amount of people sharing fake news on the internet. Just because large portions of the people subscribe to something, does not make it automatically trustworthy. What Mr Singh was looking for, and presumably what the public would like to know as well, was what mechanisms would be put into place to insulate SMT from political influence, especially since the money is as mentioned before contingent on them fulfilling certain criteria set forth by the government. I understand Minister Teo has no interest in answering that question, but the condescension coming from her was palpable even through my screen.
Of course her answer begs a question from Jamus Lim which was paraphrased by Minister Teo as "if they trust these local mainstream media so much, why are they not buying or paying for subscription?" Minister Teo's first reaction to this is to compare SMT to the New York Times and The Guardian. Two things: first, SMT is no New York Times, nor is it The Guardian; second, both the New York Times and The Guardian have political leanings, even if they try their best to remain neutral to the issues. Also, she neglects to mention that the US and UK have robust two party systems, so any kind of national funding for these publications does not immediately raise the suspicion that they would be beholden to any one party.
She goes on to say that The Guardian had to cut 12% of its workforce in 2021. Oh, the horror. Imagine a for profit organisation having to cut its workforce in order to maintain profitability. The Singapore government does not have a good track record in meddling. Remember Hyflux, Creative, and SMRT? These were once lauded as the gold standard. They have all had influxes of government money. Hyflux has wound up, Creative lost out to the IPod as the premiere MP3 player and has never recovered, and SMRT has been bought back by Temasek, where it has posted another unprofitable year in 2021. Make of that what you will.
PM Lee wants us to trust in our institutions, yet continues to field Josephine Teo as a minister. At some point, he has got to choose one or the other.