20-09-2021, 10:07 PM
The last week has brought a distinct feeling of deja vu.
Firstly, we had the decision to close Yale-NUS, which was spun as economic but was clearly a political decision. After Singapore promised that there would be freedom of thought and expression on campus, it became increasingly cleat that this was unacceptable to the Government. Such is the degree of top-down control that Lee Hsien Loong’s Government exerts over the university that even a relatively innocuous module that was to be taught in 2019 by playwright Alfian Sa’at was unacceptable to the authorities. Clearly the authorities were worried that if they did not clamp down now it would become a hotbed of dissent and maybe a source of potential future Opposition candidates among the students there. It is rumoured that student assistance to the Workers Party, which must have seemed to the students to be a relatively safe option given the PAP’s endorsement of Workers Party under Pritam Singh, in Sengkang was the last straw.
Secondly, judgement was given in the libel suit brought by the PM against Terry Xu from The Online Citizen. Given the statistically improbable run of success the PM and his PAP cronies have enjoyed before the courts where he appoints the judges and his AG controls their promotion or demotion, the finding of defamation and the quantum of damages ($210,000) was not a surprise (though vastly reduced in real terms from the damages that the courts routinely ordered my father to pay), even though in this case the PM chose not to sue his siblings who had been the source of the alleged libel.
Singapore often claims that it follows UK law and that therefore there is rule of law in Singapore. However, even in the UK, which is seen as one of the friendliest forums for defamation claimants, litigants are required to prove that they have suffered economic loss as a result of the libel. This was the argument that George Carman made when he defended my father in the defamation suit brought by “Swiss standard of living“ Goh after the 1997 General Election. Carman forced Goh to agree that far from suffering an economic loss, he had had an “excellent” year. The judge hearing the suit, Rajendran, agreed because he only awarded Goh $20,000 in damages. Goh, as everyone knows, appealed and got the damages increased to $100,000 without economic justification.
A lot more at https://www.bannedsite.com/forum/current...her-things
Firstly, we had the decision to close Yale-NUS, which was spun as economic but was clearly a political decision. After Singapore promised that there would be freedom of thought and expression on campus, it became increasingly cleat that this was unacceptable to the Government. Such is the degree of top-down control that Lee Hsien Loong’s Government exerts over the university that even a relatively innocuous module that was to be taught in 2019 by playwright Alfian Sa’at was unacceptable to the authorities. Clearly the authorities were worried that if they did not clamp down now it would become a hotbed of dissent and maybe a source of potential future Opposition candidates among the students there. It is rumoured that student assistance to the Workers Party, which must have seemed to the students to be a relatively safe option given the PAP’s endorsement of Workers Party under Pritam Singh, in Sengkang was the last straw.
Secondly, judgement was given in the libel suit brought by the PM against Terry Xu from The Online Citizen. Given the statistically improbable run of success the PM and his PAP cronies have enjoyed before the courts where he appoints the judges and his AG controls their promotion or demotion, the finding of defamation and the quantum of damages ($210,000) was not a surprise (though vastly reduced in real terms from the damages that the courts routinely ordered my father to pay), even though in this case the PM chose not to sue his siblings who had been the source of the alleged libel.
Singapore often claims that it follows UK law and that therefore there is rule of law in Singapore. However, even in the UK, which is seen as one of the friendliest forums for defamation claimants, litigants are required to prove that they have suffered economic loss as a result of the libel. This was the argument that George Carman made when he defended my father in the defamation suit brought by “Swiss standard of living“ Goh after the 1997 General Election. Carman forced Goh to agree that far from suffering an economic loss, he had had an “excellent” year. The judge hearing the suit, Rajendran, agreed because he only awarded Goh $20,000 in damages. Goh, as everyone knows, appealed and got the damages increased to $100,000 without economic justification.
A lot more at https://www.bannedsite.com/forum/current...her-things