Singapore’s ruling party on attack mode ahead of expected elections early next year

By Ivan Lim
Contributor to AsiaN

Singapore: Ahead of general elections tipped to be called early next year, Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) is gearing up to win public support, its tactics at the moment being to assiduously censure opposition parties over hot-button issues.

In the past week, the government countered three rival parties for their online postings and articles, ranging from the performance of the Government Investment Company and Temasek Holdings’ sovereign wealth fund to job retrenchments among Professional, Managerial, Executive and Technical (PMET) employees, and state funding for Singapore and foreign students at the tertiary level.

In what pundits see as coming handy for the PAP for early electioneering, the government has instructed the office of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) to rule the opposition parties’ views and comments on the financial, employment and education policies as false and misleading, and order them to post corrections.

While complying, the Progress Singapore Party (PSP) and Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) have countered that they had relied on public information for the disputed online statements. The PSP, led by former PAP veteran Tan Cheng Bok, even challenged the government’s prerogative to determine what is the truth and what is false, asserting that should left to the court.

The People’s Voice leader Lim Tean has defended his statements after being cited for posting that the government spent $167 million on grants and bursaries for Singaporean students versus 238 million for foreigner students. The Pofma Office said the posting implied that the Ministry of Education, which runs a $13 billion annual budget, spends less on Singaporean than on foreign students. This is false, it said.

Mr Lim is mulling his legal options after being served a correction order. “Anyone who read my post…would have been under no mistaken impression  that I was discussing the amount of money spent on grants and scholarships and not on the overall spending on all Singaporean students,” he said.

“It is clear to me that Pofma is being used by this government ahead of the upcoming GE to silence its opponents and chill public discussion of unpopular government policies,” the lawyer added.

The use of Pofma as a weapon is seen as part and parcel of the PAP strategy to try and weaken the opposition, thereby pre-emptively cutting down any challenge at the polls.

An opening presented itself when the main parliamentary opponent, the Workers’ Party, was held liable by the High Court in October for losses totaling $33.7 million suffered by the Aljunied-Hougang Town Council (AHTC), arising from the key officials’ breach of fiduciary duties in appointing estate management agents without calling a tender. Capitalising on the verdict, the PAP opened a debate in Parliament castigating the WP officials “ dishonest and improper conduct” and tabled a Motion calling on the WP chairman Sylvia Lim and ex-secretary general Low Thia Khiang to recuse themselves from handling financial matters.

In pushing through the motion, Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat rode the high horse, declaing that the government “affirm the vital importance for Members of Parliament maintaining high standards of integrity and accountability.”

More ominous for the WP is that if its faulted leaders are unable to pay for the losses and are declared bankrupt, they would not only lose their Parliamentary seats but would also not be able to contest the coming elections.

The swift PAP attack on the WP without bothering to wait for the outcome of the latter’s appeal against the court verdict has drawn criticism and remind observers of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s 2008 ‘’fix the opposition” statement when he had asserted: “What’s the opposition’s job? It is not to help PAP do a better job. Their job is to make life miserable for me so that I screw  up and they can come in and sit where I am now and take charge…Then instead of spending my time thinking what is the right policy for Singapore, I’m going to spend all my time to think what is the right way to fix them….’’