Questions: Before I Go Any Further In Voicing My Contempt For Certain Aspects of Singapore's Management Team

Singapore's law against sedition starts off like this:


3. —(1) A seditious tendency is a tendency —
(a) to bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the Government;


By "the Government" do they mean the ruling political party which happens to be in power, that is to say, "in government", at any given time?

So that to excite disaffection against an opposition party's policy would NOT be seditious, until there come a time (praise the Lord!) when some group such as the Singapore Democratic Party is in power? And then it would become seditious?

And that praise for the current PAP's wise policies would become seditious if it was no longer in government?

And is the judiciary part of the Government?

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Because I want to link to Molly Meek's latest post - typically bimbotic! - and to the Wall St Journal's November 29th editorial "Singapore Strikes Again", about the Asian WSJ being sued for, for, for all sorts of things, like reporting.

And I want to ask the person who, on the WSJ forum, wrote this...

The Wall Street Journal is sued in Singapore for badmouthing the latter's political system again. We are annoyed by westerners constantly trying to impose its value on other cultures. The result can only be one thing: deepening hatred of the white people and periodic vengeful infliction of pain like the 9/11 attack and the search for American and English to butcher this month in Mumbai.
This is a classic example of arrogance of a culture that dominates others for one reason or the other at different stages of human history. This dominance of European culture will not last.
Cheung Yuk Ming
November 30, 2008

...why they think merely reporting on public domain facts warrants their implied (fairly overt it now sounds to me) threat of terrorism in reprisal and if so, will it perpetrated by themselves, or by the Singapore Government, or all Asians - that is to ask, who is "we"?

And also ask this Cheung Yuk Ming (Emperor Ming? He of the royal "we") which "westerners" values exactly do you/they/we consider are bringing about all this hatred?

The right to a fair trial before peers? (Too slow!)

Free speech? (Too loud!)

The right to peaceful protest? (Too trafic-jamming!)

The separation of powers? (Too surgical! One or more of the conjoined babies might die!)

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Wasn't it the alternative values of the Asian Tigers - "slave labor, cheap prostitutes and even cheaper politicians" (and their profiteering cronies - robbing their own banks, chopping down forests illegally or running drugs, etc...) - that brought about the previous economic crisis in 1998-2001 AND have helped keep the vast majority of Asia's poor in stone-age living conditions, cowering in fear (such as in Singapore-supported Myanmar) or living in silent desperation under corrupt and oppressive regimes?

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The reason I ask this is that clause 3 of the act says:

(3) For the purpose of proving the commission of any offence under this Act, the intention of the person charged at the time he did or attempted to do or made any preparation to do or conspired with any person to do any act or uttered any seditious words or printed, published, sold, offered for sale, distributed, reproduced or imported any publication or did any other thing shall be deemed to be irrelevant if in fact such act had, or would, if done, have had, or such words, publication or thing had a seditious tendency.

... which E@L's learned legal brain translates as, "if you didn't intend to be seditious but what you said, did or wrote can be twisted by lawyers working for the PAP [oops, I mean Government, or do I?] to appear seditious, then it is seditious".

Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Changi Airport. Do not collect your Welcome To Singapore brochure.

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Ah, only seven days in the country and I'm going insane! And judging by his new banner, Skippy-san wants to live here? It's just amazing...

E@L