Air-Conditioned Nation

Essays about Singapore / Cherian George

Author: Cherian George (Page 1 of 6)

RACE RELATIONS

SECTION 298 IS RIPE FOR REVIEW

The government has said it’s ready to rethink how Singaporeans should be allowed to discuss the sensitive topics of race and religion. If indeed we are going there, we need to add Section 298 of the Penal Code to the reform agenda.

This is a bad hate speech law, because it fails to distinguish between:

• the objective harms caused by incitement to hate — which violate victims’ equal rights, and should therefore be criminalised; and:

• words that cause subjective offence and disharmony — an allegation too hard to counter and too easily used to silence socially valuable speech, and which should therefore be regulated through social norms, not hard law.

For the unacquainted, here is what the law says:

Penal Code, Section 298/A

It is a law with roots in British colonial times, devised by rulers more concerned about taming native subjects than building a multicultural nation. It does not belong among Singapore’s multiple defences against chauvinism, communalism, and hate. It promotes offence-taking instead of live-and-let-live tolerance. It encourages citizens to demand action from above, instead of talking things through among themselves.

Until now, I felt it was futile to press this point, because most Singaporeans are wedded to the idea of solving social frictions by calling 999. I did broach the topic in a Straits Times op-ed way back in 2011. But my 2016 book, Hate Spin, was global in scope and barely referred to Singapore. When I brought up Section 298 in my 2018 Select Committee testimony, it was because I felt I had to, not because I expected it to make any difference.

This week, though, I’m starting to wonder if Singaporeans are finally ready to reconsider their law-and-order approach to managing diversity. During an Ethos Books dialogue on Sunday, Mohamed Imran Mohamed Taib, one of Singapore’s wisest thinkers on race and religion, made an interesting observation about the PAP’s attack on Raeesah Khan and how it backfired.

He was of course referring to one of the biggest controversies in this month’s election campaign, when someone lodged a police report against the Workers’ Party candidate concerning intemperate remarks she had made in the past about the system being rigged against minorities. She immediately apologised, but the PAP went to town with this. It issued a party statement that inaccurately claimed that she had by her own admission made anti-Chinese and anti-Christian comments.

Not just die-hard opposition supporters but also many apparently middle-of-the-road Singaporeans reacted strongly against the PAP attack. The blowback was strong enough for PAP leader Lee Hsien Loong to change the party’s tune on the final night of campaigning, acknowledging that younger Singaporeans like Raeesah might have a different approach to talking about race.

On Sunday, Imran said, “There was a clear backfire over the police report on Raeesah Khan. … With the outpouring of support for Raeesah Khan, does is it mean that people are more accepting of divisive racial or religious remarks? I don’t think so. What clearly happened is this – people now have greater sensitivity about when race or religion is weaponised for political ends.”

This is a healthy development, Imran added. It suggests that people have internalised the government’s injunction against politicising race and religion. What is new, he suggested, is the people’s awareness that the taboo should also apply to those who claim to be policing harmony.

“It cuts both ways. Saying something is divisive can itself be a divisive act with an intentional political end. This is something we have not seen before, which clearly speaks to greater civic political awareness.”

If Imran is right, Singaporeans are now savvy enough to understand that legal interventions designed for ostensibly good ends can be hijacked for bad ones. If so, we may be ready to talk about Section 298 as well as other similar laws.

The law is again bound to make news soon anyway, since the PAP’s offer of a truce to Raeesah’s fan base did not resolve the matter of the police complaint. The authorities will have to announce the outcome of their Section 298A investigation. My guess is that, rather than charging her, she will be let off with a “stern warning” — the route they usually take when the offender has shown remorse. This will defuse the debate about the law itself, until the next time it is wielded.

Even if Raeesah is spared, though, Section 298 should remain in the dock, to be grilled about its actual contribution to Singapore’s system of managing diversity.

Such discussions are easily side-tracked and waylaid, so some clarifications are in order.

First, this is not a partisan issue. This time, the law was weaponised by PAP supporters against an opposition politician, but strategic offence-taking has also been used against the PAP by its critics, as I pointed out in a 2016 journal article on incitement and offence laws in Singapore and Indonesia.

Second, it would be naive to think that the Sengkang GRC result shows that playing the race or religion card no longer works. Although there was an outpouring of support for Raeesah on online forums, there is no hard evidence that the PAP’s tactic – casting her as anti-Chinese and anti-Christian – did not have an impact at the ballot box.

Online sentiment analysis, though hardly an exact science, showed more “negative” perceptions about her than even Chee Soon Juan, who has been subject to far more intense and sustained attacks.

So it is quite possible that Raeesah owes her Sengkang GRC seat not to #IStandWithRaeesah, but to her wildy popular teammate Jamus Lim. All we can say with certainty is that the anti-Raeesah smear campaign was not effective enough — not that it didn’t work at all. In a single seat or in a different GRC contest, the PAP campaign could well have tilted the balance against her. I point this out not to rain on her parade, but lest we misinterpret her party’s electoral breakthrough as a sign that Singaporeans are immune to Islamophobia.

Third, most Singaporeans who are rightly protective of racial and religious peace need to be convinced that reforms won’t generate unacceptable risks. As Janil Puthucheary asked me during the Select Committee hearings when I proposed repealing Section 298: “But what would you say to the members of the religious community, the religious leadership, who take the very opposite view from what you have just described and who feel that such a tool is necessary to maintain and protect what we already have in Singapore?” The answer I gave is below:

Minutes of the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods

The conventional wisdom is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And indeed if by “broken” we mean prone to communal violence, Singapore is in good shape. I suspect, however, that many Singaporeans share my view that we can aim higher than not killing one another; that we can be so bold as to aspire to our “one united people” pledge. It will take a long process of gentle, evidence-based persuasion to wean our fellow Singaporeans off their dependence on the police.

Finally, if the political leadership does not warm to the idea of reviewing the law, we should expect that the status quo will be vigorously defended by PAP Ultras — the internet brigades that in recent years have stolen the mic from the establishment’s voices of reason, spewing divisive rhetoric from the national populist playbook of rightwing extremists around the world. They will be back, preying on ordinary Singaporeans’ fears of instability, spreading disinformation about anti-racism activists, and thus trying to paralyse any effort for progressive change.

I hope Imran is right, that Singaporeans are wisening up to political dirty tricks. If so, it may indeed be possible to have a meaningful debate about how to amend Singapore’s racial harmony laws.


Correction: An earlier version said that allegations of offence were “too hard to prove”; I meant too hard to disprove/counter, and have amended the text accordingly.

SUCCESSION

4G AND THE 2 SHANS

Singapore’s fourth prime minister faces challenges not unlike Goh Chok Tong’s.

More earnest than magnetic, better at balancing budgets than rousing a crowd, Heng Swee Keat is unlikely to be saddled with unrealistic expectations when he becomes Singapore’s fourth prime minister. Being underestimated can be a political asset. It was a step in Goh Chok Tong’s ladder from a wooden technocrat to a popular leader. When Goh became prime minister in 1990, people regarded him as a seat-warmer for Lee Hsien Loong, and Lee Kuan Yew’s second- or third-choice one at that. But rather than provoke scorn, this image evoked empathy, which Goh cultivated into affection and even respect.

In late 2018, Heng Swee Keat was anointed as Lee Hsien Loong’s eventual successor in similarly unpropitious circumstances. Once again, this wasn’t the incoming leader’s fault: it had more to do with the public’s doubts about the People’s Action Party’s (PAP) unconventional selection process, and rumours that his seniors may have preferred others to be in charge. Once again, a sceptical public may give the new leader the benefit of the doubt and warm to him, mindful that alternative scenarios could have been worse.

[Cont’d]

This is a chapter from Air-Conditioned Nation Revisited: Essays on Singapore Politics (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2020).

ONLINE POLITICS

NOTES FROM THE FIELD

Once in a long while, I enter the world of Facebook Comments to get a feel of the place. It can be maddening, but as a writer I find it helps periodically to exercise muscles that I rarely use in normal social settings. So, for the past 24 hours, I’ve been spending more time in Zuckerberg’s playpen than on Netflix, which for me is saying a lot.

The timing had to do with pieces that I wrote last week, in midweek and yesterday morning criticising some worrying developments in online politics. These generated pushback from individuals who, for some reason, took it very personally.

Engaging them was as instructive as I’d expected.

One striking pattern in their comments was the dogged effort to change the subject away from the matter I’d raised: the extraordinarily embarrassing sight of a group of PAP fans publicly accusing PAP stalwart Inderjit Singh of being a Chinese Communist Party stooge. No, this isn’t what ownself-check-ownself is supposed to look like. To call it an own goal doesn’t do it justice either. It’s more like executing a standing double backflip while kicking oneself in the head.

Rather than quickly deny, disown and limit the damage from what’s apparently a rogue skunkworks unit, the PAP seems content to perpetuate the impression that its radical fringes will be given free rein to police insiders who inch out of line. Sort of like how Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution were — and CCP trolls still are — let loose on internal critics.

Pointing this out has infuriated some hardcore PAP loyalists, who swarmed Facebook to attack the messenger and other non-PAP critics. They naturally avoided talking about Inderjit Singh, crossing their fingers that the internet will just forget. And, as one astute writer pointed out:

Thanks to Bhas Khunju for this.

The second lesson I’ve gathered from the exchange is not new, but a powerful reminder of just how toxically partisan our political discourse has become.

Ours is a multiparty democratic system (in principle; in practice it’s a dominant party system). So a certain amount of partisanship is inevitable. But if citizens are only capable of viewing debates through a party-political lens, that’s a serious problem. Democracies progress when governments and citizens deal with ideas and arguments as they stand, and not through the lens of fixed allegiances or the short-term need for partisan point scoring.

I won’t address their ad hominem attacks and sheer inanity, because I always feel it’s more educational to engage with opponents’ arguments at their strongest — no matter how hard that is locate — and not their stupidest. So let me focus on the nub of the hardcore PAP loyalist counter-arguments: it is basically that I should be more cognisant of the fact that pro-opposition trolls are at least as bad as pro-PAP ones, and that my failure to be even-handed betrays a bias.

One prominent pro-PAP blogger even emailed me just before midnight last night to share a sample of the vulgar and xenophobic messages he’s received from anti-PAP sources. He promises to “save the long form for elsewhere” so I won’t steal his thunder by sharing his email and attachments here.

There are at least three ways I can respond to this argument: the personal, the structural, and the ethical.

The first requires me to point out my own record as a writer on Singapore politics. I find this is a somewhat tasteless exercise, because I think readers should be able to judge an argument on its merits, without reaching for the intellectual crutch of making up their minds based the speaker’s perceived background (for fellow nerds: this is in line with the theory of deliberative democracy). But I recognise that in the real world, if we don’t play the game and guard our credibility by referring to facts, we lose out to bad-faith opponents who will attack our credibility based on lies.

So I have to point out reluctantly that I have a long history of calling out idiocy and abuse on the opposition side of cyberspace. As a result, I have been trolled by pro-opposition types for far longer than by the Johnny-come-Latelies of the PAP.

I was, for instance, targeted by opposition trolls around the 2011 election, when I criticised the misogynistic attacks on the PAP’s young new candidate, Tin Pei Ling. I was also targeted by The Online Citizen when I pointed out that they had unfairly triggered a witch-hunt against another PAP backbencher by misquoting him. Netizens also attacked me when I suggested that bloggers (all whom were non-PAP back then) create and abide by a voluntary code of ethics.

In my 2017 book, Singapore, Incomplete, I have only one chapter (republished in my latest compilation, Air-Conditioned Nation Revisted) that focuses on irrational, intolerant online public opinion — and it’s not about PAP trolls. It is about the anti-government netizens who launched a xenophobic onslaught on a proposed Philippine independence day celebration, exploiting anti-immigrant feelings to attack the PAP government’s immigration policy. I still think this 2014 episode represents the most shameful low point in Singapore’s history of online discourse.

Many opposition supporters also did not like it when I threw a wet blanket on the opposition’s famous triumphs in the 2011 General Election: within hours of the result, I predicted that a much-improved PAP could make the opposition’s job much harder, which is exactly what happened in 2015.

For at least the past five years, I have made a conscious effort to focus my writing on how to improve the PAP because, as I have openly stated and still believe, it would be foolish for reform-minded Singaporeans to put all eggs in the opposition basket.

If we want a better Singapore, working for a better PAP must be part of our total strategy. Yes, we need stronger opposition as an alternative, but that does not mean the health of the party in power is of no consequence. After all, even if you have taken out a life insurance policy on your head of household, that doesn’t mean you should stay silent when he picks up bad habits like smoking. My 2017 book was entirely premised on this conviction: we need to improve the PAP in case the opposition doesn’t develop into to a viable alternative. Hardcore opposition fans, naturally, do not like this way of thinking.

Now that this is out of the way, let me deal, second, with the structural issue. In any democracy, the words and actions of a ruling party matter more than the words and actions of the opposition. This is even more true in Singapore’s dominant party system, where it is unlikely that the opposition will take over any time soon.

It is correct that we demand higher standards from any ruling party, because that’s where real power resides. Not just influence, and not just words, but cradle-to-grave powers to tax and spend, to licence and lockdown businesses, to issue orders enforceable by police, and to decide how children are educated, where to bury the dead and when to exhume them, and even when to send our men and women to war.

Our Constitution is based on this principle, that rulng parties have special obligations. Which why Lee Hsien Loong is answerable to Parliament in ways that Kenneth Jeyaretnam is not. PAP fanatics who say government critics are biased because we don’t spend equal time scrutinising the opposition may as well accuse the Constitution of double standards. This seems like such an obvious point that to belabour it risks insulting the intelligence of most readers. So I will stop here.

Third, there’s the question of values and ethics. In every sector, the best organisations set their own standards and brand themselves by their values. They don’t benchmark against the average, let alone the lowest common denominator.

Nor do they engage in whataboutism: when it’s pointed out to them that they are being associated with bad behaviour, they don’t say, “But what about our competitors? They are even worse.” No. If they are not responsible for that bad behaviour they disavow and clarify. If they are responsible, even indirectly, they accept responsibility and take swift remedial action. For example, when loutish football fans get abusive and this is picked up by TV cameras, top clubs don’t make excuses like, “We didn’t instruct those fans to do that, so don’t blame us.” No. They say, “Such behaviour is not who we are. They are not true fans, do not represent our values. We reject it completely and unequivocally.” Many socially responsible media organisations have the same attitude to readers who post comments. The best news publishers understand that abusive and irrelevant comments taint their brand and reduce its appeal, even though they were not written by the organisation’s own staff. This is why many such sites close comments on topics that they know will bring out the worst in readers.

Compared with football clubs and media organisations, it is much more important that political parties pay attention to the reputational damage caused by their hardcore but misguided fans and followers. Political parties set the tone for our democratic life. The serious ones should be eager to clean up their act.

Not surprisingly, some are quick to claim that such calls for ethical behaviour are the same as demanding censorship. The loudest objections tend to come from the worst abusers who have most to lose from higher standards. Therefore, when I called for voluntary self-regulation about a decade ago, I was derided by anti-government forces. Now it’s the turn of the vocal, nutty minority of pro-PAP netizens.

But let’s see how the more reasonable and quieter majority responds. And no, I won’t be looking for them in Facebook Comments. As workouts go, it is like jogging in circles. You break a sweat, but don’t go anywhere.

PRO-PAP FAKE NEWS

A TROUBLING SILENCE

The inconsistencies in government responses to online falsehoods and harassment reveal a worrying degree of partisanship.

I don’t write regularly about Singapore as, after 30 years of doing so, I’m not often stirred by anything going on in Singapore’s stable political environment. But recent developments in the PAP confound me. After more than a week, I am still waiting for PAP leaders to say something about an apparently pro-PAP Facebook group that has outrageously defamed one of their own — the respected, long-serving former backbencher Inderjit Singh. 

In two posts dated 6 and 10 May, the site, managed by eight anonymous individuals, claimed he is part of a “motley crew of Singaporeans” who “immediately raised their hands” when the People’s Republic of China “looked around for some stooges… to undermine Singapore and its Government”.

“They were more than happy to get RenMinBi (the Chinese currency) to burn their own houses. Most of them without jobs, yet can comfortably afford their lifestyles,” it said.

The rest of the “motley crew” comprised five other Singaporeans who had also written articles for Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. Their SCMP articles were a little more critical than what emerges through the gates of national media self-censorship. (I, too, have been named in the conspiracy, originally as a HK-based middleman in this supply chain of Singapore content appearing in SCMP, then as a supplier myself, even though none of my three SCMP articles have been about Singapore.)

The case is full of ironies. Members of the Singapore establishment have written for SCMP without being deemed traitors. You’d think Inderjit Singh, who joined the PAP grassroots in 1984, would enjoy the same licence. Apparently, decades of loyal service to the party count for nothing the moment one has the temerity to have an independent view.

Another irony: two other Singaporeans are currently on trial for criminal defamation over an online posting that makes less serious allegations against public figures. The prosecution says the letter in The Online Citizen alleges corruption among Cabinet ministers – but not that they are guilty of treason or conspiring with a foreign government, which is what the trolls are suggesting about Singh and the “motley crew”.

Some say that we should just ignore trolls. That’s usually true and what I normally do. But in this case, it’s already clear that the extreme allegations are being recycled — mostly without reference to Inderjit Singh — by other anonymous pro-PAP groups, quickly creating a post-truth alternate reality for a vocal minority of Singaporeans.

Of course, the leadership’s silence could be due to the fact that they have their hands full with the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout. Online squabbles are certainly trivial in comparison.

But then what is one to make of the fact that the machinery of government has just churned out a Pofma directive to correct the facts surrounding… Pofma? It would be hard to concoct a more piercing parody of the establishment’s instincts for self-preservation. 

This week’s Pofma case shows that officials do in fact have enough bandwidth to deal with the massive national crisis while at the same time intervening in public debates to set the record straight on relatively mundane matters. Coming out to disavow these vile pro-PAP sites and defending citizens’ right to express their views without fear of doxxing and defamation requires far less time and energy than triggering a Pofma directive or criminal defamation proceedings.

Which suggests that if they are not doing anything about the potentially dangerous attack on Inderjit Singh and other citizens, it is because they don’t want to, not because they can’t.

Such selectivity is a matter of priorities and values. The government’s uneven response to “fake news” suggests that some of the worst polluters of our online environment can get a free pass if they do it in the PAP’s name; that partisanship matters more than principle; and that wearing white matters more than being right.

On the bright side, it is refreshing to know that I’m still capable of being surprised.

MORE

Time for a code of online conduct for political parties?

Who are these guys anyway? You tell me.

ONLINE POLITICS

TIME FOR A CODE OF CONDUCT

Some pro-government websites are going too far, violating principles set out by the Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods.

Singapore needs a code of online conduct for all political parties and government bodies, committing them to more ethical and transparent use of internet tools. Public opinion manipulation by politicians, their functionaries, and their hardcore supporters is threatening Singaporeans’ ability to conduct reasoned debates about national issues, and exposing individual citizens to the harms of hate speech.

Like anything on the internet, such toxicity cannot be regulated out of existence, nor need we even try. But self-regulation by major political parties as well as the internet user with the loudest voice — the government — can go a long way towards cleaning up our political discourse.

There are at least three key core commitments that a code of conduct could flesh out:

  1. No to all inauthentic behaviours, such as using fake social media accounts and paid human trolls to mislead people about the state of public opinion.
  2. Yes to full transparency in public communication, with no hidden or opaque sponsorship of content, or use of anonymous sites.
  3. No to supporters who propagate lies and incite hatred in your name: disown or correct those who abuse others, including your political opponents.

Instituting such a code of conduct is a major piece of unfinished business arising from the deliberations of the 2018 Parliamentary Select Committee on Deliberate Online Falsehoods.

The Select Committee’s report expressed concern about these and other tools: fake social media accounts to infiltrate communities and amass support; human trolls and automated bots to make falsehoods go viral; and digital advertising tools and for-profit political consultants using data analytics to micro-target messages at susceptible demographics.

On transparency, the Select Committee endorsed several experts’ recommendation to compel disclosure about whether content was paid for, and by whom. This transparency should be required of all forms of issue-based messaging, and not just campaign advertising, it said. “The goal of such transparency is to educate users on the behaviour and intent of other content providers they encounter online, and reduce the opportunity for malicious actors to hide behind Internet anonymity to carry out abusive activities,” the Committee said.

It added: “Users ought to be provided with sufficient information to know whether they are interacting with accounts belonging to and managed by a real person, or whether they are interacting with accounts run by a bot, or with an account where someone is impersonating another. Impersonation is often used to create an appearance of popularity, to increase the influence of the online falsehoods propagated by inauthentic accounts. This is not a trivial concern; inauthentic accounts operating on a broad scale have the potential to disseminate widespread disinformation.”

Select Committee Hearings, 2018.

But, there was a major problem with the Select Committee’s report. It was like a large illuminated mirror giving us a better look at our online environment — but tilted at an angle to keep the government out of view. After setting out key ethical principles for online public discourse, it recommended their imposition on everyone else, especially internet platforms such as Facebook, but not on the state or the ruling party.

This seed of selective vision ultimately sprouted into the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), through which only government ministers get to trigger a correction or takedown order — as if it is inconceivable that any current or future office holder would ever be guilty of a false or misleading statement of fact.

A year since the passage of Pofma, it is time to make up for that blind spot in internet regulation.

Watching the watchers

Many Singaporeans will find the idea of holding the government accountable for its own speech quite radical. They trust that the government will act as a responsible policeman who does not need policing. This helps explain why Pofma was met with indifference and even positive support by the general public.

It is true that many extreme forms of disinformation are likely to come from overseas: agents of the People’s Republic of China trying to prise Singapore out of America’s sphere of influence; India’s Hindutva nationalists sowing hatred against Muslims; our neighbours’ radical Islamists preaching religious exclusivity and intolerance; and Fox News selling its MAGA worldview, along with bleach and malaria medication as treatments for the “Chinese Virus” (why the Temasek-controlled Starhub CableVision persists in giving Fox a perch in Singapore continues to confound me).

But we should not confuse extremity with impact. Low-grade manipulation by the powers that be can have a more pernicious influence than foreign or fringe attacks. Decades of research on media effects tell us this. And hate speech jurisprudence around the world is based on this insight: the European Court of Human Rights, for example, considers not just what is said but also who is saying it and in what context. Party leaders are held to a higher standard because they are more likely to incite harm than, say, a blogger or poet without a big following.

We also know from more recent research that the questionable methods of right-wing populist movements have gone mainstream, with more and more centrist governments deciding that if you can’t beat them, join them. In Indonesia, for example, President Joko Widodo’s camp has invested in the same tools of online persuasion as his less palatable foes. A report by the Oxford Internet Institute last year confirmed that governments are emerging as major players in social media manipulation.

Singapore was not included in the 70-country Oxford study, and although we do not lack individuals with the skills to undertake the required forensics, the ones with the time to do it mostly work in universities and other research centres subject to political constraints. We can surmise that Singapore, a global pioneer in e-government, is probably not falling behind in computational propaganda. Beyond that, most of what we do know is anecdotal. Many seasoned netizens are able to tell you if someone criticising you on Facebook is a good-faith interlocuter, a troll, or a fake account. One giveaway is to check the account’s history. If it has only three posts and five friends, it was probably made up just for the occasion — the digital equivalent of out-of-towners bussed in to beef up an election rally audience. But to make such fraud harder to detect, the operator can buy or hijack established accounts. High quality social media manipulation is expensive, which is why states do it better than fringe groups — and why many governments are no longer cowed by the internet and believe this is a war they can win.

Studies in other countries also tell us that computational propaganda involves a division of labour among various kinds of actor. At the centre of the enterprise is usually the ideological machinery of the government or party, churning out major talking points and identifying threats that need to be neutralised. The hub would also include a professional IT arm and data analysts, plus a media team to create content for a leader’s Facebook page, for example.

But a large volume of social media postings usually come from a separate layer of diverse players acting with considerable autonomy, including organisations and individuals affiliated to the party, and private websites covertly funded by the regime. Also craving a piece of the action are for-profit PR consultancies, often using foreign expertise. Governments and parties outsource some of their online operations to these mercenaries, who then marshal bot armies and engage in other dark arts at an arm’s length from their clients.

Finally, the most populous category in most countries comprises the unpaid volunteers who enlist in the cause out of conviction. Many of them may be trying sincerely to add value to the marketplace of ideas, but others have the self-awareness and social graces of a three-year-old (no offence to toddlers). They pick up on their leaders’ dog-whistles, share disinformation created by IT cells and PR consultants, and disrupt serious conversations with their tribal war chants. They believe they are doing god’s work, failing to realise that they themselves are victims of opinion manipulation.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a major user of computational propaganda.

Worrying trends

In recent years, Singaporeans engaged in public debate have voiced alarm at the ratcheting up of intolerant national-populist rhetoric by the PAP. Supporters defame critics, claiming they are foreign-funded fiends who are threatening the country. For an academic like me, studying major hate movements around the world, I find their faint echoes in Singapore chilling. Government leaders have not taken this trend seriously enough, allowing their followers to continue believing that political opposition and independent journalism are equivalent to treachery and treason.

Last week, a particularly vile attack came from a pro-government Facebook account named Global Times Singapore (GTS). It was obviously reacting to a strongly-worded opinion piece by Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP). GTS charged that Sudhir, along with other Singaporeans who have written for the paper — Ken Kwek, Tan Tarn How, PN Balji, Inderjit Singh and Donald Low — were contributing to a campaign by China to put pressure on Singapore. GTS defamed my wife, a senior SCMP editor, by suggesting that she is not acting professionally but using her position to help China put pressure on our country. It also defamed me, suggesting that I was instrumental in helping China by channeling these Singaporeans — two of whom I have met only once, maybe three to ten years ago — into my wife’s hands.

The allegation was so outlandish that most of us had a good laugh. Singaporeans who follow current affairs will recognise all the writers I’m alleged to have recruited for SCMP as belonging to the 95th percentile of the country’s independent thinkers, and therefore singularly unsuitable candidates for any conspiracy. They will also know that the one and only reason why so many of Singapore’s best commentators have resorted to SCMP as a forum for their pieces is that Singapore’s throttled newspapers tend to be inhospitable to views deemed critical of the government. Singaporeans who follow the media in other parts of Asia and the world can also guess why the PAP and its hardcore supporters are so thin-skinned about critiques that open societies would consider mild. It must be because decades of tightly managed debate have acclimated officials to a public sphere suffused with friendly white noise, rendering them hypersensitive to the rare instances of robust criticism.

Although it is easy to ignore the Global Times Singapore post and move on, there are three reasons why we should insist that the government take such episodes seriously. First, they have the potential to cause harm to individual citizens who are so targeted. Several incidents around the world show that all it takes is a single nutcase to get fired up by a conspiracy theory before violent retribution is meted out against defenceless individuals. My wife and I have positions of responsibility in Hong Kong’s highly polarised spheres of media and academia respectively. Both these arenas have seen cases of individuals being targeted for vigilante violence after being branded as too pro-China or too anti-China. We felt safe knowing that nobody looking at our work could honestly label us as either. We did not expect to have to worry about disinformation from our own country exposing us to hatred and contempt.

Second, there is a cost to the public interest. Don’t take it from me. Take it from the Select Committee report. “Online falsehoods can derail democratic contestation, and harm freedom of expression,” it said. “Falsehoods can erode people’s trust in authoritative sources of information, which provide a foundation of facts for rational discourse. Psychological research has shown that being exposed to large amounts of misinformation can make people stop believing facts altogether, and decrease their engagement in public discourse.” The Select Committee also expressed concern about the proliferation of online news sources that “do not apply standards of professional journalism”. It identified public education and quality journalism as key pillars of nurturing an informed public. In Global Times Singapore, we see an archetype of a disinformation site attempting to undermine educators and professional journalists. The government needs to tell us if sites like this are excused from the principles and recommendations offered by the Select Committee, just because they are pro-PAP.

Third, there is also a cost to Singapore’s ruling party. I am not a PAP member, but if I were, I would be outraged at how pro-PAP sites are tainting my party’s hard-earned reputation for rational and sober governance. I would remind the party’s third and fourth generation leaders that Lee Kuan Yew, while always mindful of the popular will, resisted the populist temptation. I would advise them that people know you by the company you keep. Netizen Lee Kuan Yew would have remembered this, and not compromised his brand by liking or sharing comments from shady commentators sucking up to him. He would not have allowed the clarity of his message to be clouded by duffers and fools claiming to love him and hate his opponents. If my party leaders bristle at my counsel and prefer to surround themselves with sycophants and cheerleaders, I would know this is the beginning of the end for my beloved PAP.

Like he would care.

Of course, one could argue that sites like Global Times Singapore do not speak for the government, which therefore has nothing to account for. It could be an independent volunteer outfit inspired, but not coordinated nor endorsed, by any government or party official. Or it could be the product of a rogue sub-contractor of a third-party contractor of an official arm of the state. It could even be an anti-government operation disguised as pro-government in order to give the PAP a bad name (creating imposter sites is a well-documented Russian disinformation tactic). Since we do not know its provenance, it is premature to blame the government or the ruling party for it. But, whatever its origins, it is not unreasonable to expect leaders to tell us where they stand.

Time to take a stand

Granted, the online conduct of opposition supporters is often worse. But such counter-arguments belong in the realm of partisan politics, not the public interest; they are forays into whataboutism, not moral reasoning. Regardless of what others are doing, leaders have a responsibility to set the tone for their followers, and to correct those who claim to be their supporters when they are wrong. Singapore’s ruling party has a greater moral responsibility than the rest, because of its supersized influence. Just as Donald Trump is rightly chastised for being slow to condemn racism in his ranks, citizens should demand that Singapore’s political parties check the excesses of their hardcore supporters.

When such ugliness reaches dangerous levels on the anti-PAP side, I would apply the same standard. Correction: I have done that already, back in the days when I blogged more regularly about Singapore. In the 2011 general election campaign, for example, I was among the first commentators ordinarily critical of the government to decry netizens’ personal attacks on the debutante PAP candidate, Tin Pei Ling. I accused the anti-government Temasek Review of corrupting the political terrain with its report on Tin, even though I was rooting for her National Solidarity Party opponent, Nicole Seah.

The same year, when PAP backbencher Seng Han Thong made a racially clumsy comment about Malay and Indian MRT drivers and rightly apologised, I chided The Online Citizen for triggering a witch hunt against Seng by misreporting what he’d said. The influential alternative website, obviously stung by this criticism from an ally, painted a target on my back, for which I had to endure attacks from others in civil society.

Thus, I know first-hand that it is not easy to break ranks, defend opponents, and criticise allies when they behave like bullies. But, with that experience, I also know that it is not asking too much of elected representatives to do the same. There may be a short-term cost, but reinforcing basic norms will strengthen your spine and your movement in the long term.

So, I am listening out for what PAP leaders might have to say about Global Times Singapore. There is a higher chance than usual that such a statement would be forthcoming in this particular case. That’s because one of GTS’s targets, Inderjit Singh, happens to be a former PAP backbencher, and the Prime Minister’s GRC teammate to boot. Witnessing one of their own set upon by a rabid dog howling its devotion to the PAP cannot be a pleasant sight for PAP parliamentarians past and present. The leadership will need to comfort its own ranks — even if it wants to brush aside the wanton attack on nobodies like my wife and me.

Sometimes the internet forgets.

But a one-off, ad-hoc response is not enough. Populist nationalism has become endemic within the PAP. The party needs to draw a line for all to see.

An online code of conduct for political parties is not a new idea. Britain’s Labour Party, for example, requires all its members to abide by a Code of Conduct that includes a Social Media Policy. It expects members “to treat all people with dignity and respect”. Here’s more:

  • We should not give voice to those who persistently engage in abuse and should avoid sharing their content, even when the item in question is unproblematic. Those who consistently abuse other or spread hate should be shunned and not engaged with in a way that ignores this behaviour.
  • We all have a responsibility to challenge abuse and to stand in solidarity with victims of it. We should attempt to educate and discourage abusers rather than responding in kind.
  • Trolling, or otherwise disrupting the ability of others to debate is not acceptable, nor is consistently mentioning or making contact with others when this is unwelcome.
  • Anonymous accounts or otherwise hiding one’s identity for the purpose of abusing others is never permissible.

Obviously, such codes are never watertight. In any large community or organisation, no matter how loudly it proclaims its norms, there will always be some who deviate. That’s understandable. What matters, though, is how the group responds when its norms are violated. Do leaders “challenge abuse” and “stand in solidarity with victims of it”, to quote the UK Labour Party’s code? Or do they excuse or even tacitly endorse the abuse when the target is a critic or political opponent? How a leader responds to bad behaviour by its followers will define the character of the group; and reveal the measure of the man.

The ruling party and the government can demonstrate its stature by instituting a comprehensive internal code of conduct against online abuse that prioritises openness, transparency and honesty. We should expect nothing less from leaders who have pontificated about online toxicity as if it is the greatest threat to Singapore since Japanese bombers entered our airspace, and have gone on to construct the world’s most elaborate law against manipulation of online discourse — by anyone outside of government, that is.

But neither should we wait for politicians to act. A code of conduct can be a citizen initiative. We have enough expertise in technology, internet regulation, law, media ethics, and other relevant areas to produce such a code. And if political actors do not want to be part of the process, that itself tells us all we need to know.

Postscript, May 11

Friends tell me Global Times Singapore responded to the above (kind of). I don’t propose to reply to their eight anonymous administrators, because my issue is with the political masters they think they are serving, not the low-level functionaries operating such outlets (so low-level it didn’t occur to them that they might embarrass the Prime Minister by labeling his former GRC teammate as a PRC stooge: yes, Inderjit Singh, who served in the PAP grassroots from 1984 and as an MP for 18 years).

Why anonymous pro-PAP sites choose to remain anonymous is an interesting question. I have in the past engaged in dialogue with pro-PAP bloggers who have enough spine to reveal their identities. But the nameless variety is a different species altogether.

In Singapore, all other things being equal, being pro-PAP entails much less risk than being neutral or anti-PAP. Yet, all the critical voices that these pro-PAP attack dogs target have enough backbone to use their real identities — even the women who, global research shows, get trolled much more viciously than men.

So what is stopping these pro-PAP sites from saying who they are?

I suppose one reason is that anonymity shields them from defamation suits. Their political heroes use defamation law as one oracle to settle debates. But these sites don’t want to play by those rules — since this would require them to confine themselves to allegations that they can substantiate. (In the case of GTS, I have openly declared that they have defamed me.) I love the chutzpah of these types, carrying on the debate with such verve even though it’s obvious they can’t put their money where their mouth is.

Another possible reason why they insist on being anonymous is that they are civil servants, engaging in conduct they know violates PSD rules. A third possibility is that they are private sector hacks whose contracts require them to shield their clients from liability. It is also possible that several of these anonymous sites are being churned out from the same small factory (because, of course, efficiency is important): content producers trying to make people believe that Singapore is full of their kind. Revealing themselves would shatter the illusion.

And of course none of these suspicions makes the PAP look good, which is why I cannot understand the establishment’s tacit approval of such practices. Transparency and a code of online conduct would solve the problem.

ONLINE FALSEHOODS LAW

CALIBRATED LEGISLATON?

Calibrated censorship is not always kinder.

One of the arguments being marshaled in defence of the government’s sweeping online falsehoods bill is that existing laws are actually even wider. In a Straits Times op-ed yesterday, Senior Counsel Siraj Omar pointed out that the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) would provide more “measured and calibrated” instruments than already exist in the Broadcasting Act and other legislation.

The Law Ministry has chimed in to say Omar is correct that POFMA “gives narrower powers to the Government, compared with powers the Government already has, under existing legislation”.

“The Bill does seek to scope down and calibrate the Government’s powers in key areas,” the ministry adds.

It is certainly true that some of POFMA’s features are more refined than existing laws. For example, receiving a correction directive under POFMA would be less painful than being hit with a defamation suit, or being charged with sedition, a Section 298 violation, or scandalising the judiciary—until now the most commonly used weapons against online political expression.

Similarly, POFMA’s take-down directives would be far less extreme than China’s mass blocking and filtering, which existing Singapore law allows.

But this does not mean we should feel grateful for the Bill. Adding a less repressive instrument to a government’s toolkit does not automatically produce less censorship or coercion.

Consider this analogy. If a country already has nuclear weapons, it would be foolish to encourage it to boost its conventional arsenal as well. The proliferation of small arms has cumulatively claimed more fatalities than the world’s fission and fusion weapons, precisely because handguns and rifles are more measured and calibrated—and therefore more readily triggered—than the nuclear option.

The analogy is extreme, but the same logic applies to POFMA. When comparing it with existing laws, it is not enough to measure their relative firepower. We also need to weigh the political and administrative costs of using them.

China-style blocking is so extreme that the Singapore government has, sensibly, never used it against good-faith news media and blogs. In contrast, POFMA would allow ministers to intervene in media cheaply. Considering the government’s track record of overreaction, the temptation to play with this toy may prove irresistible.

There is a second problem with the notion that calibrated coercion is necessarily better. We need to ask, better for whom?

Certainly, our media workers and media owners are spared the brutality that their peers face in some countries, and that is not a privilege to be scoffed at. When direct and violent repression is replaced with a system that encourages self-censorship, the media may even cease to feel like victims.

Yet, such a system is not victimless. Media freedom does not belong to media workers or media owners. It belongs to the public. Yes, the media could get comfortable with a regulatory system that is highly calibrated and measured. But when the media adapts to the new rules, the real loser would be a public that is not getting the fearless reporting and commentary it needs.

As for the Law Ministry’s assurance that POFMA “represents a shift in the Government’s approach, with the Government adopting a more measured and calibrated approach”, we can only wait and see.

The claim would be more persuasive if the government promised to review those other, more extreme laws. Or, at the very least, it should pledge that those who comply with POFMA correction and take-down orders will get immunity from more severe laws that could have been used.

I have made a similar suggestion regarding the correction powers in the Protection from Harassment Act. (See “Dreaded Defamation” in Singapore, Incomplete.) It would be a great step forward if compliance with such relatively painless directives provided protection from costly defamation suits.

Such arrangements are not without precedent. The Indonesian Press Council has a memorandum of understanding with the police, to the effect that if news reports are alleged to have violated ethical and possibly legal limits, and if the media concerned subject themselves to the Press Council’s independent self-regulatory mechanism, the police will not proceed with criminal investigations.

This is the kind of compromise that would truly represent a more measured and scoped-down approach to balancing media freedom with the need to protect society from its harms.

 

A 400-word version of this piece was offered to the Straits Times Forum page, but editors turned it down.

PAP COHESION

CALLING IT SPLITS?

One of the intriguing features of the 2011 General Election was the number of establishment-types who joined the Opposition. It got me thinking. Was this the start of that phenomenon that pundits have been speculating about for decades — a PAP split? Was this the stuff of PAP nightmares – its dreaded Bigfoot?

Not Yeti.

In a blog mapping elite disaffection in 2011, I observed that dissenting establishment-types fell into three categories. There were some from near the top of the hierarchy who clearly fell out with the leadership – but they didn’t go all the way to join the Opposition.

Then there were high-level mandarins who spoke their mind on a few key issues, but again did not engage in a broad-based assault on the PAP, let alone join the Opposition cause.

As for those who did join the Opposition, they tended to be less well known and from lower down the hierarchy.

None of these posed a serious threat to PAP unity. The danger zone would be breached when individuals high up the party or government hierarchy exited and went all the way.

Tan Cheng Bock appears to be doing just that, requiring an update to my 2011 graphic:

[See my original 2011 version for a fuller explanation of this graphic. There is also a 2017 update.]

I’m not saying that Tan will definitely win a seat or that his new party will necessarily become a major player.

But what he is certainly doing is to make defection thinkable among PAP elites. If PAP loyalists grow unhappy with the leadership, they now have a role model and a path forward.

The question is, what development could trigger enough defections to threaten PAP hegemony. I doubt any rift will be caused by a substantive policy disagreement. It will have to do with less tangible factors like trust and inclusiveness. (See also my 2011 blog on managing the elite.)

For example, if Lee Hsien Loong’s son Li Hongyi were to be inducted into politics, any hint that he’d enjoy a specially protected fast lane to high office would probably prompt an exodus of the PAP’s brightest and most independent minds. Since Li has said he has no intention to enter politics, though, this is a purely hypothetical scenario for the purpose of illustration.

Ultimately, the ball is still in the PAP’s court. If it manages the party and country well, there may be little space for Tan Cheng Bock’s or any other Opposition party to grow.

THE PRESS

DEFENDING PSEUDO-FREEDOM

There are newspapers around the world that struggle for press freedom. There are others at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, like China’s Global Times, that unapologetically serve as mouthpieces of the ruling party.

The Straits Times in Singapore is in neither category. It operates under laws that compel the press to align itself with the government, which is not its fault — but it tries to deny it. Instead of struggling to be free, it struggles to be seen as free.

In the past week, we saw two such cases.

First, Tommy Koh raised the seemingly obvious point that, in covering politically sensitive and controversial issues (in this case the debate on the income divide and a minimum wage) the press shows a bias for official positions, even if arguments are raised that any unfettered professional journalist would recognise as more newsworthy (in this case arguments by him).

Second, Yahoo! News made public what industry insiders have known for months: that one of ST’s most competent journalists, Li Xueying, was removed from her post as political editor because she was not trusted by some government leaders. Even as the paper should be gearing up for elections that may be called within a year, an already depleted political desk was absorbed into the general news desk, relegating its importance.

In both cases, ST’s official response was a stout defence of its professionalism, as if its critics got it wrong and don’t understand how news organisations work.

Click the photo to download.

This is conformism and self-censorship at an advanced level, where gatekeepers do what’s required of the powers that be while insisting, maybe even believing, that they are acting independently.

And this is exactly what Lee Kuan Yew designed the press system to do. My 2012 book, Freedom from the Press, tried to explain how it works. I also talk about the press in chapter 20 of my 2017 volume, Singapore, Incomplete. I’m releasing that chapter for free here, in appreciation of Tommy Koh and other Singaporeans who still care about the quality of our journalism.

DIVERSITY

RESCUING RELIGION

An extract from the Q&A after my talk at the IPS Diversities conference.

Q: To what extent do you think a civic impulse is workable only insofar that we have don’t have religious groups that are seeking to expand?

A: We can tell how open this IPS dialogue is, when we can actually talk about religion, which is a third rail in many societies.

I still think that, despite the worrying rise in aggressively exclusive religious groups around the world that have also inspired groups in Singapore, politically it is not as serious a problem here as it is elsewhere. I study intolerance and hate around the world, so relative to the stuff that is going on in other parts of the world, we are in pretty good shape.

And I’m convinced that one reason why is that no matter how worrying some of these trends are within any one faith group — or more accurately within sub-groups within major religions — there’s a limit to how much damage will be caused as long as those force are not aligned with party political forces. That’s when it becomes very potent elsewhere, when it becomes in the interest of a political party to court and partner with some of these exclusive and intolerant religious movements. And that makes sense in countries with a dominant religion, whether it’s India or Indonesia or Myanmar or the US or most of Europe.

It simply does not make sense in Singapore. A political party could try it, but it would not succeed, because even if you court the 40% Buddhist population out there, you’re going to alienate the 60% that make up everyone else. The same applies to other religions. And that does give us some assurance that there is a limit to how much religious divides can translate into electoral advantage.

Of course politics is more than elections. So religious forces can influence how debates are handled. And yes, in that sense we are in a worrying phase globally as well as in Singapore. For whatever mix of reasons, which sociologists of religion will be better equipped to explain, the centre of gravity in many of the world’s religions is at the more intolerant and exclusive ends of the spectrum.

It’s important to realise that this wasn’t always the case. I’m convinced this moment will pass. It is up to us collectively to make sure this moment passes. It is especially up to those who are the most devout in your respective communities to make sure this moment passes.

It was not too long ago that religious groups were at the forefront of progressive change around the world. Think of the major successes in human rights and democracy over the last 200 years. Most of them were fronted by religious organisations. The Quakers in Britain helped to get rid of slavery. Think of the church’s role in the Philippines’ People Power movement or the American civil rights movement. Think of religion’s role in Indian nationalism, which we benefited from as well. So there is a strong history of religion being on the side of tolerance and expanding human rights.

It is depressing to see how this strong tradition of religions standing up for the rights of others, including the rights of other faiths, has somehow been relegated, and instead the wind is at the backs of those who are more exclusive. I would urge every person of faith in this room to take personal responsibility to move religion back to where it should be, on the side of right, and on the side of the rights of people.

There are many inspiring stories around the world. In Philadelphia, where I’m now on sabbatical, I visited the leading human rights group that stands in defence of Muslims in in the US, the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR in Philadelphia is headed by a white Jewish American, its legal officer is an African-American Christian, and a Muslim is its education officer (main photo). So its three fulltime employees are a white Jew, a black Christian, and a Muslim immigrant. And they are fighting for Muslims’ human rights. This is what religion is capable of. It is capable of coming together in interfaith struggles to pursue social justice.

One of the proudest achievements of Singapore is to host the world’s oldest interfaith organisation, the Inter Religious Organisation. This is one of the resources we have. Sadly, though, that’s not where the action is, so to speak, in public life. Sadly, the agenda has been seized by a minority of leaders and members within the world’s great faith groups, that are pushing intolerance and exclusivity. That needs to change.

FULL Q&A – VIDEO

TOMMY KOH

ANOTHER REASON HE’S A NATIONAL TREASURE

At today’s IPS conference, I argued that the state should continue to lead the management of diversity – but less through coercion and more by modelling the kind of values we need. I pointed out that government rhetoric frames diversity mainly as a risk to social order. This is only partly true. Diversity is also a source of vitality. (Full text here.)

During the Q&A, I said that growing up in a multicultural society has modulated my “Indianness” with traits from Malay and Chinese culture – and I feel I am the better for it. I think there are Malays who feel similarly positive about the hybridisation of their own culture.

But what about our majority race? Are our ethnic Chinese government leaders able to say how living amidst minorities in multicultural Singapore has helped them?

No, I’m not just referring to how minorities add to Singapore’s colour and cuisine; or how our presence enhances Singapore’s appeal as a tourist destination.

What I’ve been waiting for is a prime minister who can share how interacting with Malays, Indians and others has made him a better person. I don’t recall hearing this from the first three. Maybe the fourth will finally have an answer?

I meant this question for our political leaders, but it was Ambassador Tommy Koh who rose to answer it.

He offered his own personal list. He has learnt from his Malay friends the values of gotong royong and mesyuarat, he said. And his Indian friends have taught him the value of principled argumentation.

I don’t know if all Malays and Indians would agree that these are the cultural traits they are most proud of (personally I felt affirmed to hear my “argumentative” heritage valorised).

But it’s not the precise list that matters. It’s simply fact that this establishment member of Singapore’s majority community could, in a heartbeat, express his heartfelt appreciation for multicultural living.

No, there’s no need for a national Minority Appreciation Day (that would be, er, MAD). And no, school kids shouldn’t be forced to write reflection essays on the topic. That’s the kind of overkill that would invite a backlash. No need to inflict Chinese guilt on our fellow citizens.

But, not for the first time, our leaders should be learning from Tommy Koh. If they don’t feel the value of multiculturalism deep within themselves, and instead continue to discuss diversity as mainly a “fault line”, Singaporeans will never develop the people-to-people trust that is the best protection against forces that seek to divide us.

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