Singapore
Jul 17th 2008
From The Economist print edition
MEMBERS of Singapore’s government are notorious sticklers for
legal exactitude. So it has been interesting to watch the reaction
after the country’s elder statesman, Lee Kuan Yew—a British-trained
lawyer before he became a politician—gave inaccurate testimony in
the trial of two opposition leaders.
In May Mr Lee testified in a hearing to decide damages against
Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP),
and his sister, Chee Siok Chin, for defaming the former prime
minister and his son, Lee Hsien Loong, who is now prime minister
himself. Mr Lee senior claimed that after the London-based
International Bar Association (IBA) held its annual conference in
Singapore last October, its president sent a letter to the Law
Society of Singapore praising the country’s justice system. It has
since emerged that there was no such laudatory letter.
Mr Chee (who along with his sister was briefly jailed for
contempt for accusing the judge in his case of bias) tried
unsuccessfully to have the hearing reconvened in the light of Mr
Lee’s incorrect testimony. Mr Lee’s counsel, Davinder Singh, wrote
to the court on July 9th admitting that his client was wrong about
the letter but noting that the IBA’s president, Fernando Pombo, had
praised Singapore’s “outstanding judiciary” in a speech at the
start of the conference. Mr Singh argues that what matters is that
the IBA did praise Singaporean justice, not whether it did so in a
speech or a letter. Mr Chee says there is a difference: the speech
was made before the conference, where criticisms of the justice
system were aired. Mr Lee was claiming, in effect, that the IBA was
still impressed after this.
By coincidence, on July 9th the IBA’s Human Rights Institute
issued a report criticising the use of defamation suits by the
ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) to silence the opposition and
the press, and expressing concerns about the independence and
impartiality of Singapore’s judges. The law ministry has rejected
the IBA’s report, pointing out that Singapore’s legal system has
won excellent ratings in other international surveys. Indeed, in
cases not involving the country’s leaders, there is no dispute
about its quality. As for the IBA’s worries about cases involving
PAP figures, the law ministry claims that the IBA failed to
substantiate its “grave” allegations with evidence, though its
report does discuss several worrying cases.
America’s State Department, which is in rather less danger of
being sued by the PAP than are the opposition or newspapers, has
expressed concern about judicial independence in political cases in
Singapore. In its latest human-rights report, in March, the
department noted that the PAP’s consistent success in defamation
suits against critics “led to a perception that the judiciary
reflected the views of the ruling party in politically sensitive
cases.”
According to the Straits Times newspaper, Mr Lee on
July 11th accused human-rights organisations of “a conspiracy to do
us in”. He said that they saw that Russia and China had been
studying Singapore’s success, and hence regarded it as a threat. Mr
Lee and the government argue that doing things their way has made
Singapore prosperous, orderly and corruption-free, and has earned
international respect. The threat of defamation proceedings may
make opposition politicians weigh their words more carefully than
they do elsewhere. But Singaporean voters continue to buy the PAP’s
argument that such constraints are a price worth paying—so far.
