| Yawning
Bread. 5 June 2008
Whose misbehaviour diminishes us all?
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Zimbabwe On 7 May 2008, Harrison Nkomo, a media lawyer, was arrested in the capital Harare on the charge of insulting President Robert Mugabe. This law is used to penalise criticism of the president, whether his person or his office. [1] Nkomo was waiting for his turn to make presentations at a High Court bail hearing for freelance journalist Frank Chikowore when he told senior prosecutor Michael Mugabe, to tell his "father" to step down. There were apparently other utterances as well. For that, police came to his office a few days later and arrested him. An interesting twist is that the Zimbabwean president is actually Michael Mugabe's uncle, not his biological father, but this wee detail is unlikely to save Nkomo. Zimbabwe is currently in political crisis -- in addition to suffering hyper-inflation and economic freefall -- because the general and presidential elections earlier this year did not unequivocally return Mugabe and his party to power. The Elections Commission then delayed announcing the results for weeks, finally saying that no candidate had won a clear majority (if such a delayed answer is at all credible) and so the presidential election had to be rerun. In the lead-up to the new election, Mugabe is sweeping his opponents into jail on one charge or another. Those who aren't arrested are simply beaten by his party's hired thugs.
In August 2007, Jakrapob Penkair, who later became a minister in the Thai government of pro-Thaksin People's Power Party (PPP), made a speech at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok. Few local Thais took notice of this speech until May 2008 when complaints of lese majesté suddenly surfaced, accusing him of having insulted the Thai king. The delayed complaints were believed to have been orchestrated by the anti-Thaksin camp who are smarting from the fact that despite the September 2006 coup and the intensive propaganda campaign conducted by the military government against Thaksin, the PPP still won the election earlier this year to form the new government. Looking for ways to bring down the government, they have begun organising protests again. The attacks on Jakrapob are clearly meant to destabilise the new cabinet. Thais recall that just prior to the 2006 coup, Thaksin himself was similarly accused of lese majesté, so when the police decided to charge Jakrapob with the offence, political tensions rose mightily and the stock market plunged. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, "Although cases are seldom prosecuted -- Mr. Thaksin was never charged and denied all allegations against him -- the law about injuring the monarch, or lese majesté, is sometimes used as a tool to intimidate political opponents." [2] Eventually, Jakrapob resigned from the cabinet to avert further complications for the PPP government.
But what did Jakrapob say? In his speech [3], he criticised Prem Tinsulanond, the senior-most privy councillor to the Thai King, and widely believed to be the man who engineered the coup against Thaksin. Opening his speech, he said, "Who is Khun Prem, whom does he represent, whether or not he represents him, would be what we shall discuss tonight because it involves the current [state] and future of Thailand's democracy... " In the main, his speech dealt with what he saw as the central tension in the Thailand of today: that between an old patronage system and democracy. "The stakes are very high for both sides. I mean Democracy and Patronage; and if you take the result of the August 19th referendum seriously, you are observing the clash between the 56'% and the 41% of the entire population. Never before has such a high number of people come out to say that we no longer need your Patronage." He analysed why attitudes of deference to power are holding Thailand back, but I'm sure that Singaporeans reading what he said won't be able to help thinking his words could well apply to us. "Patronage system is problematic because it encourages inequality among individuals. And that's a direct conflict to Democracy. It encourages one person into thinking of depending on the other or others. It breeds an endless number of slaves with a very limited number of masters. It prevents Thailand from coming of age. That's why ..... many of us remain children. If you observe the political fights in Thai politics you would find most of them petty. It's a child's game." Anyone convicted of lese majesté faces up to 15 years in jail. We had our share of political theatre the last few weeks. Chee Soon Juan, the leader of the Singapore Democratic Party faced a charge of speaking in public without a police permit during the 2006 general election. He was convicted by District Court Judge Jasvender Kaur of the charge and fined S$5,000 or, in default, five weeks in jail. Also found guilty of a similar offence was Chee's party associate Yap Keng Ho, who drew a fine of $2,000 or 10 days imprisonment in default. Chee is bankrupt, having lost a defamation case brought against him by government leaders about 5 years ago, so he won't be able to pay the fine. Knowing Yap, he won't pay the fine either, preferring to go to jail.
Chee appeared with his sister Chee Siok Chin in another court over a different charge. This one related to an article published in the party newsletter in early 2006 that compared the Singapore government with the scandal in the finances of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) under former head T T Durai. Durai had arranged to pay himself a generous salary, flew first class, and arranged some rather opaque deals between NKF and his associates' companies. Revelation of these goings-on at Singapore's biggest charity outraged nearly everybody. Lee Kuan Yew and current prime minister Lee Hsien Loong sued the Chees and the Singapore Democratic Party for defamation and got a summary judgement in their favour quite early on. The recent court appearances were to assess damages, during which both Lees had to appear in court to be cross-examined by Chee and his lawyer M Ravi. This cross-examination was reduced to an exchange of insults.[4] The court has reserved judgement. However, Judge Belinda Ang cited both the Chees for 15 instances of contempt of court during those proceedings, when they disputed her rulings and made statements that she felt disparaged the dignity and impartiality of the court. For these, Chee Soon Juan will spend 12 days in jail and Chee Siok Chin, 10 days, starting 4 June 2008. The judge, in issuing the sentences, said, "If left unpunished, misbehaviour in court will diminish the dignity and authority of the court." [5] She was probably unaware that people would naturally see irony in her statement, asking whose misbehaviour was more instrumental in diminishing Singapore's justice system. One who made no bones about his feelings on the matter was Gopalan Nair, a Singaporean who has since become a US citizen. He had stood for elections in Singapore during the 1988 and 1991 elections under the Workers' Party, an experience that had already got him into some trouble with the Singapore government. He came back to witness the Chee trials, updating his blog frequently with severe criticisms of the court's and government's conduct. Finally, in a post dated 30 May 2008, he called the judge "compliant" with "Lee Kuan Yew's demands to abuse the law." He wrote that when Lee called Chee "a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel, a criminal and various other abusive epithets", these same words applied to him and his son. Finally, he taunted the Singapore government to arrest him. "Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, look here," he wrote, "I am now within your jurisdiction and that of your corrupt police and your corrupt judiciary who will do anything you want of them, however criminal and illegal." "What are you going to do about it?" On the evening of 31 May, he was arrested and charged with insulting a public servant [6]. * * * * * These will become prisoners of conscience, cases monitored by Amnesty International and regularly trotted out wherever there is an international audience, alongside prisoners of conscience from unsavoury places like Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. All our efforts at presenting ourselves as a modern, attractive city will be discounted by some measure with this kind of bad press. Nor did the government gain anything in the domestic public's mind by pursuing these cases. If anything, Lee Hsien Loong's attempts to make his government look moderate (and to "connect" with the people) are now in a thousand pieces with people reminded all over again how nasty and brutish this government can be towards its opponents. And how well we compare with places where it is an offence to insult the king, president or whatever, where a culture of servile patronage reigns supreme, and where paid thugs make a mockery of democracy, law and order. Oh, the company we keep! © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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Singapore likes to compare itself to developed countries, but this week,
we deserve to be in the doghouse together with places like bankrupt and
lawless Zimbabwe and coup-ridden Thailand.
