By Mr Low Thia Khiang, Secretary General and MP for Hougang

Leaders of Political Parties, Members and Supporters, Distinguished Guests:
Good Evening.

Thank you for your presence here tonight. Special thanks to those who have contributed to the successful publication of the Party’s 50th year anniversary commemorative book. The presence here this evening of the family of our party founder – Mrs David Marshall and their son – has added much meaning to the dinner to mark the 50th year milestone of the Workers’ Party.

The Workers’ Party has been a constant feature of Singapore’s political scene for half a century, witnessing the different stages of political development in Singapore and at each stage, played its role as an opposition party. The outcome has been mixed and the effect has been limited. However, despite the difficult political climate, WP has remained resilient, challenging the ruling party during each general election to provide a choice to Singaporeans. This is our contribution to the political process of our system of Parliamentary Democracy.

Since 1959 when the PAP became the only dominant party, the mass media has often portrayed opposition to be against the national interest and a source of instability to the nation. Opposition parties were labeled as irrational, opposing for the sake of opposition. The Workers’ Party has had to battle such propaganda to change this negative image.

In my view, the party has made good progress in this aspect after years of painstaking effort, through public policy discourse and ground work. We have to continue in this direction in a sustainable and consistent manner, so as to build public confidence in WP.

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工人党秘书长暨后港区国会议员刘程强先生

各政党领袖，各位党员，支持者，各位朋友，

欢迎大家的光临，在此我要感谢那些出钱出力协助工人党出版这本五十周年纪念特刊的各界人士。创党领导人马绍尔的夫人和儿子出席今晚的庆祝晚宴，使这个五十周年纪念日更具意义。

工人党在新加坡政坛走过了半个世纪，在国家发展的不同时期扮演了反对党应有的角色，虽然成败参半，所能发挥的成效也有限，但能够在一个强大的执政党 几乎掌控所有资源，政治大环境不利反对党发展的情况下持续保持活力，和执政党在大选时竞争，提供选民选择，使新加坡的国会选举制度能够运作，是个不小的贡 献。

不过，自1959年起，行动党一党专政后，通过电视、报章等大众传媒的渲染，反对党变成是反国家，造成国家动乱的组织；更被贴上不理智，为反对而反对的标签。身为反对党的工人党，必须面对这个挑战，改变人们对工人党的负面印象才能有所发展。

工人党经过这几年来的努力，在这方面已经踏出了一大步，我们必须在这方面继续努力，持之有恒，走入民间，以诚恳的态度取得人民的信任，以期彻底改变一般人的印象。

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By Sylvia Lim

Delivered at the WP Public Forum: Amendments To The Penal Code – Why We Should Be Concerned

Last Sunday we were out selling Hammer at Ang Mo Kio GRC and a middle-aged man advised me not to focus too much on issues relating to the law. He said that people may not appreciate the arguments.

WP decided to hold this forum precisely because we see a need to raise awareness of crime and law and order issues. The Penal Code is the main criminal legislation here, but how many Singaporeans have even heard of it?

The official view usually is a right wing one – protect the public, safety, increase imprisonment. But what about the presumption of innocence? The Constitution provides the right of an arrested person to consult a lawyer, but in practice the police decide when it is convenient to do so.

WP has always had great concerns over the CJS. I’m happy to have this chance to share some of my thoughts on the draft Penal Code amendment bill.

The amendments proposed generally increase punishments and create new offences. Some of new offences catch up with technology but I am also a bit bewildered by the preoccupation with sexual crime in all shapes and forms! I leave a fellow panelist to deal with the sexual crime.

The areas I will cover are:

• a) Increase in punishments for many offences
• b) Sentencing options
• c) Message for young people
• d) Some aspects missing from the Bill

Increasing punishments

Fines have gone up, by either 3 times or 5 times. The rationale for this is that the fines were mostly fixed in 1952 when the value of money was very different from today e.g. $500 in 1952 was a huge sum, compared to what $500 is today.

Generally, I have no quarrel with the increase in the fines.

What makes me worried is the increase in the imprisonment terms. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, the government has “avoided increasing imprisonment terms unnecessarily”.

When you look at the details, we will find huge jumps in the maximum terms for many offences. To take some examples:

• (a) If someone assaults a Member of Parliament intending to scare him from doing his job as an MP, the current maximum term is 7 years. This will go up to 20 years – nearly 3 times 7 yrs.
• (b) If you are a member of an unlawful assembly, the current maximum jail term is 6 months. This will go up to 2 years, which is 4 times the current maximum. This is very significant as unlawful assemblies now clearly cover situations when there is no intention to breach of public peace.

Since the government says it has not increased imprisonment terms unnecessarily, we must ask the government why it is necessary to increase the maximum jail terms by 3 times or 4 times.

By doing this, the government must be saying that all this while, the offences have been treated too lightly. But we have lived peacefully with this law since the 1800s – has our society been rocked by many such cases? Are we over-reacting to particular incidents, out of proportion with the offence?

Is our society moving towards being a very punitive society, and is this good for an inclusive society? According to the 7th World Prison Population List compiled by King’s College International Centre for Prison Studies (www.prisonstudies.org), Singapore has one of the highest imprisonment rates in Asia (350 per 100,000 population), excluding DRC population.

Thomas Koshy mentioned to me that one danger of having much higher jail terms is that people who are charged may be pressured into pleading guilty. I agree with his assessment. You may want to fight the case in court, but as we know, people who claim trial get higher sentences than those who plead guilty. Faced with a high maximum jail term, some people will not be willing to take that risk. Is it good if people plead guilty all the time? It may save the government time and money, but the risk is that prosecution and police will become shoddier in their work.

As MHA is proposing some very drastic sentence increases, they must justify the significant increases to convince us that the imprisonment terms are not increased unnecessarily.

Sentencing options

One good thing about the changes is that some of the mandatory minimum sentences have been removed. E.g. if you steal a motor vehicle, the current law says you will get a minimum jail term of 1 year. With the changes, there is no minimum and it would be up to the judge to decide what is a suitable sentence. This is good.

One bad development, however, is that the changes will allow judges to combine all the 3 types of punishment of jail, fine and caning in one case. This will apply to several offences including outraging of modesty and causing hurt to a public servant.

This is a change from the current situation when the judge can choose to combine only 2 out of the 3. In fact, under the Criminal Procedure Code, it is stated that the High Court can pass any sentence except that “in no case shall the 3 punishments of imprisonment, fine and caning be inflicted on any person for the same offence.” The rationale behind this is to protect the offender from excessive punishment.

MHA has not described the situations when all 3 forms of punishment might be appropriate. The general understanding of sentencing principles is that jail and caning is generally suitable for crimes of violence, while non-violent offenders should get jail and fine. It is hard to think of what kind of offender should get the triple sentence, which is a big change from the current law.

Message To Young People

There are many provisions where the age of the victim matters. And of course there are good reasons for this as we want to protect our young people. My fellow panelist will touch on some of the provisions on sexual crime against young victims.

What I find is quite interesting is that our law generally seems to deal with young people in an inconsistent way.

For instance, the current Penal Code makes it an offence to sell / distribute obscene objects to anyone including young persons. If the young person is below 20 years old, the offence has higher punishment. Now, the government wants to move this from 20 to 21 years, to align it to R(A) ratings of films.

The cut-off age of 20 years has been there for a very long time. Is there a justification to raise it to 21?

This seems even more ridiculous when you look at things that people below 20 can do.

For instance, anyone above 18 can drink alcohol and smoke. A girl above 16 can freely consent to sexual intercourse, whereas she would not be able to watch R(A) films!

Boys are drafted into National Service at 18 years, can theoretically die for Singapore, and yet cannot watch certain films. Does this make sense?

Perhaps it is timely for us to consider using 18 years as a general cut-off point so that our young adults can exercise choices at their age.

It is useful to look at international benchmarks. By and large, the age of majority in most countries is 18, a recognition that children are maturing faster than before. Is there any reason to think that our young people are less mature than their peers elsewhere? I think it may be time for us to consider lowering the age of majority to 18 as well.

Aspects missing from the Bill

Some of the new offences include extra-territorial crimes i.e. crimes committed by Singaporeans and PRs while overseas. For instance, under the new laws, Singaporeans and PRS who patronize child prostitutes in other countries can be charged in Singapore as if they committed the offence in Singapore.

I think we can see the rationale and why Singaporeans might think twice if they knew that Singapore law could get them when they come back. Although it might be harder to investigate and get evidence in another country, the government has shown some resolve by writing this into our law and working towards prosecuting people.

Similarly then, I’m wondering why the government is not creating a similar offence for Singaporean Citizens, Permanent Residents and Companies who are creating haze pollution in Indonesia. The government seems to be aware that our fellow citizens running businesses in Indonesia may be employing slash and burn tactics – previous Environment Ministers had reminded Singaporeans not to do so. The haze has been with us for about 15 years and we all know the damage it has caused to the health and quality of life of the whole population. This is not to mention the losses to our businesses.

The haze is a regional issue which requires co-operation of several countries to solve. Nevertheless, these processes are obviously slow. I think this is an excellent opportunity to show our commitment to solving the problem by showing we will act against our own people.

On the whole, the amendments seem to be taken mainly from a prosecution point of view. As such, nothing has been mentioned about reviewing the section on Defences. Some of the defences need a closer look e.g. the defence of duress i.e. that a person was forced by a threat of death to commit a crime. This defence is too limited as it only covers a person who commited an offence while threatened with being killed, but not if he committed the offence because his daughter would be killed. Unfortunately, the govt has not looked at the defence angle at all.

Thank you.

By Sylvia Lim

Delivered at the closing dinner of the Academic Conference of the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations

Your Excellencies, President SR Nathan and Ambassador Patricia Herbold, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Recently I spent 3 weeks in the USA on an exchange program. I was joined by 20 colleagues from different countries. As we got to know one another over those weeks, we came to realise that though we were culturally diverse and our countries were at different stages of development, our societies faced issues with common themes.

Many of us came from countries which had been colonized by Britain. During the years of British rule, organs of State and government processes followed British models with some adaptation. Hence, my colleagues and I were able to find similar institutions in our countries and use the same terminology when talking abou governance e.g. terms like Parliamentary democracy, Hansard and judicial independence. Though we came from Singapore, Jamaica, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, we understood each other immediately.

The desire for self-determination made our countries seek independence from Britain. However, many of the legacies remain, particularly the public institutions. But the formal institutions tell only half the story. The way these institutions now operate and how the people actually experience them is unique to each country.

Under the British model, Parliamentary democracy installs checks and balances through the separation of powers between the 3 branches of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. For the checks to be effective, there are several assumptions made. This evening, I would like to touch on 2 of the assumptions:

First, that the legislature is elected by the people through free and fair elections.

Secondly, that there are rigorous checks on the executive.

Status of Elections

There is a constant battle about how elections can be made more democratic.

At one end of the spectrum, some colleagues of mine had to contend with the very real possibility of being murdered by political opponents and having their homes torched by arsonists. Others lived in dictatorships, where ballots were apparently cast by phantom voters or persons who were already deceased. In some countries, the elections are run by the ruling party. It is not uncommon to see ruling parties use their positions as government to entrench themselves politically. The use of the incumbent’s advantage happens in most countries. It is a question of degree. Nevertheless, these practices are objectionable, as they make voting less free by unfair pressure on voters to resist such inducements.

Even in the First World, the electoral process is not without its problems. During my recent travels in the USA, my colleagues and I detected increasing cynicism among Americans towards the electoral process. It costs a lot these days to run for state or federal office, leading to the common belief that successfu candidates are beholden to big sponsors and big business. There is also a real threat of public apathy and disengagement – it seems that there are people would rather go on holiday than vote! If voter turn-out is low, how valid is the winner’s mandate? I wonder what Ambassador Herbold would say if I suggested that voting in the USA be made compulsory.

Checks on the executive

Besides the formal checks by the legislature and the courts, it is clear to most Asians that the prevailing culture of a society greatly impacts how much accountability the executive government gives.

Two key factors of culture come to mind. First, how much information is available in the public domain, and secondly, the role of the mass media in the society.

In many Asian countries, the citizen has access only to information which the executive chooses to disclose. Classifying information is deemed to be the government’s prerogative, with the citizen a passive bystander in the process. There is no equivalent of a Freedom Of Information Act for citizens to compel disclosure, nor
is there any automatic time-frame for de-classifying information unlike in the USA. This severely cripples the ability of the citizen to lay his hands on concrete facts to call the government to account.

Besides access to information, the role played by the mass media can be decisive in keeping governments accountable. One need only recall Watergate and the pressures facing the Washington Post editors and journalists as they uncovered the break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in 1972. If such an event were to happen in this region, how far would it be reported? Each Asian country has its own barometer of tolerance of media control. In the case of state-owned media or media which needs to be licensed by the authorities, their latitude to report also depends on how much discretion the authorities have to issue or withhold licences. There are still serious constraints in many Asian countries which lead the mass media to expound the official view disproportionately, leaving their citizens poorer for it.

Thankfully, the advent of new technology has been a driving force for change. The use of the Internet to “leak” information and to disseminate non-official views is now widespread. This serves as a pressure point for the mainstream media to be more balanced to remain credible. The authorities are also responding to Internet criticisms. These are healthy signs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, what I have talked about assumes that building democratic societies are universal goals. Is this true of Asian societies? There have been views expressed by some Asian leaders that Western democracy promotes individualism, which is inconsistent with collectivism and Confucian values. My view is that if democracy embodies citizen participation in public life and in determining the kind of society we have, there is enough scope within it to cater for Asian values. All politicians should face their electorates squarely and seek mandates which are truly democratic. To this extent, democracy has value for all societies.

By Perry Tong

Delivered at the Workers’ Party Youth Wing Conference 2006

Dear WP Youth Wing Members,

It gives me great pleasure to convene this conference after GE 2006 as your elected President.

Having recently contested in the national elections I hope to pass on my experiences, as I am sure many of the candidates present here today do too, to as many of you as possible with a view to growing the WP into a more agile, responsive and responsible election platform.

Many of you have provided invaluable assistance during this past GE. From myself and all the candidates present or otherwise: Thank you very much, your efforts are not in vain and they are very much appreciated. Your continual support is vital for the WP to move on to the next phase of growth, which I believe the Youth Wing is well placed to undertake.

As the WP grows and as the Youth Wing grows it necessitates some changes in operations and perhaps even our constitution. In the activities to come I wish for the members to own the organization. You, the Youth Wing members, will decide what is best for the Youth Wing going forward through a democratic process.

I would like to reiterate some points from our Terms of Reference:

That the WP Youth Wing is committed to supporting:

Hammer Sales

Political Education of the Youth

Area and Constituency Committees formed by the Party

Any activity organized by the Party

Some or many of you are familiar with Hammer Sales, Area and Constituency Committee work and Party organized activities. For Political Education I hope that all of us will serve as Ambassadors of The Workers’
Party in practicing, spreading and inculcating a truly democratic mindset to combat inequalities, particularly political inequalities, in Singapore. To this end, a series of induction workshops will shortly be organized at the Party level and I encourage all of you to attend these workshops. While there are materials currently available you are all free to contribute to making our messages even more effective through a process of consultation and peer reviews.

With this knowledge shared and gained, we as members of the WP Youth Wing are tasked, each and every one of us, with bringing up initiatives that will impact Singaporeans in the political, social and economic sphere as it is beneficial to Singapore and to the Workers’ Party. We are the agents of change. Change against some forms of conservatism which retard growth of the citizenry in the practice of citizenship, change to the culture that prevents Singaporeans from exercising their democratic rights, change to the culture that
breeds fear of opposition politics or just plain old politics for that matter, change to the culture that is upholding all these fears which politically paralyzes many Singaporeans. It is to this end that political education is a critical task that must be carried out by the Youth Wing.

It is my duty, as President, to promote our initiatives at the Party level for adoption and practice where feasible and possible.
Thank you.

Perry Tong
President

Workers’ Party Youth Wing

By Sylvia Lim

Delivered at the Institute of Policy Studies Post-Elections Forum

Good afternoon distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. I remember in the run up to this election, a number of people who are here in this room actually, whether in the media or privately in your own homes were saying that they expected a clean sweep from the PAP in the General Elections. And I wish I could name all of you individually. But that would not be in a good taste. And I think if not anything else, this election gives us, who are in the opposition party, some cause for hope for the future because we see certain
rationality, a certain appeal to the higher principles in which Singaporeans vote.

And of course, my presentation here is not as analytical as Derek’s (Derek da Cunha) because I am not an analyst. I am just a player in the system. And speaking from the Workers’ Party (WP) perspective, I think there is some cause for optimism for the future for us. To people outside Singapore, they maybe wondering why is there a cause for optimism because it is after all, the number of elected seats for WP remains at one seat out of 84. If you look at the share of valid votes that the Workers’ Party got, it is actually slightly lower than what we got for the 2001 elections. There were some pleasant surprises for me personally and, I think, for some of my party colleagues as well, arising from this election.

This photograph here, some of you may have already seen it, was used here with permission from yawningbread. It was obtained at 8.45 am this morning. The first two points which I put up there are connected in a sense that we know that the Prime Minister gave Senior Minister this permission of winning back the two opposition wards, and they were talking about getting a clean sweep and as the weeks went on, it became maybe 83 out of 84 after all. In the end, it failed in such a way that the two incumbent oppositions
have actually increased their voting margins. SM Goh put it down to the case of loyalty to the incumbents. But my question is, is it just a case of loyalty?

Perhaps, there was a feeling that there was a lack of fair play in the elections. And we find that connected to this, there is an indication that there is an open rejection of the strategy of selective upgrading of HDB estates in the General Election. Even people who are not living in opposition wards, people who are living in private housing were beginning to question whether it is legitimate for the PAP to use tax-payers’ money to advance its party objectives. We made this an election issue this year and it seems that from my assessment of what people has been saying, it seems to strike a chord with the voters.

One interesting thing which I found was the role of the cyber community which I believe some will be touching on later. Personally, I am not a geek. I don’t talk to people I don’t know on the net. In the course of house visits in the last few years, I had not seen an indication that cyberspace had affected the information the voters had about us. But this election showed me that probably, the penetration rate and the potential of the reach of that form of communication can be very high during the period when people have intense interest in the elections. I was very struck by that fact that during the campaign, for example, say, I would be doing a public outreach somewhere, someone would come up to me and say, “Oh, I have seen your talk on the videocast.” I realized myself that I have underestimated the value of that.

This is interesting because if you remember in April, the Workers’ Party filed a parliamentary question to raise this point with the government. We asked the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts whether there would be a liberalisation of the podcast and the Internet. And Dr. Balaji said, “No, it would remain illegal and people would be prosecuted”. But it seems that people don’t believe that this would happen (that they would be prosecuted). It is interesting to note that it was reported yesterday by Dr. Lee Boon Yang who was making a comment at some public relation academy that they would look at liberalising this form of communication for the next GE and so, this is a significant victory.

The last point is about voters’ behaviour pre and post. For all of us in the WP, we sometimes ask ourselves of the effort we put in and the limited resources that we have – are we frogs in the well? Do Singaporeans care about what we are trying to do? And so on. And we find that during this election, we had very encouraging
and warm responses from people. During the pre-election period for instance, there were many people who volunteered to help us during the elections. They just did not talk but they put their words into action. For example, we have people we never knew before agreeing to function as our polling agents and counting agents during the whole of Polling Day as well as being our representatives for the process. There were some others who were more physically fit and volunteered to distribute the election materials. They impressed me, in particular with one man who single-handedly delivered our materials to 5000 homes all by himself. These are very touching outpourings of support.

Of course, during the polling results, we could see that there was some support of what the WP is trying to do based on the outcomes of the various electoral wards. In the post-election period as well, I mean we take Derek’s point that we try to reach a critical mass because we know at this stage we are still building phase and we have seen people come forward to join us, and also, it is very interesting that nowadays, when I am out somewhere, strangers would come up to me. The other day, I was having dinner with some friends, and as I walked out to the ladies, this waiter was proudly showing me the WP’s party flag that he bought from the rally and asked me to sign the materials he had purchased. It was a touching outreach from the people.

Perhaps more significantly, we are confident there is public acceptance in the population for party politics. It is interesting to note the responses from Aljunied’s PAP MPs who said that their local programmes did not really attract voters’ interest. Voters were really concerned with national issues. And the point is, in the context of Singapore, when else can the people of Singapore have the government to account for their national policies? An endorsement of this was seen on Tuesday night when the Prime Minister made his speech at the swearing in of the Cabinet. He said, “Alright! This election, we have heard from the people. We will do something about the cost of living. We will look at Healthcare.” We (WP) make no apologies for canvassing the national agenda.

An interesting phenomenon is on engaging the population. Last week there was a forum in the Guild House where some speakers observed that there seems to be an awakening in the people about politics. We seem to find that this is quite true. I don’t know the reason exactly. It could be a combination of reasons. One of the reasons is that more than half of the seats were contested this time. So, more than half of the electorate is forced to make a choice. And once you are forced to do that, there is a domino effect on your
family when you need to exercise your vote. Secondly and possibly, the population became engaged because they saw some dynamism in the opposition movement. As far as the WP is concerned, in the last election we fielded 2 candidates. In this election, we fielded 20 candidates, 15 of whom are first-timers, including myself. I think that has some effect over the younger generation, that the opposition movement is alive, and perhaps there is some potential to grow. Lately, I have been receiving a lot of queries myself from young people asking me why I have taken this step to join the WP. I think it is very healthy that people are talking about these issues.

The last point here is about earning the trust of the people. I think it was mentioned earlier on by Derek that the WP appears to be very moderate and in one sense, careful. I think that we know that we have to earn the trust of people and it does not come overnight. People observe the party over a period of time. And we are very happy to note in the post-GE conference that the Prime Minister called, he was commenting on the results of the Ang Mo Kio GRC, and he said that that, “Well, the Ang Mo Kio voters voted for the WP brand”. Well, thanks for that.

Of course, besides the party organisation and the fact that we have to build up our organisation, I think as individuals the population looks at opposition members very carefully. Perhaps more carefully than the PAP candidates because in one sense, when you are faced with the choice whether to vote for the opposition, you might be voting for change so, who are these people you are voting for? For us, we realise that we need to spend a period of time to let the voters get to know us. So if we ourselves are not public figures
in our own right, then there is no substitute for groundwork and hard work. We are prepared to work because we think that it is something that people need to know.

Some of the points here are covered by Derek already. Perhaps, I want to touch on the second point which is the ‘Fear Factor to Diminish’. Many of us, who have lived in Singapore all of our lives, have gone through periods where we have seen opposition members get into trouble because of the law but a lot of the young people here don’t have that baggage. We still see some signs of it in a sense that young people came to inquire about the WP; parents may try to dissuade them from getting involved because of the memories of the past. But nowadays, young people make up their own minds. Having seen the fact that WP has grown…we are still not in jail – jail is not necessarily an end-point to opposition involvement. I think, over time, this fear factor will diminish. At the next election, I think WP will field more candidates. How many more?
It is hard to say at this point. Rest assured Derek, we will work towards the critical mass.

Thank you.