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Excerpted
from Beyond Suspicion? The Singapore Judiciary by Francis T.
Seow, published in May 2007,Monograph. Published by Yale Southeast
Asia Studies. Copyright©2007 by Yale Southeast Asia Studies.
Reprinted by permission
 Francis
Seow was once the highly-regarded solicitor general of Singapore in
the government of Lee Kuan Yew and president of the Singapore Law
Society. After leaving the government, Seow made the mistake of
defending people the government was prosecuting.
In
1988, Seow was taken in for questioning by the Internal Security
Department. After 17 straight hours of invasive interrogation, he
collapsed and was rushed to a hospital by officials who feared he had
had a heart attack. While he was incarcerated, his law office was
raided by authorities who removed all of his records. After he
was released from detention, he announced plans to run as an
opposition candidate and won a non-constituency parliamentary seat.
The government filed six counts of tax evasion against him and
ultimately convicted him in absentia after he had fled the country.
He was disqualified from sitting in Parliament as a result of his
conviction.
To show
how far the government pursues its opponents, Seow had earlier won a
seat on the board of the Singapore Turf Club, the republic's
horse-racing organization. The government abolished the turf club,
wiped out the entire board, appointed a new one and took over the
newly formed racing club. At the time of his arrest, Seow was
involved in a relationship with a Singaporean businesswoman who was
financing a business deal through Bank Nationale de Paris. The bank
suddenly dropped her line of credit and forced her out of the
business deal. Bank officials at the time said the government had
nothing to do with aborting the transaction.
While he was in
the United States, the government abolished all appeals to the
Judicial Committee of the Privy Council -- Singapore's last court of
appeal in London -- which made him wary of returning to Singapore.
Seow obtained a fellowship from Yale University and has lived in the
United States since 1988. This is the preface to his book.
Justice in
Singapore is Janus-faced.
The
Singapore courts—when adjudicating commercial cases between two
contending parties where neither the authorities nor the political
élite are involved or interested—may be relied upon to
administer justice according to the law. In this regard, Singapore
judges have an overall reputation for the integrity of their
judgments. The enthusiastic reports of international organizations,
such as the Geneva-based World Economic Forum or the Hong Kong-based
Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, have to be read subject to
this important rider.
This book,
however, is concerned with the other face of justice in Singapore:
where these very same judges, sad to say, in politically-freighted
cases have repeatedly demonstrated a singular facility at bending
over backwards to render decisions favourable to the Singapore
government and its leaders. Their judicial contortions have acquired
an international notoriety that concerned human rights organizations,
such as Amnesty International, the Geneva-based International
Commission of Jurists, and latterly the Lawyers’ Human Rights
Watch Canada, enough to send legal representatives to Singapore to
observe the trial proceedings at first hand.
Their
observations confirmed what many Singaporeans have known all along:
that the political context of such cases invariably influences the
judges in their decisions.
And yet,
the Singapore judiciary was historically free and independent of the
government of the day or of any other controlling legal authority,
until the ruling People’s Action Party—with no viable
political opposition to keep it balanced and in check—began to
entrench itself in the body politic of the nation. In that time,
Prime Minister Harry Lee Kuan Yew, now nominally senior minister but
still the enduring éminence grise of the People’s Action
Party (PAP) government, systematically gained control over the
courts, which he exercises currently through his judicial point man
and great friend, Yong Pung How, the chief justice.
In
addition, Lee appoints only politically correct lawyers as judges
whose loyalty he ensures with princely remunerations—well over
and above the comparable market rates for judges worldwide.
Corruption
oftentimes takes many forms and disguises: paying obscenely high
salaries and bonuses to judges is one, for they inevitably assume the
gratifying form of monthly retainers by the government for loyal
services rendered or to be rendered. Given that he who pays the piper
calls the tune, it is virtually impossible for judges to do justice
by the citizens when the state or its leaders are involved as
litigants, as this narrative will amply demonstrate.
Unlike
previous defamation actions, the legal blitzkrieg herein—masterminded
by Harry Lee Kuan Yew—was exceptional in the sheer number of
PAP plaintiffs who retained in concert disparate law firms of
high-priced lawyers and who, against valid objections and normal
procedural laws, were allowed by the courts to maintain multiple
lawsuits over the same matter against the defendants: lawyer and
unsuccessful opposition electoral candidate Tang Liang Hong, his
wife, Teo Siew Har, and, ultimately, his defence counsel, J. B.
Jeyaretnam, who was also then the secretary general of the opposition
Workers’ Party.
The
insidious purpose of this unusual legal manoeuvre was intended to
overwhelm the resources in personnel and finances of the defendants,
and of Tang in particular, and to hamper their defence—a
manoeuvre that was patently obvious to the judges but who, however,
chose to turn a Nelsonian eye on these legal shenanigans.
Lee used
to assert that the judiciary must be protected against “unjust
attacks and slurs,” but, in truth, it is he who has not only
disfigured the face of justice in Singapore but undermined its very
foundation by politicizing it, as well as that of the legal
profession. In the ensuing proceedings, counsel for Lee and the Prime
Minister, Goh Chok Tong—Drew & Napier and Allen &
Gledhill respectively—not to mention the lawyers for the other
PAP plaintiffs, disgraced themselves and sullied the profession of
the law by meekly allowing themselves to be led by their noses by the
puppet-meister.
In an
attempt to win their case at all costs, they not only suppressed
important evidence advantageous to Tang but concealed it from the
presiding judge, Justice Chao Hick Tin. Nor did they take any steps
to correct the judge’s misconception of the facts at the
subsequent judgmental hearing, consequently ensuring that the damages
awarded against Tang would be humongous: thus perpetrating a travesty
of justice by their studied silence. A classic case of the legal
maxim, suppressio veri suggestio falsi—suppression of
the truth is suggestion of the false.
Given
their seniority at the bar, they should have known better. Together
with the staff of the Supreme Court registry, they manipulated the
practice and procedure of the court and its docket to disadvantage
the defendants at every turn in their obscene rush to judgment.
In a
closed society where the government has a finger in almost every pie
of business and commerce and controls every aspect of community life
right down to sporting and even kindergarten activities, it makes
sound commercial sense, if nothing else, to keep on its good side for
its capacity to distribute lucrative contracts and work to the
politically correct.
Insofar as
the legal profession is concerned, the cornucopia of legal work
dispensed by the government and its many linked companies was, and
is, immense and lucrative. It is bread-and-butter work. It is
understandably the aspiration of many law firms to be the chosen
receptacle of such official favors. The defamation case or rather
cases against Tang Liang Hong and his wife, Teo Siew Har—and
the opposition Workers’ Party then leader, J. B.
Jeyaretnam—bring into sharp focus the reluctance of Singapore
lawyers to represent clients who are anathema to the puissant Lee and
his government. Even so, this is Asian value at its rawest: one does
not muddy the source of business or possible business by being a
contrarian.
In the
related Jeyaretnam case, a self-conscious judge, S. Rajendran—aware
of the allegations that the prime minister and the senior minister
and their political confrérie were using the courts to smother
their political opponents with a blanket of lawsuits and bereft them
financially in order to remove them from the political scene—was
constrained to stress, inter alia: Underlying questions relating to
the independence of the judiciary and the likelihood of a fair
hearing inevitably surface when political leaders resort to the
courts to pursue their claims.
There are
no private directives to a judge from the executive or from anyone
else on how a case is to be conducted, how the judgment is to be
phrased, how the law is to be applied or what matters of policy are
to be considered. The judge is expected to decide each case
impartially in accordance with the evidence and in accordance with
the law. Indeed, the Singapore Constitution requires every judge, on
appointment, to take an oath that he will discharge his judicial
duties without fear or favour, affection or ill-will to the best of
his ability and in accordance with law.
I would
emphasize that what we have in Singapore is an open system of
justice. All evidence and all arguments in all writ actions are
presented in public. And the records of the courts are public
documents available for public perusal. Hearings being in public, and
only in public, any ruling and any judgment made by the court, must
stand the test of public scrutiny. Any appeal to the court of appeal
is also heard in public and must again stand the test of public
scrutiny.
This is
one of the great strengths of our system of law. Any judgment that
does not stand the test of public scrutiny will tend to destroy the
integrity of the judiciary—and will be a disservice to the
people of Singapore.
The very
fact that the judge felt obliged to descend into the obvious speaks
volumes for the sorry state of a judiciary in bondage. It requires no
special lexicon to interpret this well-known Shakespearean dictum:
methinks the judge doth protest too much. With the best will in the
world, is it really conceivable for any judge in Singapore to decide
a case against Harry Lee Kuan Yew and his PAP cohorts?
Neither a
wink nor a nod is necessary for a judge who values his position to
decide in a certain way. Even if Lee’s judicial point man has
not intimated the correct decision to his judges, Lee has ensured
their loyalty with magnanimous monthly salaries and allowances
topping them up with generous yearly bonuses. To paraphrase Vladimir
I. Denisov, a Gorbachev-era Soviet parliamentarian: given their
princely pay, perks and privileges of office, no Singaporean judge
would be mad enough to rule against Lee and his political confrères.
The PAP
mouthpiece, the Straits Times, in its news coverage of the visit of
Lord Woolf, the Master of the Rolls in England to Singapore, bragged
that the visiting English judge was reportedly “especially
struck how courts here have built a new legal culture which is highly
efficient and technology-oriented. For example, he noted that while
court cases here could be heard within six months, quite a few
lawsuits in his country were still taking more than two years to be
resolved.
"It
is very impressive how Singapore courts are so efficient in managing
cases and using it.’” Lord Woolf was speaking, be it
noted, on the mechanics of the courts system and not on the quality
of justice! One should be able to separate the wood from the trees.
The technology may be impressive but it is the administration of
justice between people, and justice between individuals and state,
and vice versa, that really matters ultimately.
The
draconian Internal Security Act (ISA), Cap 143, which allows the
arbitrary and indefinite detention of Lee’s political
opponents, dissidents and media critics, among others, is noticeably
being relegated to the back burner, as the courts are increasingly
being used to suppress critical comments and viewpoints through
threats of defamation actions and the payment of huge damages and
ultimately bankruptcy.
Singapore
has earned the dubious distinction of being a country whose leaders
routinely use the libel laws as a weapon of repression. However, the
courts cannot be freely resorted to, unless they are first made
reliable tools of government: in other words, the judges chosen must
be reliable. Tang’s legal predicament with its scads of
lawsuits, and by extension to that of his defence counsel and
political colleague, J. B. Jeyaretnam, proves their political
reliability, beyond peradventure.
The news
media, in the rankling words of Harry Lee Kuan Yew, must be
subordinated to “the overriding needs of Singapore, and to the
primacy of purpose of [his] government,” a feat he achieved
with relative ease but at great cost to his international reputation
and stature. The news media was subsequently reshaped into his
subservient mouthpiece and that of his pap government. The legal and
judicial system is not too far behind.
Once
before, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, dreamt
of the same system of justice for the Third Reich where “justice
must not become the mistress of the state, but must be the servant of
state policy.” But where Adolf Hitler and his enthusiastic
minister of propaganda failed, Harry Lee Kuan Yew is succeeding. It
is not an idle, but a terrifying prospect.
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The grim truth of war remains: hearts and minds are lost in the campaign to get the enemy by the balls
Europe falls behind the US in engaging with Asia
I for one am glad that the governbment uses the law to silence those who indulge in defamation. What the author does not say is that in Singapore, the political leaders sue you if you said a leader is corrupt but never if you said the leader is stupid. This is an important distinction. What the author does not say also is that oppostion leaders like Chiam have sued PAP leaders and won, also for defamation. Consider if the leaders kept silent in the face of personal attacks of corruption. The suspicion grows that there is some truth so we lose respect for politicans and with that, cohesion in the country. Now cohesion may not be important or may be a price some other societies are willing to pay the price for, but it will be suicidal if Singaporeans lost respect for their political leaders. Or consider if the law on defamation is framed very much in favor of the defamer. Then policians will defame each other. Again respect is lost in silence or valuable time of the leaders will be mispent in the courts. Worse, good men will not enter politics where mud slinging is the ordert of the day. In the current climate, politics is kept clean and discourse, serious. So only those gutter politicians and journalists would fear a law that protects honorable people in politics.
When will papers like Asia Sentinel learn? They have a set of western values they seek to impose on us but they have very little knowledge of how Asian societies work. Let it continue its anti Singapore stance preaching to us what it thinks its best for us. Shouldn't they start prescribing medicine for their own societies? Lat I heard, they have huge problems back home. This paper will soon follow the path treaded by the Far Eastern Economic review (into oblivion), while this little confident country continues to ignore what the paper says and marches to yet greater heights.