Singapore Opposition Leader Slapped With New Restriction
Jeyaretnam told to carry message on website saying he “communicated multiple falsehoods”
The government of Singapore, even on the alert to tighten the screws on the opposition, has ordered Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the secretary-general of the Reform Party, to earmark his website The Ricebowl Singapore and his accounts on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn as “Declared Online Locations” under the island republic’s fake news law. This prevents him from benefiting financially from the platforms for two years.
Jeyaretnam is the first individual to be saddled with the restriction although The Online Citizen, edited by the now-exiled Terry Xu, having moved his news portal to Taiwan and renamed it the Online Citizen Asia, has similarly been hit with it. There is little actual effect on Xu since he has moved out of the country. He has continued to report extensively on Singaporean affairs and politics.
Nonetheless, until December 12, 2025 — after the latest date for Singapore’s projected next election — Jeyaretnam’s site must carry a notice alleging that “Multiple falsehoods have been communicated on this website. Viewers should exercise caution when accessing this page for information. This website is a declared online location in Singapore under Section 32 of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act 2019 (POFMA). Also, providing financial support to support, help, or promote the communication of false statements of fact in Singapore on a declared online location is prohibited under Section 38 of POFMA.”
(For more details, visit https://www.pofmaoffice.gov.sg/registry/declared-online-locations.)
While The Ricebowl Singapore can remain in operation, it isn’t allowed to make any money from it, Jeyaretnam said. A provision under Pofma allows the government to order an Internet intermediary to disable access to a website if the owner doesn’t comply with the declaration. If an Internet intermediary fails to comply and is convicted, it can be fined up to S$20,000 for each day that the government order is not fully complied with, up to a total of S$500,000.
“I have never monetized my blog with advertising, which I believe hampers the reader experience,” Jeyaretnam told Asia Sentinel in an interview from the UK, where he is attending his son’s award of a doctoral degree. “I don’t write for profit,” he said. “I don’t employ anyone. Costs are negligible. I don’t need the income. I did recently add a ‘buy me a coffee if you like my work’ type link but the amount that brings in, whilst a welcome sign of reader interest, is not actually enough to keep me in coffee. I am not a media news company, just the leader of a political party writing in their own right.”
He called the ministry’s statements defamatory although he received demands for corrections on July 16, August 2, August 22, August 30, and November 2. He said he believed he had struck a nerve by revealing that Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan are living in magnificent colonial-era bungalows on exclusive Rideout Road which are owned by the government and whose grounds were renovated at state expense. The Singapore Land Authority (SLA), which rents out the properties, comes under the Law Ministry headed by Shanmugam although he maintained that he had rented the property through an agent in a hands-off transaction.
DISCLOSURE: Access to Asia Sentinel’s website was blocked in Singapore by the Ministry of Communications and Information after we refused to comply with an order to correct a May 24, 2023 article concerning the use of government power against dissenters. Asia Sentinel cited statements confirming the veracity of our reporting. The government demanded that Asia Sentinel carry the correction at the top of our website for 30 days, which we refused to do.
Singaporeans are barred from financially supporting “Declared Online Locations” if they know they would support, help, or promote the communication of falsehoods in Singapore on the platform in doing so. Members of the public, the communications ministry said, “are advised to be alert to Mr Jeyaretnam’s history of communicating falsehoods”
Jeyaretnam and others have laid the impetus for a series of similar crackdowns over recent months to a supposition that while general elections aren’t due before November 2025, they are expected sooner as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong seeks to prepare the ground to hand over the premiership to Finance Minister Lawrence Wong amid fading amicability on the part of the electorate with the People’s Action Party, which has run the country in an unbroken reign, mostly under the stern leadership of the Lee dynasty or its surrogates, since 1959.
“They're trying to take me out before the next election,” he said. “You know, I think this may be just be opening shot and maybe they're working on preventing these from standing in the next election.” He called the use of the provision a ploy to tie him up for the next two years during election season. He defended his statements on the Rideout Road properties, which have been uncomfortable for the two ministers because of the optics of occupying luxurious government properties at a time of housing shortages in enormously expensive Singapore.
There is probably more to come in two weeks when provisions of FICA, the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act come into full force on December 29, requiring residents defined as agents of foreign entities living in Singapore as “politically significant persons” who will be required to follow a list of stringent rules. Political parties or candidates will be prohibited from accepting any voluntary labor or professional services from any Singapore noncitizens. They must also disclose their affiliations with any "foreign principal", who may be a foreign government, a foreign government-related individual, a foreign political organization, a foreign public enterprise, or a foreign business, according to local media.
These changes “were put in place to deal with attempts by foreign agents to covertly influence Singapore’s domestic politics,” although there is scarce evidence of any such attempts. Instead, say critics, the provisions coming into effect could specifically be weaponized against any Singaporean citizen who either goes on record for, or writes for a foreign publication such as Online Citizen Asia about anything critical about Singapore or the PAP government by insinuating that such contributions or critical coverage about Singapore were done in active collusion with foreign powers and interests, or at the behest of foreign powers and interests.
“The chilling effects this will have on Singaporeans in publishing anything on foreign official publications, or even so much as being quoted on the record cannot be understated,” a source told Asia Sentinel. “Had this measure been in play a few months earlier, it could well have been used against a professor from NUS writing a recent critical article for East Asia Forum based out of Australia.”