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John
Tan
What was surprising, however,
was that WP's Ms Sylvia Lim did not make a more critical analysis
of the situation in Singapore given the decades of human rights
violations here. Books and volumes of legal research have been
written on this topic.
I came away with this
disturbing observation that among our three Singaporean speakers
(a cabinet minister, an academician, and an oppositionist) there
was one common view – that there were no serious problems
with the rule of law in Singapore and that there is no repression
here.
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Vantage
Observations
at the IBA symposium
John Tan
22 Oct 07
At
the International Bar Association's Rule of Law Symposium last
week, there was a dichotomy, perhaps not surprisingly, between
the speeches made by the Singaporean speakers and those by the
non-Singaporeans.
On the Singapore side was Minister for
Law S Jayakumar, law lecturer Simon Tay, and Workers' Party (WP)
Chairman Sylvia Lim. The international speakers included Justice
Hisashi Owada (Japan), former AG Lord Goldsmith (UK), Justice
Albie Sachs (South Africa) and Ms Ambiga Sreenevasen
(Malaysia).
Let me start with my fellow Singaporeans. Mr S
Jayakumar and Mr Simon Tay, predictably, defended the
Government's approach to the rule of law as it is practiced here.
What was surprising, however, was that WP's Ms Sylvia Lim
did not make a more critical analysis of the situation in
Singapore given the decades of human rights violations here.
Books and volumes of legal research have been written on this
topic.
It was like the proverbial white elephant standing
square in the middle of the
living room – it takes quite a bit of effort trying to
ignore the beast.
The foreign speakers, on the other hand,
spoke about how individual rights had to be respected.
An
important point to note was that they were not all Westerners. Mr
Owada and Ms Ambiga were Asians, and Mr Sachs was from South
Africa.
And yet, the most revealing difference between
the speakers showed up not during the speeches but in the
exchanges during the Q&A sessions.
Mr M Ravi had
stood up to make a general comment that the IBA should look into
the problem of opposition leaders finding it difficult to engage
lawyers to represent them when they faced the PAP
Government.
Even though the comment was not directed at
her, Ms Sylvia Lim volunteered that "The Workers' Party has
no problems finding lawyers."
This directly
contradicts her predecessor, former WP secretary-general J B
Jeyaretnam, who said: "No lawyer in Singapore wants to do
political cases." (see here)
Even
senior criminal lawyer, Mr Subhas Anandan, said that he had no
problem defending murderers and even terrorists, but not
oppositionists.
Dr Chee Soon Juan too could not find any
lawyer to represent him in his 2001 defamation lawsuit.
Perhaps
the present WP has no problem finding lawyers to represent it.
But it might be important to ask how many court cases, if any, it
has had to face since Mr Jeyaretnam's departure.
I then
read out the conclusion of the report made by the Lawyers' Rights
Watch Canada that questioned the independence of the judiciary in
Singapore and asked the speakers if they considered this as
"foreign interference."
Ms Sylvia Lim restated
her position that there were good benchmarks on Singapore's
system but foreigners should not interfere.
At this point
the president of the Malaysian Bar Association, Ms Ambiga said,
"I don't agree with my fellow speaker." She cited how a
resolution passed by the IBA in a previous year had helped to
create positive developments in the rule of law in Malaysia.
Ms
Ambiga had earlier said that fundamental values of judicial
independence, press freedom, independence of law societies do not
belong to the West only but to us in Asia, too.
As an
aside, the courageous Malaysian lawyer is presently under
investigation by the Malaysian police for defying the illegal
assembly law and conducting a march together with her fellow
lawyers in protest of interference of the judicial process by the
government.
I came away with this disturbing observation
that among our three Singaporean speakers (a cabinet minister, an
academician, and an oppositionist) there was one common view –
that there were no serious problems with the rule of law in
Singapore and that there is no repression here.
This is most
unfortunate.
John Tan is the Assistant
Secretary-General of The SDP
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