PROPERTY
CARS
JOBS
Daniel Chew, Melvin Tan, Michael Cheng and myself were verbally cautioned for organising the first in a series of political talks entitled "Youth and Politics in Singapore" on Oct 1, 1999 at the RELC International Hotel.
The comedy-drama unfolded when the Think Centre (of which I am the founder) and some Socratic Circle members initiated the Politics 21 (P21) series to raise awareness and supplement the S21 process. The government-launched S21 initiative has called for its citizens to practice active citizenship and shape the Singapore that they want to live in.
The P21 committee launched the announcement of their activities on the Internet and had sought to register participants for its various programmes through its [#1]website[/#].
Most of the 70 people that registered for the first talk did so online or via forms sent to them. But about 10 people, students and plain-clothes undercover types, turned up at the door without prior registration. By allowing these people into the talk, an offence was alleged to have been committed.
The "festivities" began 25 days
after the talk when I was informed that there had been a complaint lodged with the police
against the activity on Oct 1 and was advised to apply for a licence for future events.
When I queried, "Who lodged the complaint?" I was promptly informed that the
police did not have to divulge the information unless the case went to trial.
This began the process of statement recording at Tanglin police station over a period of
two months by Chief Investigation Officer, ASP Deep Singh. The conference office
representative at the RELC, the several people who organised the forum, speakers who spoke
at the forum and speakers invited but either declined or could not make it were also among
those who had to chronicle their story.
The thrust of the investigation was to determine whether there was a pre-meditated and
willful action on the part of the organisers to put together a public talk without a
licence. At the heart of the problem was the P21 committee's innovative use of the
Internet to create awareness, invite people and have them register online.
The porousness of the Internet did not give these first-time organisers the control they desired to keep their activity "closed-door". Thus, the event under investigation was put into the category of "public talk". Under the present law, the application for a public entertainment licence is necessary when trying to harness the potential of the Internet to bring people together physically.
A sub-plot in the investigation was also to
determine the modus operandi of the group, how they met, who the "leader" was,
how speakers were invited and by whom, the registration of the Think Centre, the source of
funding and whether anyone in the group had direct connection with any local opposition
political party or with a "foreign power".
ASP Deep Singh was very thorough in his inquiry. As a group we were confident on all these
counts as we had taken the necessary pre-emptive steps. We had expected these very queries
to emerge whenever anyone or group tried to explore political space in Singapore and were
not surprised in this instance.
That we were cleared was quite obvious to me from the onset. Thus it was no surprise that
my application for licences for our other talks were promptly issued. During the course of
the investigations, the P21 committee, under the auspices of the Think Centre,
successfully organised two other licenced public talks and have planned more for the year.
This comedy-drama was finally brought to a close the morning after our third talk was
reported in the local media. We, the four young Turks, were summoned to Tanglin Police
Station and a "warning" was issued. I was "warned" because I was the
"chief", according to DSP Goh Lum Khiong, while the other three - Chew, Tan and
Cheng - were "advised" for helping organise the first event in the series
without a licence.
The effort to contain laughter was difficult. Our cheeky request to take a picture of this
"warning" session, which took place in DSP Goh's room, was predictably declined.
Determined to have a group picture to commemorate this session at Tanglin, we thus
enlisted the help of a gangster-type loitering at the station.
He was very obliging and helped the group out with a few photographs. As we turned to leave we thanked him for doing his part for the Singapore 21 process!
JAMES GOMEZ is the author of a newly launched book "Self-Censorship: Singapore's Shame". He is part of a new group of young Singaporeans active in civil society. Visit their website at [#1]http://www.politics21.mainpage.net[/#]