Why doesn’t Chee Sue MM?

SDP chief Dr Chee Soon Juan had recently been found guilty of defamation over allegations of government corruption made in an SDP newsletter ahead of general elections in May 2006. He and his sister were also found guilty of contempt of court.

The saga however continues outside of the court room, over the presses. It centers on a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) op-ed piece titled “Democracy in Singapore” in which the journal painted a less then flattering picture of a paranoid statesman’s use of defamation suits to quash freedom of speech.

In response, the Press Secretary to Minister Mentor issued a clarifying note, “Two Views of Freedom of Speech and Law in Singapore”, to the WSJ online. She stressed that “the case had nothing to do with political freedom” and that “it was for defamation arising from the Chees' false claims that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Lee Kuan Yew are criminals and corrupt”.

The interesting twist is that she claims Dr Chee had in open court, “called the Singapore leaders "murderers, robbers, child molesters" and "rapists."; a charge Dr Chee has publicly come out to deny.

If this is indeed so, wouldn’t this amount to defamation on the part of MM Lee? Why doesn’t Chee sue?

Chee has also been previously accused of treasonous actions whilst in the employ of unnamed foreign enemies of Singapore. Why doesn’t he challenge the Lees to produce evidence?

The Lees had lambasted Chee for not providing evidence of their alleged corruption and instead used the court proceedings to push for his other campaigns of political freedom. Now would be a great chance for Chee to bring MM back into court and similarly challenge him to produce evidence that he had made those remarks and that he was under the employ of foreign entities.

One may reason that the courts are biased against the Chees and he wouldn’t get a fair trial anyway.
But I feel this is an opportunity too good to miss. My only caution is that he threads carefully and not over extend his bite.

Attempted Subordinate Court Escape: Better Humans not Systems

“It shouldn’t have happened” and “human error” have become popular phrases by high level ministers these days. We first heard them from Wong Kan Seng after the Mas Selamat escape and now from K Shanmugan after the attempted escape by 2 individuals charged with robbery.

Unlike Mas Selamat’s escape, the foiled subordinate court escape was apparently not due to poor systems/procedures. I guess I can accept that point. After all, there was nothing wrong this time with the CCTV cameras or the physical structures of the lock-up at the courts. So yes, it was largely down to human error. This view is of course only based on what I know of the incident as reported.

Limiting the movement of accused individuals at the Subordinate court, as proposed by Shanmugan, sounds like a good idea as long as this does not deny them the right to have their case heard in a manner that is not prejudicial to them. Just like flights risk individuals should not be denied medical treatment. If the treatment is not in a public hospital then the standards in a secured facility should not be lacking in quality.

But limited movement is movement nonetheless and thus there will always be opportunities for lapses to occur once again.

Will adding more procedures or systems be the cure-it-all? It really depends as more steps can actually further complicate things and result in confusion or an over reliance on these systems to prevent human error. Each individual may start to rely on another cleaning up potential lapses. Thankfully there was some semblance of system effectiveness in reacting to the attempted escape.

But those that have been to the army will know that no amount of SOP, guidelines or rules can prevent shit from happening. As long as humans are left in charge of executing them, there will always be the chance for mistakes. And this can sometimes be due to “negligence” or “acts of God” beyond our control. Personal errors are not always due to “complacency” as the state-funded press will have you believe.

This is where our million dollar ministers earn their pay check. Apart from formulating strategies and systems of conduct, they also need to invest heavily in proper training and motivation of personnel under their charge. A system is only as good as the sum of all its parts and if the just one component fails, the whole system crumbles.