User talk:Sgconlaw/2010 archive

ANI

This message is to inform you there is a discussion of this account here, your input is welcome and appreciated. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:13, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Advice for university projects

Please read WP:SUP for guidance and ask participants in your project to read it too. Thanks. – ukexpat (talk) 21:28, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I've looked at it. Smuconlaw (talk) 08:25, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Welcome

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Group username

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Draftydoor (talk) 11:12, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Hello, and thanks for your message. The aim of this University project is to create or improve articles relating to the constitutional and administrative law of Singapore and not about the Singapore Management University at all. As regards the WP:NOSHARE issue, it has been raised Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive590#User:Smuconlaw and there seems to be consensus that my use of the username in question should be permitted. I reiterate that I am the only person using this account; it is not a shared account. Students participating in the project are required to create their own user accounts. Smuconlaw (talk) 12:04, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, you should be fine then. But maybe you could add a note to your userpage indicating the fact that this account is run by a single person, to avoid being perceived as a group account? Also, be aware that if you are running another Wikipedia account (for general editing) in addition to this one, you are required to disclose this account to the Arbitration Committee as a legitimate alternate account. Draftydoor (talk) 12:50, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Done, thanks. Smuconlaw (talk) 18:13, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Non Free Files in your User Space

Hey there Smuconlaw, thank you for your contributions! I am a bot alerting you that Non-free files are not allowed in the user or talk-space. I removed some files that I found on User:Smuconlaw/Apparent bias in Singapore. In the future, please refrain from adding fair-use files to your user-space drafts or your talk page.

• See a log of files removed today here.

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Thank you, -- DASHBot (talk) 00:25, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Powers of the President of Singapore

Hello! Your submission of Powers of the President of Singapore at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! NortyNort (Holla) 12:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Powers of the President of Singapore

The DYK project (nominate) 00:02, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

DYK Query

Hello! Your submission of Offence of scandalizing the court in Singapore at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 19:49, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Offence of scandalizing the court in Singapore

— Rlevse • Talk • 12:04, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Constitution of the Republic of Singapore Tribunal

— Rlevse • Talk • 00:04, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Chng Suan Tze v. Minister for Home Affairs

The DYK project (nominate) 18:03, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:School and university projects

Hi there

Wanted to point out this project page; maybe it might be of interest. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 02:14, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware of its existence. Thanks. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:40, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Judicial independence in Singapore

Hi there, in relation to Judicial independence in Singapore I have an observation to make. It is widely regarded that the court systems in Singapore are widely abused by the PAP to stifle opposition, and this is briefly mentioned in the lead and at Judicial_independence_in_Singapore#Defamation_suits. As Lee Kuan Yew has a stranglehold on Singaporean affairs, one would think that given the topic that he could be notably mentioned.[1]

In the further reading section of the article this is linked to, but it doesn't seemed to be utilised within the article. Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam is mentioned at Judicial_independence_in_Singapore#Subordinate_Court_judges, but it is limited to the early 1980s. From pages 6-7 of the above linked report:

After discharging his debts, Mr. Jeyaretnam was reinstated as a lawyer and regained eligibility to stand for office in the 1997 general election. By virtue of the number of votes he won, he received a seat in Parliament. Shortly after this election, Senior Minister Lee Kwan Yew, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and other senior PAP members filed suits against Mr. Jeyaretnam alleging that a statement made in the course of his election campaign was defamatory. The alleged defamatory words of Mr. Jeyaretnam were: “Mr. Tang Liang Hong has just placed before me two reports he has made against, you know, Mr. Goh Chok Tong and his people.”20 Mr.

Tang was a Workers Party candidate who had filed police reports alleging that Goh and others had defamed him by calling him ‘anti-Christian’ and a ‘Chinese chauvinist’. As Mr. Jeyaretnam was concluding his rally speech, Mr. Tang placed copies of his police reports on the lectern and informed Mr. Jeyaretnam that the reports had been made. The only statement made by Mr. Jeyaretnam was the simple truth; that is, that the police reports had been filed.21 The Prime Minister was awarded S$600,000.00 for the publication of the same materials by Mr. Tang and sought a further S$200,000.00 plus costs against Mr. Jeyaretnam.

The trial of this defamation action was condemned by the International Commission of Jurists, which had sent an international observer, Stuart Littlemore, Q.C., to the hearings, as a “parody of justice”.22 This will be discussed in more detail in the section below respecting the independence of the judiciary.

Within the same section of the WP article, it states "In Parliamentary debates before and after the inquiry it was suggested on the one hand that the transfer had been routine and the timing coincidental, and on the other that it was related to Khoo's competence in handling the case. The reason for the transfer was never clearly established.[38][43]"

From page 15 of the same report:

In January 1984, Judge Khoo acquitted Mr. Jeyaretnam of the false statement and fraud charges and convicted him of another count of fraud, for which he imposed a fine that was insufficient to cause Mr. Jeyaretnam to lose his seat in Parliament. Seven months later, Judge Khoo lost his judgeship and was transferred to the Attorney General’s office. He later left government service.

Although the government denied that the transfer was a reaction to the Jeyaretnam decision, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew suggested otherwise when during a Parliamentary debate in July 1986, he stated,

“…there was very good grounds why, if a person can make such a series of misfindings of fact and two misfindings of law in one simple case [referring to the Jeyaretnam case], he should be transferred to the Attorney-General’s Chambers.”52

Another judge later imposed on Mr. Jeyaretnam a fine high enough, to result in Jeyaretnam’s disbarment from law and disqualification from Parliament. (This was the decision eventually overturned by the Privy Council, as discussed above.)

This seems to conflict somewhat with our article which states the reason was never clearly established. I would think that our article should mention the appeal to the Privy Council in London, which recommended that he be reinstated to parliament; a recommendation that was ignored by the Singaporean government, and which also resulted in the government removing the right of Singaporeans to appeal to the Privy Council.

It is important that our articles provide background information such as how the subject has evolved, and how it came into being. However, it is also important that our articles also reflect realities. Pages 15-16 of the same report:

The Singapore courts, when adjudicating commercial cases, which do not involve interests of PAP members or their associates, may be relied upon to administer justice according to the law. In this regard, Singapore judges have an overall international reputation for the integrity of their judgments.55 In cases involving PAP litigants or PAP interests, however, many see the Singapore judiciary as amenable to control by the will of the executive.

Perhaps this is best demonstrated by the infamous case of the International Herald Tribune, which in 1994 was sued by PAP figures, including Father Lee, and was ordered to pay damages of hundreds of thousands of dollars to PAP figures, after printing two articles which, ironically enough, discussed political nepotism and the lack of judicial independence in Singapore.

Gary Rodan, Professor of Politics at Murdoch University sums it up nicely[2]:

The centrality and distinctiveness of legalism to the reproduction of authoritarian rule in Singapore has not escaped theorists' attention. Essentially making the same point, Kanishka Jayasuriya describes this as "rule through law rather than rule of law:, while Christopher Tremewan characterizes it as "thinly disguised rule by decree". In contrast with legal institutions in liberal democratic systems, where challenges to state power are not only possible but common, in Singapore they serve more to consolidate and expand the power of the state and to enforce the government's objectives and policies. The structural conditions under which the judiciary operates, including the granting of short-term appointments to the Supreme Court that may or may not be renewed at the government's discretion and the potential for untenured lower court judges to be transferred between judicial and government service, provide an avenue through which political influence and pressure can be exerted over the judiciary. Considerable ideological store is placed by the PAP, however, in the depiction of Singapore's judicial system as independent and fair. Ironically, such is the government's insistence on this that it is virtually impossible to publicly debate the question without inviting an action for contempt of court. As Jayasuriya observes: "The distinguishing feature of this legalism is the use of liberal language, rhetoric and the ritual of law to pursue its distinctly illiberal political objectives".

Don't you think that the article should cover these realities (perceived or real) in greater detail? They certainly aren't fringe views as searches of scholarly sources would show.

Your thoughts welcome, --Russavia ^{I'm chanting as we speak} 10:47, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Hi, and thanks for your thoughtful comments. I wonder if the article's talk page is a better place for this discussion? Be that as it may, here are my thoughts on the matter:

• There has been much foreign criticism of judicial independence in Singapore, but much of it (such as the Lawyers' Rights Watch Canada report which is listed in "Further reading" but not cited in the article proper) seems predicated on the assumption that if political leaders frequently succeed in defamation suits against opposition politicians, this must mean that they have improperly interfered with the judicial process in some way. I do not think this is necessarily true. Michael Hor, cited in the Wikipedia article, cautions against jumping to such a conclusion. A plausible alternative explanation is that the situation is the result of Singapore courts taking a rather conservative view of the tort of defamation, and being reluctant to apply the right to freedom of speech rigorously because the Constitution is worded in a way that appears to give much discretion to Parliament. In any case, the allegation regarding defamation suits is mentioned in the "Defamation suits" section (with copious references), and my students and I have tried to present this in a balanced way by giving both sides of the picture.
• Similarly, even if one were to accept that Lee Kuan Yew "has a stranglehold on Singaporean affairs", as you say, is there any actual evidence that he has somehow improperly influenced the courts? In the absence of such evidence, this is not an insinuation that should be made in the article.
• Michael Hor makes the point that the reason for Khoo's transfer to the Attorney-General's Chambers was never made clear. As the Wikipedia article points out, although there was a suggestion in Parliament that the basis had been Khoo's handling of the case, there was also a statement in Parliament that the transfer had been planned before the case and that the timing was coincidental.
• If, despite what I have said above, it is felt that such views should nonetheless be mentioned in the article, I do not think I can personally insert them. Apart from the fact that I have doubts about the grounds for the allegations, making a statement that impugns the impartiality of the judiciary amounts to the offence of scandalizing the court in Singapore, for which the penalty upon conviction is a fine and possibly jail. I think the law on contempt of court should not take such a stand, but that doesn't change the fact that that is the state of the law at the moment.
• We need to think about whether the article would be overburdened with information about the Jeyaretnam's appeal to the Privy Council, the termination of appeals to the PC, and whether the PAP government upholds the rule of law or not. This seems to be straying some distance from the subject of the article: judicial independence. (Note that the PC did not actually recommend that Jeyaretnam be reinstated to Parliament; that would have been beyond their remit. What it said was: "Their Lordships' order restores him to the roll of advocates and solicitors of the Supreme Court of Singapore, but because of the course taken by the criminal proceedings, their Lordships have no power to right the other wrongs which the appellant and Wong have suffered. Their only prospect of redress, their Lordships understand, will be by way of petition for pardon to the President of the Republic of Singapore.")

— SMUconlaw (talk) 18:20, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Histmerge request

• Re request to move or histmerge User:Smuconlaw/Presidential elections in Singapore to Presidential elections in Singapore :: instead, I moved Presidential elections in Singapore to Presidential elections in Singapore/version 1, then User:Smuconlaw/Presidential elections in Singapore to Presidential elections in Singapore, as there was little or no textual continuity between these two pages at the supposed cut-and-paste point. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 20:32, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 04:46, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Presidential elections in Singapore

Hello! Your submission of Presidential elections in Singapore at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Strange Passerby (talk) 07:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Unblock request

You will have to give more information, such as the IP address which is affected. Can you copy the exact message you receive to this page? JamesBWatson (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, the problem seems to have gone away, so I can't replicate it. Anyway, thanks for your help. If it happens again in the future, how do I find out what IP address I was editing from? — SMUconlaw (talk) 19:26, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

[3] can be helpful for that. If the problem is gone, you may want to remove your unblock request above so that it doesn't continue to show up in CAT:UNBLOCK, just to keep things tidy. - Vianello (Talk) 19:47, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I have removed the unblock request, because as long as it is there admins will keep wasting time coming here to check it. If the problem returns make a new unblock request. JamesBWatson (talk) 20:05, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 14:37, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Bias in Singapore

Hello! Your submission of Bias in Singapore at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 14:59, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Unblock request

{{Unblock|I am being transiently affected by a block. One of the error messages stated: "You have been blocked, because it has been detected that you are using the Tor anonymising service, or you or somebody sharing your IP address (220.255.1.110) is running a Tor exit node.

Editing pages from tor exit nodes is disabled due to abuse. In order to edit through tor and from IP addresses running tor exit nodes, you need to request an account and then request block exemption. Please note that this will only be granted in exceptional circumstances.

Please note that some Internet service providers may use a single IP address for a large number of users. If one of those users runs a Tor exit node, then all of them will be blocked."

I suspect this is because of the IP addresses that my Internet service provider uses, which keep changing from time to time. Please help!}}

Your IP is part of a blocked range. I'm trying to figure out why it was blocked, before I consider unblocking that range of IP addresses.

For the mean time, can you log in via our secure server? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

OK. It's a transient issue – am currently able to edit, but if I encounter problems again I'll do what you suggest. Thanks. — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:44, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

IP block exempt

I have granted your account an exemption from IP blocking. This will allow you to edit through full blocks affecting your IP address when you are logged in.

Please read the page Wikipedia:IP block exemption carefully, especially the section on IP block exemption conditions.

Note in particular that you are not permitted to use this newly-granted right to edit Wikipedia via anonymous proxies, or disruptively. If you do, or there is a serious concern of abuse, then the right may be removed by any administrator.

Appropriate usage and compliance with the policy may be checked periodically, due to the nature of block exemption, and block exemption will be removed when no longer needed (for example, when the block it is related to expires).

I hope this will enhance your editing, and allow you to edit successfully and without disruption. Syrthiss (talk) 16:36, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks very much! — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Unblock request

Thanks! This seems to happen quite a lot. Is there any way to avoid the problem? — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:55, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I'll drop a note on a checkuser's page just to be sure...but we can likely flag this account so that blocks on the IP that you use will not cause your logged in edits to be blocked. Syrthiss (talk) 15:57, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Just realized I'm still encountering transient blocks. I think it's because my ISP (SingNet) randomly assigns IP addresses when subscribers access web pages. — SMUconlaw (talk) 16:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Yep, thats what I expected was happening as well. Hopefully we can get this sorted for you. Syrthiss (talk) 16:03, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Your contributed article, Nominated Member of Parliament/List of NMPs

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DYK nomination of Article 9 of the Constitution of Singapore

Hello! Your submission of Article 9 of the Constitution of Singapore at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Allen3 ^talk 13:27, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Nominated Member of Parliament

Materialscientist (talk) 06:03, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Group Representation Constituency

Hello! Your submission of Group Representation Constituency at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! The Interior(Talk) 05:55, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

In case you missed my reply at DYK (nom has been moved to prep), WP:EL is the relevant policy page. Basically, external links should either be placed in an "external links" section, or be converted to a footnote. Thanks for a well-referenced and in-depth article, The Interior(Talk) 07:02, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. For some reason I thought WP:EL applied only to "bare links" (e.g., http://www.example.com) rather than external links created by templates. — SMUconlaw (talk) 09:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

DYK for Group Representation Constituency

Seasons Greetings. Thanks for your contribution from the DYK project Victuallers (talk) 06:04, 25 December 2010 (UTC)