No CCTV. No Grilles. No Guards. No Dogs. No High Fence. Just One Big Open Window, And A Lot of Toilet Paper To Cushion Impact.

I live in a high-rise apartment. When my baby son first started to crawl and walk, I quickly engaged a contractor to install grilles for all the windows. It was a simple safety precaution. Just common sense, really.

Too bad the Ministry of Home Affairs doesn't have common sense.

ST April 21, 2008
Gone in 49 seconds

That is the time it took for terrorist Mas Selamat to leap to freedom, in a re-enactment of his daring escape after he got out of the toilet in the Whitley Road detention centre.
By Ian Lim

IN THE executive summary on the report of Mas Selamat Kastari's escape from Whitley Road Detention Centre (WRDC) on Feb 27, the Committee of Inquiry (COI) found that the detainee could have made his escape on Feb 27 in 49 seconds.

In a re-enactment requested by the COI, a Gurkha guard took 49 seconds to retrace Mas Selamat's possible escape route from the detention centre.

An unsecured window in the toilet of the visitors block allowed him to make the prison breakout.

The executive summary was released by Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng in Parliament on Monday.

On Feb 27, the COI found Mas Selamat was taken out of his cell for his family visit scheduled for 4pm to 4.30pm at the Family Visitation Block.

At 3.35pm, two Gurkha guards escorted him to a locker room to change into civilian clothes.

After changing into a light yellow baju kurung and greenish-grey pants, he was escorted by the two guards and a woman Special Duty Operative (SDO) - a junior Internal Security Department (ISD) officer - to the Family Visitation block at 3.54pm.

He asked to use the toilet next to the family visit room to shave and comb his hair.

One guard stood outside the toilet while the other followed him inside.

Mas Selamat used the urinal cubicle and closed the door. He flipped his pants over the ledge above the door. He left the tap running.

After a few minutes, the guard felt that Mas Selamat was taking too long. He alerted the other guard standing outside the toilet, who then reported to the SDO outside the toilet. The SDO asked a male Assistant Case Officer to check on the toilet.

At 4.05pm, the male SDO kicked open the door of the urinal cubicle, Mas Selamat was not inside.

The ventilation window pane located above this urinal cubicle had been swung open.

An immediate alert was raised that Mas Selamat had escaped.

The COI found that Mas Selamat had about 11 minutes between 3.54pm and 4.05 pm to make his escape.

The COI believes that while in the cubicle, Mas Selamat climbed onto the ledge located just below the ventilation window, pushed open the window and squeezed himself through it.

He probably held on to a water pipe running vertically down the external wall of the toilet.

The COI received forensic evidence from CID that smudges were found on the water pipe, although there were no conclusive fingerprints. A packet of seven rolls of toilet paper was found on the ground, which he could have used to break his fall.

There were also two CCTV cameras mounted where Mas Selamat climbed out, but they were not switched on as they were part of the CCTV system upgrading and the system was still in its testing stage.

There is no conclusive evidence of the exact route Mas Selamat took to escape.

The COI's view is that he was likely to have used a route 20m to the right of the ventilation window, where the inner and outer perimeter fences converged with the enclosed staircase and walkway.

Mas Selamat would have scaled the fence, climbed onto the roof of the enclosed staircase and walkway, and jumped over the converged perimeter fences.

The above report raises many questions in my mind. I'm sure it raises many questions in your minds too, dear readers. Overall, the security just seems so lax. Jurong Bird Park keeps its birds under tighter security.

Your comments, please.
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Perhaps the Minister is a Little Confused

Either that, or he is engaging in obfuscatory political doublespeak:

ST Nov 13, 2007
Inflation could hit 5% early next year, then taper off
By Li Xueying

AS CONSUMER prices continue to rise, inflation in Singapore will likely surge to 4 or 5 per cent in the first quarter of next year.

But it should taper off by the second half of the year to 'more normal conditions', said Trade and Industry Minister Lim Hng Kiang yesterday.

The average rate for next year should be around 3 per cent.

Fuelled mainly by rising global oil and food prices, inflation recorded a 13-year high of 2.9 per cent in August. It is expected to dip to 2.7 per cent in the last quarter, Mr Lim told Parliament.

Citigroup economist Chua Hak Bin said that the 5 per cent rate predicted would be a 'historic high' in the 25 years since 1983. The previous high was in July 1991, when it hit 4 per cent.

Most economies, including Singapore's size up inflation by tracking the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. The CPI measures the cost of a basket of goods and services consumed by most households.

Yesterday, Mr Lim cautioned against 'interpreting a rise in the headline CPI as necessarily reflecting an increase in the cost of living'.

It depends on the individual household's spending. 'Switching to cheaper products can reduce the cost of living despite a rise in the CPI,' he added.

But of course a rise in the CPI reflects an increase in the cost of living. After all, the CPI is meant to track the cost of living. If the CPI does not track the cost of living, then what would you want it for?

As for individual households switching to cheaper products, well, in fact, they have to. That’s the effect of inflation - your dollar has less purchasing power. Therefore with the same amount of dollars, you can only buy cheaper products.

Minister Lim must be confusing “cost of living” with “standard of living”. Cost of living means the cost of maintaining a certain standard of living. In turn, standard of living refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services generally available to a certain class of people (for example, average Singaporeans).

Instead of saying that “switching to cheaper products can reduce the cost of living”, Minister Lim would have been more accurate to say, “switching to cheaper products can lower the standard of living”. For example, instead of living in a 5-room HDB flat, you can live in a 1-room HDB flat (a cheaper product). Instead of having chicken rice and vegetables for lunch, you can just eat plain porridge (a cheaper product).

Living in a 1-room HDB flat and eating plain porridge constitutes a lower standard of living. So yes, by switching to cheaper products, you can lower your standard of living. And a lower standard of living does cost less to maintain.

In summary, what is Minister Lim's advice to you? To deal with inflation, lower your standard of living.

Wow, and for telling you that, he even gets a world-class ministerial salary. I bet inflation doesn't bother him much.
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Dr Thio Li Ann's Infamous Speech

Recently, NMP Thio Li-Ann received what she described as "hate mail". Personally I would describe it as karma.

Looking around the Internet, it appears that a great number of Singaporeans do find Thio Li-Ann's own behaviour quite hateful. Click here, here, here, here, here and here, for a few examples.

What happened? Last week Thio Li-Ann had gone to Parliament on a mission to attack the rights of gay people. I believe that she set a new national record. Her now-infamous speech has probably made her the most intensely disliked NMP in the entire history of Singapore. Among gays and straights.

I am quite serious. Which other Nominated Member of Parliament, past or present, has ever attracted such a storm of angry, negative comments from the general public of Singapore? You tell me.

Even the respectable, gentlemanly Dr Cherian George from NTU (also Stanford, Columbia and Cambridge University) could not find a single good thing to say about Thio Li-Ann's speech. Here's Cherian, in his own words:

" .... more distressing than the final result of the debate was the retrogressive speech by the high-flying legal scholar Thio Li-Ann. Her convoluted, caricatured rendering of political philosophy and comparative politics needed to be corrected by good political science, but she got away with it in Parliament. Her theories about what constitutes a minority could have been debunked by any graduate student of sociology or anthropology, but this did not stop her.

Then there was Thio’s tasteless digs at homosexual sex, which some of her comrades considered witty, but really deserved no place in the highest forum in the land. Thio has been celebrated for supposedly speaking up for the silent majority. This is an insult to the majority, most of whom have the basic decency to know the difference between what should be uttered in public and what should be confined to close friends or private blogs.

Thio also did a disservice to the majority of God-fearing Singaporeans – we who would like to believe that our faiths are ultimately about compassion, not the hateful, hurtful cheap shots that Thio felt compelled to deliver on our behalf. How I wished a theology professor or other religious scholar would have stepped into the debate at that point, to show how it might be possible to express a faith-based objection to homosexuality – minus the hate speech .

"Hate speech". Wow, wow. Isn't that a rather harsh sin for one distinguished professor to accuse another distinguished professor of? I wish I could say that Cherian was exaggerating. Unfortunately I think that Cherian was just being his usual self. That is to say - very perceptive, very accurate and very precise with his choice of words.

See for yourself what hate speech means. Note how the term is legally defined under the laws of Ireland, Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway - "... publicly making statements that threaten, ridicule or hold in contempt a group due to race, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, faith or sexual orientation" etc.

Then ask yourself whether Thio Li-Ann's parliamentary speech would have constituted a criminal offence, if she had made that speech in any of those countries. Although I, as an ex-Deputy Public Prosecutor, have prosecuted crimes only in Singapore, and not in any of those other countries, I personally think that the chances would be ... high!

And so this is a rather sad moment in the history of Singapore. Hate speech has made its own way into Parliament. For so many years, Singapore has placed significant restraints on the freedom of speech, supposedly as a trade-off for ensuring the greater good of social harmony and peace. Yet hate speech has managed to make its own way into Parliament.

And according to reports, it even gained the noisy, boisterous support of some chair-thumping PAP Members of Parliament.

What happened? Where did we go wrong? What a sad moment this is, for Singapore. Prime Minister Lee, you should consider reviewing the selection process for NMPs.
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Two Men and a Hypothetical Woman in a Public Place

Just three days ago, PAP MP Charles Chong suggested in Parliament that the laws in the Penal Code should be drafted in a more gender-neutral manner. A quote from the ST report:

"TAKING a swipe at what he considered anachronistic differentiations between the sexes in the Penal Code, MP Charles Chong (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC) said the law seems to consider men 'less modest' than women.

Arguing for gender neutrality in the way statutes are framed, he noted that under criminal law, a woman's modesty can be insulted by words, sounds, gestures or objects, but a man does not seem to have modesty enough to be outraged, he said in a speech peppered with the glib humour that has become his trademark."

For example, if a man enters the ladies' changing room at a public swimming pool, strips himself naked, peeks into a cubicle where a woman is changing and then masturbates himself in front of her, this would be an offence under section 509:

Word or gesture intended to insult the modesty of a woman.
509. Whoever, intending to insult the modesty of any woman, utters any word, makes any sound or gesture, or exhibits any object, intending that such word or sound shall be heard, or that such gesture or object shall be seen by such woman, or intrudes upon the privacy of such woman, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.

However, the victim must always be a woman. If the victim is a man, then there is no offence under Section 509.

Today, it so happens that the Straits Times reports such an incident - except that it takes place in the men's changing room and the victim is a man. Therefore Section 509 cannot apply:

ST Oct 26, 2007
Man fined for exposing himself in changing room

A 39-YEAR-OLD man was fined $500 on Friday for exposing himself to a swimming instructor at a male changing room.

Chur Kim Guan, unemployed, admitted to the obscene act in the changing room of the public swimming pool on April 23.

The 27-year-old instructor was whistling while changing into his swimming trunks when Chur peeped out of the cubicle he was in.

Shortly later, Chur stepped out and used his right hand to masturbate himself in front of the victim, who shouted at him and threatened to call the police.

Chur dashed out and was detained by a lifeguard who heard the commotion.

His lawyer said he committed the offence due to his mental illness. Since 2000, Chur had been in and out of the Institute of Mental Health after a relapse.

The ST article says that Chur was fined, but it does not specify which specific provision of the law was used. From the wording of the first sentence of the article - "fined for exposing himself to a swimming instructor at a male changing room" - my guess would be that the prosecution used section 27A of the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act:

Appearing nude in public or private place
27A. —(1) Any person who appears nude —

(a) in a public place; ....

shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding $2,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 months or to both.

The men's changing room of a public swimming pool is still a public place (any man can walk in, and in fact as far as I'm aware, it wouldn't be illegal for a woman to walk in either). In our case, section 27A does get the job done, in the sense that Chur the offender still gets convicted and receives a punishment.

However, the section 27A charge is conceptually unsatisfactory given the facts of the case. In fact it would be quite displeasing to those lawyers who desire as a general principle that the law reflects clearly what a person is being punished for.

After all, men are always walking around nude in men's changing rooms, in full view of one another, and no one ordinarily gets prosecuted for that.

In Chur's case, the offence really lies in the masturbatory display. The section 27A charge would have failed to reflect that, for section 27A merely talks about appearing nude in a public place. Section 509 of the Penal Code would have worked very well to capture the essence of the crime, except that section 509 doesn't work where the victim, as in our present case, is a man.

One significant point is that while the same act may theoretically be prosecuted as different offences, the sentencing options available differ from offence to offence. For example, all robbery is theft (but not all theft is robbery); and all rape is also outrage of modesty (but not all outrage of modesty is rape). Yet we wouldn't expect robbers to be punished merely as thieves, or rapists to be punished merely as molesters.

Of course, Chur is mentally ill, and a regular IMH patient - another important factor in the overall sentencing considerations.
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Sexual Discriminations in the Law

ST Oct 24, 2007
Men have modesty too, so make laws gender neutral

TAKING a swipe at what he considered anachronistic differentiations between the sexes in the Penal Code, MP Charles Chong (Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC) said the law seems to consider men 'less modest' than women.

Arguing for gender neutrality in the way statutes are framed, he noted that under criminal law, a woman's modesty can be insulted by words, sounds, gestures or objects, but a man does not seem to have modesty enough to be outraged, he said in a speech peppered with the glib humour that has become his trademark. He acknowledged that there have been improvements - now the law recognises that a minor can be assaulted by a male or female predator, for instance - but still much more could be done, he noted.

For instance, he said that under Section 493, a man can be charged with deceiving a woman into believing she is married to him - so she would cohabit with him and have sex with him.

But it was not 'completely outrageous' that a woman could also similarly cheat a man in similar circumstances.

'The law seems to suggest that only women can be duped while men cannot be duped. This seems to underestimate women while it gives too much credit to men!' he said, to guffaws in the House.

........ In response, Senior Minister of State for Home Affairs and Law Ho Peng Kee noted, with a smile, that archaic terms and gender neutrality were some of Mr Chong's 'favourite themes'.

Associate Professor Ho said that, in the Government's view, not all crimes should or could be gender neutral. There are 'logical and physiological differences' between men and women, he said.

Rape cannot be gender neutral, and the provision to stop rape in marriages in some circumstances also cannot be applied equally to men and women, he said.

Ho Peng Kee is wrong, of course. It is quite possible to draft all sexual offences in a completely gender-neutral way. Australia did this long ago.

How do you do it? Well, basically, instead of saying "Any man who does X is guilty of an offence," you simply say, "Any person who does X is guilty of an offence."

Instead of describing the victim as a "woman" or "man", you simply describe the victim as a "person".

For offences involving victims who are minors, instead of using words like "boy under 16 years of age" or "girl under 16 years of age", you simply use a term like "minor", and define "minor" as "person under 16 years of age". And so on.

This is not merely about political correctness or linguistic games. Such changes lead to very definite changes in the effects of the law. In fact, Singapore's laws against family violence (found in the Women's Charter) are already drafted in a gender-neutral manner - thus protecting not just abused wives, but also abused husbands, for example.

One example of how gender-neutral termininology in sexual offences would work is that the same legal protection will be extended to young boys and young girls alike. Women can also become guilty of sexual assault. You may, at this point in time, be reminded of an incident in Singapore whereby the members of a female teen gang assaulted a female teenager - stripping her naked, forcing objects up her vagina etc. With gender-neutral laws, such acts could then be dealt with as sexual offences.

In general, gender-neutral terminology simply removes a lot of unfairness and discrimination from the law. Men and women, whether they are the criminal or victim, are treated with equality. For example, if we treat soliciting in public places as an offence, then we treat soliciting in public places as an offence, regardless of whether the prostitute is male or female.

We also avoid absurd situations where the laws say it may be okay for you to penetrate an anus, but that it really depends on the gender of the person whose anus is being referred to. Similarly, we avoid absurd situations where the laws say it may be okay for you to suck a penis or kiss a vagina, but that it really depends on whether you yourself have a penis or a vagina.

Oh wait. My absurd examples just described Singapore, as it has just become. No wonder Ho Peng Kee doesn't want gender-neutral legislation:

Anal Sex Now Legal for Heterosexuals But Not Homosexuals in Singapore
Short News - 23 October 2007

Singapore: Parliament has repealed a law criminalising "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" thus making oral and anal sex between heterosexual couples legal. New laws were enacted to deal with sex tourism and child prostitution.

The parliament declined, however, to repeal a section which makes sex between men an offence punishable by up to two years in jail. The decision to keep the seldom enforced law came after spirited debate which included the presentation of a petition.

"They [homosexuals] live their lives, that's their personal space. But the tone of the overall society, I think, it remains conventional, it remains straight and we want it to remain so," said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

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EDB Under Scrutiny

ST May 26, 2007
Watchdog wants more regular audits
for EDB

LAPSES at the Economic Development Board (EDB), including its financial operations, have prompted a parliamentary watchdog to urge the Auditor-General (AG) to give it more regular audits.

The Public Accounts Committee, made up of eight MPs, noted that the lapses were spotted when the 46-year-old agency underwent its first audit by the AG.

The audit led to 'a large number of observations'' that the EDB had not established proper
internal control procedures, the committee said in a report presented to Parliament on Thursday.

However, the committee was 'encouraged'' by a letter it got from the EDB outlining the prompt action taken to address these lapses.

Every year, the committee pores over the financial statements of government agencies and the AG's annual report and seeks written explanations from agencies concerned. It then reports on the irregularities involving the use of public funds.

The EDB lapses involve mainly the way the agency is run and its financial operations, including its procurement and accounting systems.

The committee noted, among others, that EDB had delegated power to staff to grant loans and to borrow without reporting back to its governing board.

'Such practices were not in compliance with the law,' said the committee, which is headed by MP Cedric Foo.

More details from Reuters.

Frankly, what I find most shocking about this whole matter is not that the EDB has lapses in its "governance structure, financial operations, procurement and accounting systems" (as reported by Reuters).

The most shocking thing, to me, is that this is the first time the Auditor-General of Singapore has audited the EDB, in 46 years.

I wonder how many other government agencies or statutory boards there might be in Singapore, that the Auditor-General hasn't audited even once, in the past 5, 10, 15 or 20 years.

Who knows how many other NKFs we might discover.

What HAS the Auditor-General been doing?

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Hey Look! ST Journalist Criticising the PAP

March 1, 2007
Why PAP MPs should go beyond cheerleading

By DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR, Chua Mui Hoong

WHAT is the role of a People's Action Party MP in a PAP-dominated Parliament?

The question came to mind yesterday, as yet another PAP MP rose to his or her feet to sing the praises of this Budget and this Government, for the second day running.

Mr Wee Siew Kim called Budget 2007 generous and forward-looking. Dr Fatimah Lateef declared that nowhere else in the world would anyone find a Budget so full of 'love' and 'compassion'.

Is the PAP MP's role to be a cheerleader for the Government? Maybe part of his role is to spout and defend the rhetoric of the excellence of the PAP government. This, after all, is a democracy with competitive political parties vying for votes.

But too much self-praise by the PAP is off-putting, even if Budget 2007 has won deserved accolades, even from non-partisan observers, for boldness and generosity.

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