OCR Text |
Show SACRIFICING DEMOCRACY IN THE NAME OF PROSPERITY: THE TRADEOFF BETWEEN POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN SINGAPOREAN DEVELOPMENT Nick Barker While his court battle was proceeding, Jeyaretnam alleged in parliament that Judge Khoo's transfer had been politically motivated. A commission was set up to investigate the claim, with a pro-establishment judge as the sole commissioner. According to the commission's report, there was no truth to the claims: "The wholly unfounded allegations of Mr. Jeyaretnam were scandalous statements that should never have been made" (Seow 1999, 111). Jeyaretnam filed a motion to have the report rejected, which was denied. Further, parliament found him guilty of contempt of committee and of parliament, fining him S$l,000 (Seow 1999, 111). He was also found guilty of contempt for publishing five "offensive" newsletters relating to the incident, and fined S$5,000 for each. On top of this, Jeyaretnam was fined S$l0,000 for writing an article in the Workers' Party newspaper about his mistreatment (Seow 1999, 111). After refusing to pay, the attorney general sued him and obtained judgment of the total sum of S$35,000 (then approximately US$17,500), plus court costs (Seow 1999, 111). Jeyaretnam's subsequent appeal to the Privy Council was dismissed out of hand. In the debate on Khoo's transfer, Law Minister Jayakumar dismissed Jeyaretnam's remarks as the "jaundiced view of a person who has not had satisfaction in the courts as he would have liked" (Hansard Parliamentary Debates 1986, col. 718). He justified the legal results by asking, "how many countries are there in the world that he can refer to where there are appeals to the Privy Council.. .other than Singapore? That is the litmus test of our judicial system" (Hansard Parliamentary Debates 1986, col. 718). Some vindication was in order: after being disbarred, Jeyaretnam appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, which condemned the Singaporean courts for their legal reasoning. In the decision, the Privy Council declared that Jeyaretnam suffered a "grievous injustice," and had been "fined, imprisoned and publicly disgraced for offenses" of which he was clearly "not guilty" (J.B. Jeyaretnam v. Law Society of Singapore 1988, 425, 434). THE PAP REIGNS IN THE COURTS "I can only express hope that faith in the judicial system will never be diminished, and I am sure it will not, so long as we allow a review of the judicial processes that takes place here in some other tribunal where obviously undue influence cannot be brought to bear. As long as governments are wise enough to leave alone the rights of appeal to some superior body outside Singapore, then there must be a higher degree of confidence in the integrity of our judicial process." Lee Kuan Yew 1967 (Hansard Parliamentary Debates 1967, cols. 1294-95). "With the crucial decision regarding Jeyaretnam, the Privy Council sealed its own fate" (Seow 1999, 112). In 1989, Minister of Law Jayakumar motioned in parliament to abolish appeals to the Privy Council. While three years ago he had praised the Council as the defender of justice, Jayakumar now decried it as "'interventionist' and 'out of touch' with local conditions" (Seow 1999, 113). When asked in 1995 about the abolition of appeals, the new Prime Minister Goh ChokTong responded that the Council had "gone outside its prescribed role" and was "playing politics" in the Jeyaretnam case (Straits Times 1995). Though this is one of the worst injustices Singapore has seen, there have been others. The subjugation of the judiciary began in 1969, when Lee abolished the jury system on the basis that it was borrowed from Western society, a move former Chief Minister David Marshall characterized as "the last nail being driven into the coffin of our basic freedoms" (Straits Times 1969). Juries were replaced by a panel of three judges, which eventually dropped to two because of a shortage of justices. The number dropped to one in 1992 (Seow 1999, 109). In 1995, Jayakumar praised the system for its speed and efficiency: "We now have reached the stage when criminal cases can be disposed by the high court in about six months. Criminal appeals are disposed of by the court of appeals in about six months. And condemned prisoners can be disposed of by the prison authorities in about six months." Shanmugam Jayakumar (O'Kane 1995, 20). This system, where an individual's fate rests on the integrity of one judge, cannot be considered conducive to justice and due process, because Singaporean justices are clearly fallible. There are other examples of injustice. Strategic case assignments (where sensitive cases are given to certain justices to ensure an outcome in the PAP's favor) deny justice, as shown in the case of Francis Seow, an opposition politician running for parliament in 1988. The government brought a tax case against him, and a date was scheduled in court. After receiving "higher instructions" (Seow 1999, 116) the registrar brought the date of the trial forward. If the original date had been kept, the trial would have happened long after the general election; but because the trial was announced and held just days before the election, voters were warned that it was "useless" (Straits Times 1988a) to vote for Seow, who "if elected, would have to vacate his seat in December after his conviction for tax evasion" (Seow 1999, 116). In this case, not only was injustice created through manipulation of the legal system, but any conception of democracy, the most popular definition of which "equates it with regular elections, fairly conducted" (Schmitter and Karl 1991, 78), was circumvented by disadvantaging the opposition candidate. This clearly violates Dahl's 2nd polyarchic criterion of free and fair elections. On the democratic merits of Singaporean courts, two other policies are notable. The first deals with the premise that "adequate economic monthly salaries payable to judges have long been recognized as a condition conducive to a free and independent judiciary" (Seow 1999, 118). But is there a point where this government stipend ceases to ensure judicial 12 |