I'm back in Singapore. As always after a long trip, I get really enthusiastic about how I'm going to totally change my life from now on and not overwork myself and stop burning out and start going to the gym. I give it about two more weeks before I lose motivation and go back to my unsustainable workaholic ways. 🫠
For completeness' sake I should mention that Lawrence Wong is now secretary-general of the People's Action Party, taking over from Lee Hsien Loong. This is hardly news because it was totally expected. But since this is a newsletter that covers Singaporean politics (among other things), let's all acknowledge it happened and move on.
(1)
Scams are all over the place these days, but what are the limits on state power in dealing with this problem? The Protection from Scams Bill will, as the Ministry of Home Affairs puts it, "protect targets of ongoing scams by empowering the Police to issue Restriction Orders (RO) to banks to restrict the banking transactions of the individual, if there is reasonable belief that the individual will make money transfers to a scammer". Such orders will be valid for up to 30 days, although the police would have the option to extend such orders up to 30 days' at a time, for a maximum of five extensions. To "minimise inconvenience", MHA says that the government "will put in place a mechanism for an individual (who is the subject of a RO) to have access to his monies for legitimate reasons (e.g., sustain daily living, pay bills). These cases will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, upon the individual’s application to the Police."
There was apparently public consultation on this bill conducted from 30 August to 30 September this year—anyone on this mailing list know about this?
It's clear that scams are rife these days and has had disastrous effect on many people's lives. But giving the police power to restrict personal bank accounts is really intrusive.
(2)
A POFMA-related proceeding taking place in neighbouring Malaysia is worth watching. The Court of Appeal has ordered for two lawsuits filed by Lawyers for Liberty to be sent back to the High Court. Lawyers for Liberty, a Malaysia-based organisation, was POFMAed in 2020, but refused to comply with the order. As far as I can tell, their website is still blocked in Singapore because of this.
LFL filed two suits in the Malaysian courts, essentially about the extent of POFMA's extraterritorial reach. Could Singapore actually enforce POFMA extraterritorially, especially if it might clash with rights guaranteed by Malaysia's Constitution?
I'm curious to see what the outcome of this might be and what implications that might have on POFMA, especially since POFMA was justified early on as a necessary defence against disinformation campaigns by foreign actors. I'd already assumed that there's really not that much Singapore can do if an individual or group outside of the country decides to ignore POFMA, but if the courts in Malaysia end up ruling in LFL's favour, it could be hugely embarrassing for Singapore.
(3)
What might a second Trump presidency mean for Singapore's economy? I always struggle to predict anything because Trump is so impulsive and honestly unstable. That said, economist Linda Lim has a long and very thorough analysis for Academia SG that's worth checking out:
Singapore’s particular state-driven, export-oriented, manufacturing-focused, FDI-led economic model cannot survive in a Trump-dominated world of aversion to state industrial policy, free trade and international investment.
Even if Trump, as president, enacts only a fraction of the economic policies he has floated, it will disrupt the US and world economies on which Singapore relies so heavily. The shift away from mutually agreed upon, stable and predictable multilateral rules of the game, toward variable and inconsistent unilateral actions by the US, and other major economies responding to it, leaves lesser economies like Singapore’s little room for discretionary action in advance.
On my radar...
I've been following the news about the short-lived declaration of martial law in South Korea by President Yoon Suk Yeol (wtf was he thinking?!) The way Koreans—lawmakers and citizens—showed up to shut that shit down was really the best of Korea on display.
I learnt a lot from this commentary written by Heesoo Jang, an assistant professor of media law and ethics in the journalism department of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Read it in full here.
