Last week I checked the newsletter over and over… but forgot to write my little message up top! Surely it must be a law of nature by now that typos/errors in emails can only be spotted after the email has already been sent…
(1)
Singaporeans love the death penalty, the Ministry of Home Affairs would have you know. According to a new round of public opinion surveying, support for the death penalty for most serious crimes rose between 2021 and 2023. 77.4% of respondents support the death penalty for crimes like murder or trafficking “a significant amount of drugs”. 87.9% of Singaporeans also believe that capital punishment works in deterring drug trafficking.
As always, I’m not surprised by these results. The discourse in Singapore is overwhelmingly skewed towards pro-death penalty views because of how hard the PAP government pushes this narrative (and how the mainstream media falls in line). After years of exposure to pro-death penalty propaganda alongside the sidelining or active censorship of abolitionist narratives, it’s only to be expected that public opinion surveys come out the way they do. Given how little information the government shares about the death penalty and how it's used, I'm not convinced that the survey's respondents were fully equipped with important information about how the capital punishment regime really works here and who it disproportionately affects. These survey results are a demonstration of the government's success in pushing its narrative at the expense of all else, and a reminder to everyone who's horrified by the death penalty how important it is to engage people around us on this subject and do the public education and awareness-raising work that's missing elsewhere.
I'd like to direct everyone's attention back to Dr Mai Sato's analysis of previous government surveys on the death penalty, published by Academia SG last year. The points she made then still stand:
admin
The studies examined in this piece do not oblige the government to retain the death penalty. Based on MHA’s research, current evidence on the deterrent effect of the death penalty for drug trafficking is too weak to demonstrate effectiveness. In addition, the Singaporean public does not appear to be clamouring for the retention of the death penalty for drug trafficking. Whom and what purpose the death penalty serves in Singapore remains unanswered.
(2)
Every time we creep closer to election season the PAP starts talking as if the country might sink under the sea without a landslide PAP victory. Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong posited that, should electoral margins get slimmer and political contestation become more fierce, governance in Singapore might deteriorate. "In [other] countries, governments find that doing the right thing is not politically feasible, and then political leaders of all parties default to populism or short-termism to stay in power," he said. From what I understand, his argument appears to be that it'll be best if there was less contestation in Singapore, so the PAP can be left alone to do whatever it thinks is the "right thing" without worrying about election results—that is, without worrying about backlash from Singaporeans.
Less competition would certainly be a good thing for the PAP, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing for Singapore. In fact, it could very well be a really risky thing, because that means less scrutiny, less critique, fewer checks and balances. It's not a good thing for a single political party to have it too easy; all parties need to be constantly challenged, questioned and be kept on their toes. PAP has, for a long time, enjoyed a supermajority in Parliament, allowing them to pass laws and even amend the Constitution whenever they like with no opposition force to stop them or even really slow them down. That's not good for Singapore, because it would be truly naïve—stupid, even—to expect that a political party will always get it right.
(3)
Stop bugging teachers on their personal numbers and after hours! Chan Chun Sing, the education minister, has said that teachers are not obliged to give parents their personal phone numbers or respond to messages outside of the work day.
All this is to establish boundaries, to allow educators to focus on conducting class and student activities, and to ensure that our educators have protected time after school hours to take care of (their) families, rest, and recharge.
— Chan Chun Sing
Teachers have previously reported being overwhelmed by messages from parents about all sorts of things, including minutiae like what attire their kid should wear to school the next day. These things should be noted by the kid when they're briefed in school, and if they've missed it, well then that's just too bad and not a good enough reason to bother someone else outside of their working hours.
On my radar...
💰 Goh Jin Hian, the son of former prime minister Goh Chok Tong, has been accused of being the "mastermind" of a market rigging scheme at New Silkroutes Group, an investment holding company. A former finance director at the company has been sentenced to 12 weeks in prison after pleading guilty to six charges under the Securities and Futures Act, with 25 other charges taken into consideration. He's the first of four co-accused (including Goh) to plead guilty.
🇹🇼 The Taiwanese Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is constitutional for the "most serious crimes" (which, notably, does not include non-violent drug offences). This is disappointing for those of us that hoped for the best, although there are some smaller wins: the ruling has also raised the threshold, making it more difficult for the death penalty to be imposed. The Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty (TAEDP) has released a statement:
When will Taiwan finally abolish the death penalty? The road ahead will be even more difficult. TAEDP emphasizes, however, that the death penalty continues to be in violation of the international human rights covenants that Taiwan has signed. The Taiwan Constitutional Court Judgement 113-Hsien-Pan-No.8 should not be allowed to be an obstacle preventing the government from fulfilling its commitment to these covenants.
As long as the death penalty exists, the authorities will depend on a sense of complacency, using the false premise that "Taiwan is not ready for abolition" as an excuse for their perennial inaction, attempting to perfunctorily use death penalty verdicts or executions to respond to the pain of victims and societal demands for public safety, while failing to invest in developing and implementing effective policies that can substantively protect society and ensure people's safety, thereby hindering progress and reform.
