Even as the country battles the worrying Delta variant surges,there is another big battle going on. The Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill is up tomorrow (Oct 4) for its second reading and is on course to become law very hurriedly – if efforts to prevent it from being possibly steamrolled throughParliament fail. The FICA bill, all 249 pages covering 127 separate clauses, was tabled and had its first reading just weeks ago on Sept 13. My hats are off to the various organisations now mounting a real-life relatively Herculean attempt to make sure that Singapore and Singaporeans are not being short-changed by the manner in which the bill is being rushed.
What the bill wants to achieve is important, I agree. As the Home Affairs Ministry said: “The Bill will strengthen our ability to prevent, detect and disrupt foreign interference in our domestic politics conducted through (i) hostile information campaigns and (ii) the use of local proxies.” The threat of influence peddling has become a real cat-and-mouse game – because of changing political dynamics, the ongoingterrorist menace, new technology offering greater monetary incentives, and new players. An update and smarter laws are needed.
Precisely because the bill is important, it should be properly examined and debated.
In the lead up to tomorrow’s Parliamentary sitting, a number of out-of-establishment developments have been taking place. Each has a different agenda but all ultimately attempting to prevent a repeat of previous whitewash debates such as the one on the Population White Paper at a time when there was hardly any Opposition in Parliament and especially when the native population was terribly un-woke.
The Workers’ Party has filed a number of amendments in an endeavour to compel a longer and substantial debate. It called for changes to allow greater judicial oversight over the proposed executive powers, a “more precise scoping” of such powers to prevent abuse and greater clarity and transparency around entities and individuals affected by the bill.
The amendments include those relating to:
Progress Singapore Party NCMP Leong Mun Wai has filed a petition on behalf of civil society organisations seeking to delay passage of the bill and calling for a select committee to further study the bill. “We have no heart to debate FICA but we still have to do it on Oct 4 because it is so important for us to deliberate thoroughly on it,” he said.
The petition itself said: “Making the effort to widely consult on, carefully consider and rigorously deliberate the full range of implications and consequences of the current bill can pave the way for a more robust legislation that better serves the intention of the bill and Singapore’s national interests.”
Besides these political moves, a concerned senior lawyer has waded in on the issue.
The bill is problematic because of its extremely broad language, restrictions on judicial review and questionable procedural rules, Senior Counsel Harpreet Singh Nehal said in an opinion piece for The Straits Times.
Among other things, “FICA defines ‘foreign interference’ and ‘public interest’ so broadly that legitimate online activity undertaken by Singaporeans to influence our laws and public policies potentially risks being the subject of a ….direction by the minister, even in the absence of any manipulation or influence by a foreign government or its agents,” said Singh, the managing partner of Audent Chambers LLC.
” ‘Public interest’, too, is defined very broadly to include not just matters related to the security of Singapore or to public health, public order or public finance but also any activity ‘directed towards a political end in Singapore’. Under the bill, the words ‘directed towards a political end in Singapore’include activity which seeks to influence views on matters ‘that have become the subject of a political debate in Singapore’. That basically covers issues that Singaporeans are most concerned about.
“They include climate change laws and policies, which are issues with international dimensions, and social issues on which there is in-principle international consensus, but which still attract healthy debate, such as further improving women’s rights and entrenching gender equality.”
Singh is also concerned that the bill “seeks to very substantially restrict the role of the Singapore courts to review the legality of the government’s exercise of powers under the legislation. This is a troubling intrusion into the judicial powers granted to our Supreme Court under the Constitution”.
Finally, the bill “seeks to empower the Home Affairs Minister to make extensive new rules of practice and procedure for hearings before the reviewing tribunal which risk undermining the ability of persons to fairly challenge the government’s decisions under FICA”.
The government has responded to Singh’s opinion piece. OngKeng Yong , Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Senior Counsel Stanley Lai, a partner at Allen & Gledhill, in a rejoinder in The Straits Times, took issue with his comments on the “broad language” and the courts’ role.
They said: “As regards the ‘broad language’ of FICA, we do not see how the examples of ‘legitimate’ collaborations with foreigners referred to by Mr Singh in his article can be proscribed under the bill. (He cites public policy issues such as climate change and women’s rights)…they do not appear to be covered by the bill, and should not give cause for concern.
“(Also) it is natural to assume that appeals under the bill will involve intelligence and sensitive information that relate to operational matters, the confidentiality of which may need to be preserved in the public interest. These are matters that may not, inherently, be amenable to the courts’ judicial review.”
Apart from the political and legal arguments, some Singaporean academics, who may bealso professionally and intrinsically affected by FICA, warned that “the law’s overreach will undermine internationalisation and deepen self-censorship while weakening universities’ resistance against malign foreign interference. Parliament must direct FICA’s powers away from the legitimate and necessary work of academics.”
In a joint editorial in Academia.Sg, Cherian George, Chong JaIan, Linda Lim and Teo You Yenn said: “The government has for decades proclaimed higher education and research as vital to the country’s development as a knowledge economy. But its proposed FICA — if passed without amendment or, at minimum, watertight assurances against overreach — would represent the single biggest threat to academia in Singapore and its chances of realising that vision.
“This is not because academia is full of the kinds of malign, clandestine foreign manipulation that any government has a responsibility to counteract. Rather, the bill casts a broad shadow over activities that academics consider not only legitimate but also necessary: activities involving cross-border collaboration, wide online dissemination, and strong social impact. While academia is not the main target of FICA, in an environment already rampant with second-guessing by university administrators nervous about what might earn official displeasure, there is every chance that it will suffer collateral damage. Universities play a valuable role in research as well as in educating the public about malign forms of foreign interference. Stifling them may inadvertently make Singapore more, not less, vulnerable to foreign manipulation.”
I can’t say it better than the academics.
Yes, make the legislation clear, as also advocated by HarpreetSingh Nehal. And, if I may add, make it specific and transparent.
Tan Bah Bah, consulting editor of TheIndependent.Sg, is a former senior leader writer with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a local magazine publishing company.