5th POFMA order issued to Reform Party head Kenneth Jeyaretnam

SINGAPORE: Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong instructed the Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) Office to issue a correction order to Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the leader of the Reform Party. This is the fifth time this year that Mr Jeyaretnam has been given such an order.

On Thursday (Nov 2), the government said that an article Mr Jeyaretnam posted on Oct 22 on his website, The Ricebowl Singapore, as well as on posts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X (formerly known as Twitter), contained false statements of fact concerning the NIRC and the Ridout Road issue.

Read also: 4th POFMA order issued to Kenneth Jeyaretnam over ‘multiple untrue statements’ online

“First, the article states that most of the Net Investment Returns Contribution (NIRC) has been transferred into long-term funds and therefore does not contribute to actual spending. This is untrue,” a clarification reads on Factually, the official fact-checking website. Mr Jeyaretnam is now required to post the correction notice on all the platforms where he published his article, as well as a link to the government’s clarifications.

The Ministry of Finance has said that NIRC comprises the investment returns of Singapore’s reserves and supplements the annual Budget for public spending every year. “The NIRC has provided an annual revenue stream of about 3.5 per cent of GDP on average over the past 5 years. No proportion of the NIRC is earmarked for specific spending items, or for transfer into any specific fund(s). Instead, a portion of the annual Budget as a whole may be used to top up funds. Hence, it is incorrect to state that most of the NIRC has been transferred into long-term funds.”

Regarding the Ridout Road issue, the government said Mr Jeyaretnam’s article claimed that the Singapore Land Authority gave preferential treatment to Ministers K Shanmugam and Vivian Balakrishnan, who are renting 26 and 31 Ridout Road, giving them prices that are below the market value while charging the Housing and Development Board (HDB) inflated land prices.

“This is untrue,” the clarification reads. “As established in the review conducted by Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean, the rentals for both 26 and 31 Ridout Road were based on fair market value and not below market valuation. There was no evidence that the Ministers were given favourable rental rates due to their position. Details on how the market value was arrived at have been given in Parliament.

The clarification also debunked another claim Mr Jeyaretnam made in his article that only S$8 billion of healthcare expenditures were used as subsidies for Singaporeans, saying there is no factual basis for this claim. /TISG

Related: 3rd POFMA order issued to Kenneth Jeyaretnam over comments he made on his social media posts