Singapore ― During a Parliamentary debate on the Foreign Interference Countermeasures Act (FICA) bill on Monday (Oct 4), Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam refuted claims made by Terry Xu, Thum Ping Tjin and Kirsten Han that the law would be used to silence critics.
Dr Thum, Managing Director of socio-political site New Naratif and Ms Han, the site’s co-founder and former Editor-in-chief was cited by Mr Shanmugam on their comments on the bill.
“Actively trying to put out misinformation about the bill; the chief amongst them is Mr Thum and Ms Han,” said Mr Shanmugam.
Dr Thum recently posted a commentary claiming that the bill could theoretically be used to launch a “stealth coup” led by Mr Shanmugam, making him the “most powerful man in Singapore.”
Meanwhile, Mr Shanmugam highlighted in his speech that the New Naratif received funds from foreign entities like the Open Society Foundations (OSF), known for getting involved in domestic politics of different countries.
He added that the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA) had already denied Dr Thum and Ms Han’s request to register a company to organize “democracy classrooms” in Singapore.
“Make no mistake about it: We will say no to that in Singapore. You can organize democracy classrooms; we have no issues. Anyone can organize; anyone can criticize the current state of democracy. But it cannot be funded by Soros, or the US Embassy, or any other embassy,” said Mr Shanmugam.
On Mr Xu, who is the editor of The Online Citizen, Mr Shanmugam said the outlet used foreign writers to compose “incendiary articles” without indicating the authors’ identities.
According to the minister, readers would assume local writers wrote the articles but, in fact, curated by foreigners supposedly incentivized to release incendiary stories.
Still, FICA will not be used to stop Mr Xu or others from doing similar things in the future, Mr Shanmugam clarified.
However, the bill would allow the Home Affairs Minister to issue a transparency directive wherein the public would be informed who wrote the article and the author’s nationality.
“We all want transparency, right?” he added. “So it will be useful to Singaporeans to know whether the author of the article is local or foreign.”
Mr Shanmugam noted that the risk of not giving the power or requiring a court process through FICA would severely compromise the government’s ability to deal with the “very real risk” of foreign interference.
“This law gives the government a set of tools that can help, it is not a complete defence against foreign interference, but they can help,” he said.
“And the bill represents the best balance that they can find between dealing with the risks and providing checks against abuse.” /TISG
Read related: The 249-page FICA: Since law is important, why is there a need to fast read it?
The 249-page FICA: Since law is important, why is there a need to fast read it?
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