Singapore — The Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) has secured a partial win in its battle against correction directions issued under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma).
SDP’s lawyer, Mr Eugene Thuraisingam, announced in a Facebook post wrote on Friday (Oct 8): “The Court of Appeal set aside the first half of a correction direction issued by the Ministry of Manpower on 14 December 2019 (“SDP CD-3”). Specifically, the first half of CD-3 identified a statement that ‘Local PMET employment has gone down’.” PMET is shorthand for “professionals, managers, executives and technicians”.
The SDP was represented by Mr Suresh Nair and Mr Joel Yeow (instructed counsel), and Mr Eugene Thuraisingam and Mr Joel Wong (Eugene Thuraisingam LLP).
Mr Thuraisingam added: “The main bone of contention in respect of the subject statement was whether the word “local PMET” referred to both Singapore citizens and Singapore permanent residents, or only the former group.
In court, Chief Justice Menon disagreed with the Attorney-General’s argument that a falsehood remains a falsehood even before a court determines it is false. He said it is “untenable” that a statement is declared false because the minister has identified it to be so.
“The minister may, after all, be mistaken,” he said.
“Truth and falsehood are ultimately matters to be determined by a court based on the evidence”, he added.
In December 2019, the SDP had received three correction directions from the Ministry of Manpower in respect of three posts; an online article published in June 2019 titled SDP Population Policy: Hire S’poreans First, Retrench S’poreans Last; a Facebook post in November 2019 linking to the above article; and a Facebook advertisement in December 2019 containing a link to the article and a graph with a downward-pointing arrow titled Local PMET Employment.
The correction direction that SDP partly succeeded in appealing was based on a December 2019 Facebook advertisement. SDP had put up the ad which contained a link to an older article titled “SDP Population Policy: Hire S’poreans First, Retrench S’poreans Last”.
What Happened Initially
On Dec 2, the SDP published a sponsored Facebook post with a graphic showing plunging local PMET employment.
Rebutting the SDP’s statement that local PMET retrenchments were increasing, the Ministry of Manpower said the number of local PMETs retrenched had declined since 2015. It also said that the graphic which the SDP published was wrong and that the ministry’s Comprehensive Labour Force Survey showed that local PMET employment had risen steadily since 2015.
On Dec 16, while the SDP complied with the Pofma Correction Directions and posted correction notices on its article and earlier Facebook posts, it said that the conclusions that Manpower Minister Josephine Teo had come to were “disputable”.
On Jan 3, the SDP applied to the ministry to have the corrections cancelled. Mrs Teo rejected this.
The SDP then filed its court challenge on Jan 8.
On Wednesday, February 5, the High Court dismissed the challenge brought forward by the SDP concerning a correction direction issued by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) about employment statistics the party had posted.
In this first-ever challenge to the law which targets fake news, the High Court ruled that SDP’s statements about employment statistics were false.
SDP last year had noted in an online article as well as two Facebook posts the increasing trend of retrenchments of Singaporean PMETs (professionals, managers, executives and technicians).
In December, MOM issued a directive to get the party to amend the posts and article under Pofma, saying they contained falsehoods.
On January 3, SDP applied to MOM to cancel the directive, and when MOM turned this down, the party filed a challenge against the directive in the High Court.
According to Justice Ang Cheng Hock, the party’s statements were “in fact false in the face of the statistical evidence against them”.
“I reiterate that the appellant has not challenged the accuracy of the statistical evidence, and has instead sought to critique it on other grounds,” added the judge.
TISG has reached out to SDP Secretary-General Dr Chee Soon Juan for comment. /TISG