TR EMERITUS

NCMP Yee Jenn Jong. Mr Yee contested in Joo Chiat SMC and lost to PAP's Charles Chong by 388 votes. It’s the 3rd anniversary of GE2011 today and supposedly mid of current term. I randomly googled and found this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfIguU1mVIY) which summed up my rollercoaster emotions after 2 months of hard campaigning as a then-newbie. So many people came along the way to help an inexperienced politician. We started with just 2-3 persons walking daily in the first week after I was selected to lead the thrust into Joo Chiat, and it grew into a fairly large team by the end of the campaign. So many residents encouraging us along the way, getting our share of brick-brats, old friends that I found again and many new friends made, and the 5 kg I lost through the daily door-to-door house visits (Alas, the 5 kg was gained back too quickly afterwards and in the wrong places too :>). Polling day was a mix bag of emotions: Casting my vote at St Pats first thing in morning, then moving from station to station to encourage my polling agents, bumping into residents after their voting who cheered me on, and the tense 2 hours of counting. Up one moment, down the next, and not knowing the results for certain until the last numbers were in. I was asked if I wanted a recount, because it fell just at the allowed 2% limit. I knew it was quite fruitless as I had witnessed the counting and it was impossible to have a 2% error, but we called the recount anyway just to be absolutely certain. Then began the long drive from Victoria JC counting station to Hougang where we were to assemble for the final results with WP supporters. The two months of events and words in the daily gruelling campaign kept playing through my mind in the 30-min drive: What I could have done better that would have changed the result and the hopes of people which I could not fulfil. One that kept flashing through my mind was that of the retired teacher who phoned me a few days before polling to say “I have been voting for many years with my head. I now believe I must be true to my heart. I am a retiree. I wish to give you something but I have nothing to give. I can only give you my vote.” She was voting for the opposition for the first time. Hers and the hopes of many I met along the way weighed heavily on me as I delivered the short speech in that video, choked with sadness that I had to disappoint them. I was glad though that the day ended with the major breakthrough of a GRC going to the opposition for the first time, that supposedly impenetrable fortress designed to keep the opposition from playing any big role in local politics. It led the way to two more consecutive by-election victories for the WP subsequently. Enough of recollections on this GE2011 anniversary morning and back to the long work to build for the future. Yee Jenn Jong Non-constituency Member of Parliament Source: Yee Jenn Jong's blog Editor's note: Mr Yee contested in Joo Chiat SMC in GE2011 and lost to PAP's Charles Chong by a mere 388 votes. Charles Chong is the MP who made the famous "lesser mortals" comment when DPM Teo rebuked former perm sec Tan Yong Soon for publicising his month-long expensive trip to France to learn French cooking: Agreeing that the rebuke in Parliament was “harsh”, MP Charles Chong noted that in the article, Mr Tan did not “brag” about how expensive the trip was. “Maybe it made lesser mortals envious and they thought maybe he was a little bit boastful,” he said. “Would people have taken offence if his wife (a senior investment counsellor at a bank) had paid for everything?”  Read More →

Ho Peng Kee’s Briginshaw Self-entrapment The precedent now set by Ho Peng Kee’s Parliamentary explanation now entraps SPF with this obligation - To demand ALL applicants for a permit under Public Order Act to proof that the intended assembly, if so granted, will not engender criminal consequences even if fictitious and imaginary - The evidentiary standard of proof exceeds that of civil proceedings since the fictitious risks alleged are of grave criminal consequences if breached - And that it will apply to all political parties – Workers Party, PAP or any other and no exceptions can be waived. And that proof can be challenged in the courtroom as this is a matter of statutory (parliament made) law enforceable by the State and against the State, not an administrative law discretion of the SPF. Law is made in Parliament, not made by the police corporal whose two “ikan bilis” (minnow) rank weighs on, to result in crushing death to those they politically dislike or out of the corporal’s passionate love. If the Workers Party’s mass cycling on the ECP of very limited number and no interaction with the public over the course of the journey posed such a huge unforgiving danger to Singapore, how is the proposed PIDCS mass gathering of at least 10,000 in such density of space confinement ripe of crime commissioning possibility, and maybe much more of unknown size, along Orchard Road meets with the onerous elevated requirements in the Public Order Act of fictitious criminal risks? The Briginshaw law imperative and its perversity rubs both ways. And yes, it is a wavering finger of the fiction of “more proof” and the burden of proof now falls on PIDCS in fair rotation. By Ho Peng Kee’s brilliant, ghostly imperative, PIDCS has exactly the same burden of proof to qualify for a public assembly permit refused to the Workers” Party mass cycling application! Workers Party and everyone else interested in a permit to assemble can watch with amusement what and which way the SPF is going to decide. Is the SPF going to look the other way? Can the PIDCS “prove” the improbability of criminal consequences erupting from the event. I believe the Ho Peng Kee’s imperative is now impossible of compliance, not just for the PIDCS but also for all PAP’s future gatherings, if the rule is fairly applied. The test case and whip is now in the court and hands of PIDCS. If they fail (and therefore permission is denied to stage an assembly at Ngee Ann City), and it is impossible to satisfy this Briginshaw ghost fiction of facts that must be proven at the time of application, how can any PAP-sponsored carnivals in the future meet the most learned Ho Peng Kee’s brilliant exposition of unspoken notoriously backfired Briginshaw law application? If it is approved, the public mind will ask if this is an extension of yet another corrupt exercise of administrative power in favor of the Briginshaw’s preferred “WHO”. Public Order Act is Unconstitutional Enactment The Public Order Act, in my view, is unconstitutional and contradicts our Constitutional law of free speech and assembly. Such law enactment must fall when it is subjected to the ordeal of the courts. In strictness, it is no law, because it establishes no rule: it is merely a futile attempt to establish a law. The remedy for unconstitutional enactments, as in England, must therefore be political via parliamentary amendment or revocation while in America and in Australia, they may be found in the ordinary process of the courts. Judiciary must be empowered to declare that law “unconstitutional”. Can the PIDCS successfully comply with this fiction? If it did, it will open up the Pandora box that virtually all applications for an assembly permit can simply walk through- never mind the elephant or the ant. If it fails, then no application will ever satisfy Ho Peng Kee’s Briginshaw law tenet. You can’t rape virginity. The PAP is trapped in its deceiving hypocritical application of Briginshaw law abuse and all its MPs mostly conspicuously diam diam diam (preferred silence) publicly till now including the Law Minister. PIDCS’s application for a permit (if that eventuates) puts PAP’s Public Order Act on the guillotine block. Will the SPF and PAP submit meekly and grant it permission to assemble? Or it pretends the hypocrisy of the current status quo of unconstitutional enactment? I believe PAP prefers the latter. Let me explain why. Choo Han Teck’s SDP 5 Conviction Case Law Irreversibly Hanged PIDCS Very very simple. SPF & PAP will be trapped in a quagmire of its own mischief and undoing of pursuing SDP unlimited. High Court judge, Choo Han Teck’s conviction of SDP 5 was a landmark decision. It is past tense with negative feedback loop. The ratio decidendi (legal ground) for conviction is that the accused walked together with a common purpose. Note the catchwords ‘walked together” and “a common purpose” – it is a catch-all ambit of law application – i.e. “pow kau liao” in Hokkien (catch-all). If you look at the facts of that case carefully, I find it impossible to comprehend how walking in any direction constitute the stationary definition implied of “assembly” – that is to say if you are moving in any direction, you can’t be “assembled” in an implied stationary position. The other big “crap claw” of this law interpretation is “a common purpose”. Well going to a place of worship or return from there together with your family to the MRT station also meets with the requirements of “a common purpose”. Likewise, w*o*e mongers assembled together in one of the lanes in Geylang before going on ‘chicken hunting” also meets with the law definition of “a common purpose”. If “chicken hunting” and its enjoyment is not illegal at law, how can the “assembly” of such offends the law? The offence w*o*e mongering can’t be divisible - part illegal and part legal. In the days of illegal prostitution laws in Australia, actual proof of bonking act is not required, just the assembly constitutes complete offence to prove the illegality of both the commissioning of offence of prostitution and the unlawful assembly to instigate the former. The “catch-all” law enactment says the pimp is “managing the premises” for immoral purpose i.e. the premises being the place of assignment and assembly and the prostitute is then charged for for broadest definitional offence of “assisting in management”. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/VicBillsRR/2008/18.pdf The law presumption is that premises must be for residential and/or commercial, everything else it be used for must fall in default of, for all other purposes, that befits “immoral purposes”. Since that is in offence of prevailing statutory law definition, then anyone else, by definition of facilitating its purpose for “immoral purpose” must be “assisting” (abetting) in management of the said premise for “immoral purpose” contradictory to law. Even the cleaning lady removing the condoms, towels, bed sheets and the reception offering tea to prospective customers are entrapped by this all-encompassing law. Extrapolating to our PIDCS prospective application, if assembly is illegal unless otherwise permitted at law, all other consideration of common purpose is secondary and irrelevant because the illegality of assembly essentially captures all conduct thereof as essentially an extension of illegality conduct if permit is not granted. As SPF already explicitly and publicly reaffirms the law requirement of a permit application, PIDCS must apply for a permit for its event intended on 8 June 2014 even if a common purpose is ever denied in that application to “walk around”. The permitting of assembly and the presence or otherwise of common purpose, similarly, cannot be separated – they come together in one application and of all legal obligations and consequences attached. Celebration of any cause or commemoration of any event already satisfied that “common purpose” stricture of Choo Han Teck’s ratio decidendi. PIDCS cannot say it is a religious, song, dance, women and ladyboys having random fun of no common objectives between them and therefore need not meet the same requirements imposed on the SDP 5 conviction. For PIDCS to hold a meeting or gathering at Ngee Ann City, it satisfies all the conditions that qualifies for violations which Judge Choo Han Teck convicted the SDP 5 in that landmark decision i.e. assembly with a common purpose, and by Ho Peng Kee’s authoritative demand told in Parliament. PIDCS must prove its impossibility of law violations – another trial by ordeal law application. PIDCS can “prove” no risks of criminal law violation harming public safety by not pursuing this assembly permit – exactly the same “more proof” demanded of the Workers Party in refusing its mass cycling application. Law, Unlike History, Can Be Reversed Law, unlike history, sometimes can “walk” backwards – that is a lower level court decision of injustice in the past can be reversed in a higher court, but a High Court decision of grave injustice inflicted, in hindsight cognizance of injustice, has no higher court to review and reverse that injustice. Such is the finality of Justice Choo Han Teck’s conviction of SDP 5. And even if that avenue is available of due processes, the question must be asked – is the Government via its good office of its Attorney General prepared to file an appeal to reverse a decision of injustice in the High Court to correct past inequities/injustices of a “wrong” decision in the public interest cause? Or is the Government going to allow the PIDCS to continue with this assembly intended on the 8 June 2014 in violation of our statutory law and the case law thus established – in blatant ignorance of the most learned High Court Judge, Choo Han Teck’s landmark case law decision in convicting the SDP 5? Justice Choo Han Teck’s decision is a case law precedent – it is law! Is the Government going to stonewall public dissent and face the total public embarrassment of foul application of twisted Briginshaw law shame and inequities to advantage the criminal violation of our illegal assembly law at Ngee Ann City on 8 June 2014? I guess we all have to wait and see. There is an old saying of Australian wisdom – never forget the pain and risks on your own back in the use of the big stick of power abuse in oppression of another. SPF Must Not Approve PIDCS’s Permit Application Even if PIDCS did lodge a last minute application, SPF and our Home Ministry must not – in any and all circumstances – grant the PIDCS a permit to illegally assemble at Ngee Ann City on 8 June 2014. To permit otherwise offends - our statutory law and its legislative intent i.e. Parliament had never envisaged or intended that foreigners be allowed to use our public space to propagate its own political cause and the arrest, conviction and deportation of offending Malaysians proved that, so why should PIDCS be of Briginshaw law’s preferred exception? - the ratio decidendi (legal rationale) established in the most learned honorable High Court Judge’s landmark decision in convicting the SDP 5 Why is it so? Very simple again. SPF is an instrument of Government and its proper constitutionally-defined role is to enforce Parliament made law on public security maintenance. Like bureaucrats, SPF is the servant of law prescription and enforcement, not its master or architect of law construct. To conduct itself otherwise in preference favored to any PIDCS application in pretense that it has unfettered discretion or as demanded from the political apex, it would fall foul of another High Court decision against PM LHL on his assertion of “unfettered discretion” in the Executive to decide whether to hold or not to hold a by-election in Hougang. That decision was challenged by a cleaner lady, Ms. Vellama, assisted by the most distinguished public voice in the legal, Mr.M. Ravi. Well, we know the High Court ruled against PM LHL. Now this is an obviously meritorious decision of correctness of fact and hence the correctness of law application that follows. For the High Court to agree that PM LHL is ever “correct” of “unfettered discretion”, it would make an utter mockery of fact and of the entire judicial and parliamentary process! It, would, in that hypothetical fouled-up circumstances, afford the ridiculous admission of the High Court’s irrelevance & fiction – which is, ironically, hearing the merit or demerit of that case – and that it is almost feudalism of the imagined construct of an “imperial palace” deciding unilaterally what is law and how law shall be interpreted to suit the Emperor’s corrupt interests and all its preserved eunuch and concubines!! Has Singapore degenerated back to dynastic imperial rule in this century? I think not and I am proud that our High Court agrees with me! So on all these grounds, I strongly assert here that SPF, Home Ministry and even PM LHL have NO lawful discretion to grant a waiver of statutory law (Parliament-made law) of allowing the PIDCS to engage in any illegal assembly at Ngee Ann City on 8 June 2014, much less to propagate its political cause. The State cannot abet a violation by foreigners – it’s unlawful!! How can SPF grant any permit to PIDCS to hold an assembly taking into account the statutory law and the strictures so rigidly applied in case law precedent of the SDP5 conviction (and Workers’ Party mass cycling event refused). The brave SDP 5 “offenders” went to jail. It is not the SPF lawful right to construct a law structure or obey a lawful command from above which say one law different treatment according to Briginshaw law twists that its merits be decided solely by “WHO” is the applicant. By doing a “dirty” on PIDCS of refusing its application, the SPF and Home Ministry at least will not stir up the cobra of lies that the Public Order Act is an unlawful enactment impossible of equitable justice application, saved of doing another “dirty” via Briginshaw law notoriety of “more proof” of facts improbable of serious criminal law chaos and violations. WHAT DO YOU THINK? Oxygen * Submitted by TRE reader. Related: PIDCS – It’s politics, not racism! Part 1  Read More →

Windfalls lost to artful dodgers (1 May)   Australian companies sent almost $60 billion to related parties in tax havens in 2012, with payments to Singapore and Ireland featuring high on the list, according to new data. The data, never before released by the Australian Tax Office, provides an insight into how multinational groups shuffle money between countries and comes amid an international push to halt the use of tax havens by major corporations. Due to their low tax rates, Singapore and Ireland are used by multinationals, especially technology companies such as Google and Apple, as locations for sales hubs or corporate headquarters. Read more: www.smh.com.au/business/singapore-ireland-top-havens-for-multinational-tax-dodgers-20140430-37hzi.html#ixzz30RGmwLul  Read More →