littleworkpage

Chee Soon Juan's strenuous and persistent questioning of witnesses whilst the court had disallowed those questions gave rise to a contempt conviction. Gopalan Nair's vitriolic verbal assualt making reference to the judge who presided over the case has resulted in a charge under the Penal Code of insulting a public officer. Both of these cases give rise to the fact that there is an interest in protecting the integrity of the judicial system and an opposing public interest in being able to engage in free criticism of the judiciary and to subject them to scrutiny. Here are some interesting quotes about insults leveled against the judiciary or contempt of court generally. It is quite a task to balance the need for an unimpugned judicial system as a cornerstone of constitutional governance and the need for free expression and free speech so that a little boy can still cry out that the emperor wears no clothes. In Re S.Mulgaokar(1978) 3 SCC 339. “The contempt power, though jurisdic...

Reporters Without Borders – they have again got their facts wrong. In an article entitled “US blogger Gopalan Nair still waiting the outcome of trial” dated 17th June 2008, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) makes the following assertions at two different parts of the article: Firstly, “This trial is a farce. Gopalan Nair appeared today before one of the plaintiffs herself”, the worldwide press freedom organisation said. (that’s a reference to RWB) Secondly, The case of “insulting” Belinda Ang Saw was heard today with the judge herself presiding over the hearing. The second sentence is hyperlinked to an AFP article. The AFP article does not state that the matter was heard before Justice Belinda Ang. I believe that the writer of the RWB article must have misunderstood the AFP article. The following is the relevant extract from the AFP article: In the blog, Gopalan Nair criticised a recent legal hearing at which Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsie...

Judging from an AFP report on the net which is about 4 hours old, Gopalan Nair’s original charge of insulting a public officer via sending her an email has not been substituted. The new charge is apparently one of insulting via the blog contents and it is now under the Penal Code as opposed to the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act. In my earlier blog entry, ‘From Folly to Freedom’ dated 5th June, I had said the following: I’m a little curious as to the precise wording of the charge against him. If the charge was worded in exactly the same manner as indicated in parenthesis above in the AFP report, then there is a serious slip in the charge. If the charge is eventually amended to one involving the contents in the blog and not the alleged email, then there is likely to be an interesting jurisdiction issue. My reason for stating the above was that from multiple reports both on the net as well as in the papers, I got the impression that the charge probably stated the ...

The Gopalan Nair saga (whatever the wisdom or lack of it that got it started) highlights another more important issue: The freedom to express one's views. How important is this right? What is the extent to which this right can be stretched? Rights are the antidotes to power. Often it has been stated that the freedom of speech cannot be unlimited; that freedom must be accompanied by responsibility. Whilst a person has the freedom to speak, he doesn’t have the freedom to hurt or harm. Instigating racial and religious hatred and creating social tensions in the name of free speech is a misguided use of the freedom. So far so good. I’m willing to concede. What about the use of free speech against public officials? Constitutional Rights are not rights operating in a vacuum. They are relational. The citizenry’s relationship with the state is spelled out in the form of rights. These are not weapons that we use against our fellow men nor are these empty propositions that we can cla...

Mr Gopalan Nair, a US citizen, a lawyer, a blogger, an ex-Singaporean and former member of the Workers’ Party has been charged for insulting/threatening a public servant. I read the blog. The line between bravery and foolhardiness is not always very clear. But, I’m sorry Mr Nair, this is one occasion when I would venture that your dare was just a little over the top. I do hesitate to classify what you did as bravery for it seems more likely to be otherwise. In order not to humiliate you I shall not classify it at all. I guess you figured that you’d be served with a Writ for defamation and then you would scoot off to the US and never return again. Let there be a default judgment. Let there be an order for damages. They can’t get it enforced in the US. Talk about a colossal miscalculation. When you open your gap in Singapore, you are navigating a minefield. You, sir, have hit a mine. Has an offence been committed? It appears that Mr Nair has been charged under s.13D(1)(a) of the...