Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in SG

Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in Singapore

Over the past few months, there has been a debate over one of Singapore’s most sensitive and controversial topics – whether online commentaries about politics should be banned. As we all know, politics in Singapore are often mentioned in hand with its restrictions due to sensitivity about the issue.  However, over the Net, we can still find many satirical websites that provoke and mock the government such as talkingcock.com and Mr Brown’s blog. These websites feature various articles that can be viewed as having a joke about Singapore’s current affairs and they often make fun of local issues that are usually political.

With new regulations, political podcasts, which are part of political commentaries that make use of the streaming of videos for entertainment or advertising, are now banned during election periods. On top of that, individual bloggers that post political commentaries will now have to register with the Media Development Agency if they are to continue their blogging about politically biased views. Also, they are banned from advertising anything to do with politics and political parties during the elections. During non-election periods, they can continue to post but bloggers who step over the line of political harmfulness will be given a warning and subsequently a serious fine or jail term.

The government has banned political podcasting during elections due to the fact that they are worried that these podcasts would potentially spell trouble for the election fairness. Their main concern is that bloggers use their anonymity on the Internet to amass huge crowds of people to be politically biased. Therefore, the ban is there to make sure that there are no political podcasts and advertisements during the election period to act as propaganda and that bloggers who hide behind the veil of the Internet cannot use similar tools to manipulate the opinions of a large amount of people to be politically biased.

In my opinion, the ban is justified. Since Singapore is not North Korea, our government must allow us some freedom of speech. The definition of that is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. So, the government, over the past few years, has aimed to give us an increased bubble size in which we can freely comment and even mock the way the government is handling issues. However, what I feel is that this ban is put in place just to ensure that we Singaporeans do not go over the board and step over a boundary into territory that can be potentially dangerous for the fairness, governance, and ultimately safety for the country. Furthermore, the ban on political podcasts only come in during the elections as the major concern of the government here is that these podcasts will affect public opinion and therefore affect the total fairness and authenticity of the election and the election results. In view of this fact, I feel that the government is doing this not because they are afraid that political podcasts might smear their reputation, but rather because of the benefit of the whole country. Therefore, I feel that this ban is reasonably justified and while bloggers will be disappointed, they should not be too upset due to the reasonably loose restrictions of this ban.

Next, the main reason why this ban was enforced is because the Internet has become a frequent source of abuse and attack. This is mainly due to the fact that when someone goes onto the Internet, his or her identity is anonymous as long as he or she does not want to reveal it. Furthermore, even if the individual does want to reveal his or her identity, it might not even be real. These are why the government has enforced bans in the cyber-technological area, since every person has as much chance as being Osama bin Laden as the next. To ensure the safety of our country, the ban is a must to deter anonymous bloggers to continue to post comments harmful to the cohesiveness between government and people, which is why they must now register with the Media Development Agency if they want to post anything like that.

All in all, this ban ultimately protects the justice and fairness of our country and I do not see how it is harmful to our lives, apart from the fact that just a little bit of daily entertainment is taken away.