I wrote this a number of times : the PAP Government’s skill set is long out-dated. Either it is incapable of, or refused to upgrade its skill set.
Unlike governments of many other countries in the world, the PAP Government is only able to manage Singapore without noises and dissenting voices. It is also incapable of contesting an election if its opponents’ criticisms are not reduced to minimum.
Fortunately for the PAP, it did manage to get that ‘quiet’ environment to operate for several decades. But then, time has changed. Singaporeans are getting more educated and increasingly less politically naïve. News and information provided by the cyber world offered a different lens of looking at the same event reported by government controlled media.
Suddenly, the PAP Government finds itself in an unfamiliar and crippling position. Its policies are regularly criticised. Problems and mistakes within its administration get reported long before its public relations team has a chance to study the case. Ministers’ criticisms on public members or events are often being counter challenged. Election results had been disappointing too.
As we know, the culture of an organization determines the type of people joining it. While existing ministers and MPs find it painful to bear the heat further, prospective candidates who fit the PAP’s unique criteria are having second thought about joining the party.
For decades, the ruling party has relied heavily on its powerful propaganda machinery to remain in absolute power, namely SPH and MediaCorp. The availability of alternative news in cyber world has increasingly diverted eye-balls away from state controlled media, thereby reducing not only advertising revenue but more importantly, the effectiveness of the government’s propaganda machinery.
The PAP sees itself in deep troubles. Either it upgrades its governing skill – which it is incapable of doing, or silenced the noises from cyber world.
We knew it would come and we have not been disappointed : yesterday, the government announced a new MDA licensing regulation for websites reporting about Singapore news.
Effectively, the government is saying : any website which in my opinion is found to be (1). reporting news and current affairs about my country regularly (i.e. on average one article per week), and (2). attracting significant number of readers (defined as 50,000 visits within one month) from my country, must hold a valid licence from me.
The licence has to be renewed annually and a performance bond of $50,000 is required. If the government is unhappy with the content of an article, it must be removed within 24 hours.
In other words, if you don’t remove the content within 24 hours, you lose your S$50,000 bond, and on top of that, your licence will not be renewed.
What about foreign based websites? Yaacob Ibrahim, the Minister for Communications and Information, hinted yesterday that he already had a solution in mind : an amendment to laws on media services, including foreign websites targeting Singapore market, would be introduced next year.
It remains to be seen how effective is the new regulation in getting websites to report Singapore news and current affairs in the PAP’s way, and bringing Singaporeans’ political maturity back to the 1970s era.
No one can also be too sure, how many parliamentary seats the new regulation would help the ruling party to recover from the Opposition.
Likewise, it is uncertain whether the new regulation could have a stemming effect on declining readership and viewership of SPH papers and Media Corp broadcasting. Already ranked at 149th globally, how much more competitive pressure could both local companies take?
Celia Lim