24 May 2025: Wong’s new Cabinet

I have far, far too many unread books at home—enough to last me for YEARS—but this past week I cracked again and ordered books from the newly launched Bookshop.SG because I just got too excited.

(1)

GE fever is over; back to work, everyone. The new Cabinet was sworn in last night. People expecting a super-fresh team might have found it underwhelming since there are many familiar faces, especially in key portfolios like home affairs, foreign affairs, defence and health. But Wong’s also putting training wheels on potential 5G leadership, making a couple of political newbies acting ministers and the others ministers of state or senior parliamentary secretaries. There are plenty of opinions from commentators about what this might tell us about Singapore’s political future, but predictions are neither my strength nor my interest, so I will save my random takes for where they belong: gossipy group chats with friends. Ultimately, how “new” or “refreshed” the PAP is post-GE2025 will be demonstrated by their actions and policies, so keeping a close eye on what they actually do is much more crucial than any of our speculations or educated guesses.

Other political parties aren’t taking a break, either. The Workers’ Party have announced that Andre Low and Eileen Chong will be taking up the NCMP seats in Parliament. Meanwhile, the Singapore Democratic Party has launched a campaign for electoral reform, starting with an online petition calling for six key changes: removing the Elections Department from the Prime Minister’s Office, ending gerrymandering, abolishing the GRC system, making the campaigning period a minimum of three weeks, mandating a six-month gap between the release of new boundaries and the dissolution of Parliament and reviewing the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act to allow for more media freedom. They’re also launching the Orange and Teal Social Enterprise Co-operative, a ground-up cooperative that I’m hoping to ask Chee Soon Juan more about soon, so watch this space.

(2)

If you’re a book lover, it’s never nice to see them being treated like rubbish. The sight of piles and piles of books from Yale-NUS College in plastic bags heaped on the ground, then loaded on to a lorry for recycling, sparked outcry this past week. Students who wanted to rescue them were told they weren’t allowed to. The backlash pushed NUS to apologise for “operational lapses”. The majority of the books from Yale-NUS have been absorbed by other NUS libraries, but there were duplicates and other titles that apparently weren't in very much demand. 500 of these books have already been sent off for recycling but the process has been halted for the remaining 8,500 and there are book adoption fairs in the works.

While it’s heartbreaking to see books handled this way and sent off for disposal, and it seems like there could have been more effort put into trying to find new homes for more books, there are times when recycling or disposals do happen. The publishing industry generates lots of remainder copies, be they books or magazines—some of which do eventually get sold, some not—and often these titles end up getting recycled or disposed of. So I don’t feel as outraged as some others seem to be. But the reactions I’ve observed feel tied to a greater sorrow (or anger) over a lack of respect for or validation of intangible things—like knowledge, memory, art and beauty—in a “pragmatic”, capitalist Singapore, where everything is quickly commodified and expected to demonstrate worth in dollars and cents. When we see books carelessly chucked out, it feels like yet another visual manifestation of a loss of collective soul.

(3)

Muhammad Salleh bin Hamid was hanged yesterday morning. Given the urgency, I published something about his case on social media and in the broadcast channels on Thursday. I’m reproducing it here with light edits:

On Monday (19 May), the Singapore Prison Service informed Muhammad Salleh bin Hamid and his family that his execution had been scheduled for Friday (23 May), giving them just four days’ notice.

Salleh was sentenced to death for abetting the trafficking of 325.81g of methamphetamine. Although the prosecution granted him a Certificate of Substantive Assistance, the court found that he was not a courier and therefore not eligible for alternative sentencing.

As Salleh had not been arrested with the drugs in his possession, the prosecution relied on statements, phone records and the testimony of Salleh’s co-accused to establish that Salleh was the one who'd asked the co-accused to collect the drugs. His co-accused, who’d also received a Certificate of Substantive Assistance, was found to be a courier and sentenced to life imprisonment with 15 strokes of the cane.

Salleh, who’d argued that he had not intended for such a large amount of drugs to be collected, was hanged on Friday morning. He’d already been behind bars for about a decade. When I asked his family about him, they said that he agonised over aspects of how his case had been handled, how some evidence had been interpreted and the conclusions of the court.

This is a common torment for many death row prisoners. Many of them come from difficult backgrounds or have life experiences that have pushed them into making choices that the rest of society might not understand or have sympathy for. No one is ever born a “criminal”—there is always more to the story… if only anyone would be willing to listen.

The criminal punishment system—from police investigations to court proceedings and appeals—is bewildering, overwhelming and traumatising for those caught up in it, especially those facing capital charges where the stakes couldn’t possibly be higher or scarier. Upon arrest, they’re interrogated without access to legal counsel or advice and with little knowledge of their rights. The language and processes of court hearings are difficult to follow, and they’re often expected to trust lawyers they barely know, who might make decisions or employ strategies they don’t understand or agree with. Justices who’ve had vastly different upbringings, educations and experiences sit in judgement without ever having been in their shoes. Often, people are convicted and sent to death row while still feeling like they haven’t been given a proper chance to explain themselves and be heard.

The adversarial court system is inherently unsuited to unpack complex and nuanced lived experiences and choices; a mandatory death penalty regime that doesn’t take mitigating circumstances into account makes it even worse.

In April this year, Salleh sent a 63-page letter to K Shanmugam, the minister for home affairs and law (at the time). In neat, block letters, written painstakingly on prison stationery and accompanied by court judgments, letters and other documents as references, Salleh tried again to tell his side of the story, hoping a powerful man would hear and believe him.

A month later, he received a response from a Quality Service Manager from the Ministry of Home Affairs’s feedback unit, saying that “as your post-appeal application has been dismissed by the Court, you may wish to seek legal advice on the matters raised in your letter”. It’s unknown if Shanmugam has even looked at—much less read—Salleh’s letter.

Looking through this bundle, I find letters to Salleh from the Law Society of Singapore and the Singapore Police Force. These letters show that Salleh wrote to the Law Society twice—once in July 2024 and again in September 2024—to file a complaint against a previous lawyer. He’d also been interviewed by the police in October 2024 and written to them in December 2024 in relation to this matter. The police informed him that they would not be taking action but that he could file a complaint against his lawyer with the Law Society if he so desired.

Salleh’s actions made it clear he wanted to file a complaint against his lawyer from death row. However, the Law Society’s response in September 2024 told him that “the Law Society does not act on information provided from the public unless a formal complaint is lodged”. They provided him with instructions on how to make such a formal complaint, but these instructions—such as the need to provide a statutory declaration sworn before a Commissioner of Oaths—can be confusing and overwhelming for a death row prisoner with no legal training, very limited resources and access to information, and whose family might not be able to hire another lawyer to manage such matters.

As far as I can see from the documents, no assistance was offered to help Salleh file the complaint that it was abundantly clear he wanted to make. The closest is a short mention that he might want to ask a prison officer or family member to help him retrieve information from a website.

I understand that there are requirements stipulated by law that the Law Society has to follow, but the apparent lack of clear avenues for people to seek assistance in meeting these requirements shows how inaccessible the existing mechanisms can be for people who lack the capital or resources to navigate these bureaucratic challenges.

Around the region

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