This weekend's newsletter is coming to you from Scotland, where I'm trying to balance work (and work stress!) with family and rest. Since I've arrived I've only eaten haggis once, which, now that I'm thinking about it, seems wrong.
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Even if you don’t care about politics, politics has a way of coming for you. The shitshow currently going down in the Middle East has global implications, including Singapore. On Wednesday, Israel hit the South Pars gas field in Iran—part of the largest offshore natural gas field in the world. Israel claims that this was largely to disrupt Iran’s own energy supply, but the attack has opened the door for even more escalation in the region, which then has knock-on effects for global energy supplies. This, obviously, is going to affect Singapore, because we don’t really produce our own energy (about 95% of our electricity is generated from imported natural gas).
There are already reports of electricity price plans jumping up by as much as 11% as retailers try to get ahead of price fluctuations and market volatility. But don’t panic (yet)! Tan See Leng, the minister-in-charge of energy and science and technology, says that Singapore is not yet at the point of having to dip into our energy stockpile. That said, he urged everyone to conserve energy as much as possible: install solar panels, turn up the temperature setting on aircons, carpool more, etc.
One thing I’m wondering about, but haven’t seen much about: How does this energy situation and push to conserve energy affect Singapore’s leaning into AI and desire to build a new AI park? AI is famously energy-intensive… so how?
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ABC Radio National in Australia did a radio segment on Singapore and our government got pissy about it. Anil Nayar, the Singapore High Commissioner to Australia, issued a response accusing the episode of making “baseless claims about Singapore’s political system”:
From listening to your programme, your audience would not have known that Singapore, alone among Southeast Asian nations, has never declared a state of emergency or suffered martial rule, and never once failed to hold regular elections, throughout its history as an independent nation. Nor would they have heard that almost every constituency was contested in last year’s general election, which saw the largest number of candidates from multiple parties and independents in our history.
The diplomat also used the Workers’ Party’s election to Parliament “with increased representation” as evidence to rebut commentary in the episode that described the Group Representation Constituency (GRC) system as “roadblocks” to make things harder for opposition parties. Which is, frankly, embarrassing, given how small a presence the WP has in the House, and how long it took them to win a GRC in the first place.
The main effect that I’ve observed coming out of this official objection is that a bunch of people who would otherwise never have listened to ABC Radio National have now listened to this specific Singapore segment on ABC Radio National. And yes, I’m including myself in this number. To be honest, if you’ve been following Singapore politics or reading political commentaries, then there really isn’t anything particularly revelatory or shocking in it. Despite Singapore’s accusation that ABC Radio National had picked critical commentators, some of whom had “made repeated predictions of Singapore’s political collapse”, it really wasn’t as drama as all that.
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A new legal centre has been set up to assist people with special needs and mental health conditions. The Inclusive Justice Law Centre—a joint initiative by Pro Bono SG and the Rao Family Foundation—will employ a full-time lawyer, and plans to partner with social service agencies. This fits in with the efforts of a task force looking into how to improve government support for people with special needs and mental health conditions who might come into conflict with the law.
The legal centre is a positive step forward, but there’s so much that Singapore needs to do to ensure access to justice and fair trials for people with psychosocial disabilities in Singapore. I learnt a lot about this some years back during the campaign for Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a death row prisoner with psychosocial disabilities who was executed in April 2022.
Kirsten Han
Overall, a lot more infrastructure and support for mental health is needed. There’s a shortage of psychologists in the country, for example, at a time when demand is increasing.
Got some more…
✍🏼 I wrote an essay for Adi Magazine about navigating authoritarianism and censorship, including self-censorship and self-policing. Read it here.
👦🏻 Han Hui Hui was POFMA-ed for comments she’d made about the removal of her children on a Facebook livestream. Her children had been removed from her care in February after things went bad between her, her husband, and her mother-in-law. The kids are back with her now, after additional safeguards agreed with the Ministry of Social and Family Development.
😵 Amos Yee, who left Singapore about a decade ago to seek asylum in the US, is back in Singapore, where he has promptly been charged under the Enlistment Act for having left Singapore without a valid exit permit and failing to report for the pre-enlistment medical screening. He’s now remanded in Changi Prison and says he will not be engaging a lawyer. While he was a teenager, Yee had got in trouble in Singapore for obscenity and wounding religious feelings, for blog posts and comments he’d made after Lee Kuan Yew’s death. When he got to the US, things went even more completely off the rails and was sent to prison for child grooming and child pornography. He was deported from the US after his release.
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