It seems like character assassination. PAP wants to soil his name so bad to deter him from becoming an opposition politician.
It is ridiculous that leaders of apolitical organizations are unable to air their PERSONAL views. The PAP wants to deter more credible people from airing their differences with the PAP publicly.
AMP and partisanship
By Jeremy Au Yong
Singapolitics
Thursday, Apr 25, 2013
Several questions have been raised in the wake of the allegations of official pressure made by Mr Nizam Ismail as he resigned from the board of the Association of Muslim Professionals (AMP).
But the key one revolves around partisanship.
Was Mr Nizam being partisan when he spoke at the Workers' Party Youth Wing forum or at the Population White Paper protest at Hong Lim Park?
Was he being partisan in his comment online criticising the White Paper?
It is in these questions that much of the case rests - be it for or against the pressure the Government allegedly used to push out Mr Nizam.
If the answer is yes, then objections to any intervention start to fall away. If not, then Mr Nizam is rightly aggrieved.
And while it is inevitable that the idea that a Government allegedly threatened to withhold funding evokes a sense of heavy-handedness, the history of AMP does seem to a set out the nature of the relationship.
AMP was set up in 1991 after a group of Malay-Muslim professionals argued that the community needed new leadership to help guide it into the 21st century. Mendaki, a self-help group formed under the ambit of the Government, was deemed too political to fill this role.
AMP's apolitical, non-partisan identity was thus forged. Its constitution says it is non-partisan and its website identifies non-partisanship as a core principle.
Of course, just because something is set up as an apolitical organisation does not mean that it is forever forced to be one.
Indeed, that limitation came soon after its formation, as a result of AMP accepting public funds pledged by the Government.
The Government started funding AMP when it presented itself as a non-partisan outfit. Should AMP change, then it should not be surprising that the funding should be reconsidered.
It would be something rather different if AMP had started out and was funded as a political outfit, only for the Government to subsequently turn around and ask it cut out all the politics if it still wants to receive funds.
None of this is to suggest that AMP must be subservient to the Government or that it cannot ever be critical of policies. Within its mandate of speaking up for the community, it has on several occasions voiced Malay-Muslim community concerns.
Mr Nizam himself has been known to air his critiques at AMP dialogues. Last September, he took issue with then Minister of State Halimah Yacob's National Day speech on meritocracy and social mobility saying that it took a very broad brush approach and ignored real problems.
There did not appear to be any pressure for him to leave AMP then. To the layman, the reaction now indicates that the problem is less the critiques and more the platforms Mr Nizam has chosen to disseminate them through.
It could be that his participation at the Hong Lim Park protest and Workers' Party Youth Wing forum was read not simply as active citizenry but as an endorsement of the politics of the organisers.
Mr Nizam wrote in a blog that he was made clear he was not representing AMP.
"My participation in Hong Lim Park and the WP Youth event as a civil society activist had nothing to do with AMP and Rima - inasmuch as there are other events where I speak in my personal capacity. I had made it clear at these presentations that I spoke in my personal capacity."
Yet, it is difficult to argue that this disclaimer can neatly separate his views and comments from AMP. His comments are given weight by his position in AMP. Speaking in a "personal capacity" doesn't suddenly change someone into a layman in the eyes and ears of an audience.
The question of partisanship doesn't centre on whether someone speaking was doing so in what capacity, but whether he was doing anything that is partisan.
There are arguments to be made about not having to worry about partisanship at all, for AMP to turn away further Government funds so that it can absolve itself from being accountable to the Government.
And Mr Nizam, who was chairman of AMP from 2009 to 2011, does call for the current leadership to do that in a copy of the resignation letter obtained by The Straits Times .
"AMP must seek financial independence, to allow it to function as the true conscience of the Community".
The relative merits and flaws of that decision are for another day. But it seems that the need for AMP leaders to remain non-partisan isn't a change or a new imposition. Rather, it was something that AMP committed to at the beginning.