Singapore’s Two-Faced Judiciary
August 30, 2009 by Field Reporter
Filed under Opinion
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Excerpted from Beyond Suspicion?
The Singapore Judiciary by Francis T. Seow,
published in May 2007, Monograph.
[EDITORS' NOTE: The views expoused in Francis Seow's book may not be necessarily shared by Temasek Review.]
beyondsuspicionFrancis Seow was once the highly-regarded solicitor general of Singapore in the government of Lee Kuan Yew and president of the Singapore Law Society. After leaving the government, Seow made the mistake of defending people the government was prosecuting.
In 1988, Seow was taken in for questioning by the Internal Security Department. After 17 straight hours of invasive interrogation, he collapsed and was rushed to a hospital by officials who feared he had had a heart attack. While he was incarcerated, his law office was raided by authorities who removed all of his records. After he was released from detention, he announced plans to run as an opposition candidate and won a non-constituency parliamentary seat. The government filed six counts of tax evasion against him and ultimately convicted him in absentia after he had fled the country. He was disqualified from sitting in Parliament as a result of his conviction.
To show how far the government pursues its opponents, Seow had earlier won a seat on the board of the Singapore Turf Club, the republic’s horse-racing organization. The government abolished the turf club, wiped out the entire board, appointed a new one and took over the newly formed racing club. At the time of his arrest, Seow was involved in a relationship with a Singaporean businesswoman who was financing a business deal through Bank Nationale de Paris. The bank suddenly dropped her line of credit and forced her out of the business deal. Bank officials at the time said the government had nothing to do with aborting the transaction.
While he was in the United States, the government abolished all appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — Singapore’s last court of appeal in London — which made him wary of returning to Singapore. Seow obtained a fellowship from Yale University and has lived in the United States since 1988. This is the preface to his book.
http://temasekreview.com/?p=12627
try get your hands on this book besides Said Zahari "17 Years" victim of Operation ColdStore!
