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Economist
, an influential British weekly, published an
article which criticised us for prosecuting a government officer and the editor
and a reporter of a newspaper under the Official Secrets Act. We sent a letter to
the editor to correct errors in the article. It published the letter, claiming it had
“virtually not been touched, practically in full”. But it left out a key sentence:
“The government will not acquiesce in breaches of the Official Secrets Act, nor
allow anyone to flout, challenge and gradually change the law, as has happened
in Britain with Clive Ponting’s case and Peter Wright’s book,
Spycatcher
.”
This was the whole point of the letter; we were not going to allow our press
to challenge and gradually alter by precedent the law governing official secrets.
The British press had succeeded in doing this when Ponting, a civil servant,
released secret information about the sinking during the Falklands war of the
Belgrano
, an Argentinean warship, and when Wright, an MI6 officer, broke their
secrecy rules by publishing his book. We sent a letter asking the editor to
remedy the omission. The editor quibbled and refused. We gazetted the
publication and capped its circulation at 7,500 copies. We made clear that
circulation would be progressively restricted and released the exchange of
letters. Then the
Economist
published our letter, including this sentence. After a
decent interval, we lifted the restriction.
Apart from replying to attacks in the media itself, I was ready to meet my
critics face to face. In 1990 Bernard Levin of the London
Times
wrote a bitter
attack on me and criticised the Singapore judiciary. He alleged “misrule” and a
“frenzied determination to allow no one in his realm to defy him”. To sue Levin
in England, where I was not widely known and did not have any voters, would
have been pointless. Instead, I wrote to invite him to a live television debate in
London on his allegations. Levin’s editor replied that no television station would
be interested. I had taken the precaution of first writing to the chairman of the
BBC, my friend Marmaduke Hussey, who had agreed to provide half an hour
and a neutral moderator. When I informed the London
Times
of this offer, the
editor on Levin’s behalf backed off, arguing that my response should be in the
same medium in which Levin had attacked me, namely the
Times
. I wrote to
regret Levin’s unwillingness to confront me. When the
Times
refused to publish
my letter, I bought a half-page advertisement in the British daily, the
Independent
. Interviewed on the BBC World Service, I said, “Where I come
from, if an accuser is not prepared to face the person he has attacked, there is
nothing more to be said.” Levin has not written about Singapore or me since.
In another instance, I readily agreed to a tape-recorded exchange with a
vehement critic, William Safire, who, over many years, had repeatedly
denounced me as a dictator like Saddam Hussein. In January 1999, when we
were both at Davos, he questioned me for an hour. He wrote two articles in the
New York Times
based on the interview and also published the transcripts
verbatim on the
Times’
Internet website. Singapore newspapers reprinted his
articles. From the recorded comments of Americans and others who read the full
text on the Internet, I did not lose in the exchange.
If we do not stand up to and answer our critics from the foreign media,
Singaporeans, especially journalists and academics, will believe that their
leaders are afraid of or unequal to the argument, and will lose respect for us.
Advances in information technology, satellite broadcasting and the Internet
will enable Western media networks to saturate our domestic audience with their
reports and views. Countries that try to block the use of IT will lose. We have to
learn to manage this relentless flood of information so that the Singapore
government’s point of view is not smothered by the foreign media. The turmoil
in Indonesia and the disorders in Malaysia in 1998 following the currency crisis
are examples of the prominent role played by the foreign media networks, both
electronic and print, in their domestic debate. We must work out ways to make
sure that in the midst of this cacophony of voices, that of the Singapore
government is heard. It is important for Singaporeans to know the official
position of their government on major issues.
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