Singapore court rejects opposition’s appeal over fake news law implementation

SINGAPORE: The High Court has rejected an opposition party’s appeal against correction directions by the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), as more countries were reportedly keen to emulate Singapore in introducing a fake news law.

Singapore’s media quoted the judge as saying that statements made by the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) were “in fact false in the face of statistical evidence against them”, and found there to be basis for all three correction directions.

Channelnewsasia said justice Ang Cheng Hock could not accept interpretations of the statements by SDP, over the same set of statistics from MoM.

SDP put forward that the relevant data should stretch back to 2010, whereas the attorney-general (AG) presented data showing increasing employment between 2015 and 2018.

“The critical factor on the question of truth or falsity is that the appellant did not challenge the veracity of the statistics put forward by the (AG) as evidence of falsity,” said Ang.

The judge said SDP did not “at any point assert, or even suggest, that the statistics were inaccurate”.

According to The New Paper, contrary to SDP's claim, the number of local PMETs retrenched had gone down from 2015 to 2018, and the number of those employed had been rising steadily in the same period, according to MOM figures.

PMET refers to professionals, managers, executives and technicians.

Therefore, SDP cannot remove the correction notices it was required to put up alongside the relevant online posts, said the portal.

Ang highlighted the fact that both sides had “attempted to cast aspersions on each other's intentions and motivations, with labels such as ‘disingenuous’ and ‘dishonest’ being bandied about”.

He said, however, that the court had to take an objective approach towards Pofma cases and decide whether the statements were borne out by the words and depictions in the published material, and the degree of their veracity.