When criticised by renowned Singaporean historian Thum Ping Tjin over the abuse of POFMA power to silent criticism, Law Minister K Shanmugam did exactly as how he was criticised and issued a POFMA order to ban the video.
The PAP dictatorship is unhappy that they were called out for abusing the POFMA powers, when the Oxford-accoladed historian said:
“Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), the definition of “false” means that “even if one bit is found to be wrong or misleading, the whole statement can be considered false. The definition is so broad that the omission of a fact, accidentally or otherwise, is sufficient for something to be considered misleading. The problem is, it’s impossible to include every single fact about anything in the statement. You can’t. And even if you could, anyone could selectively quote it, so that what they quote is misleading. So under this law, every statement can be considered false in some way.”
The historian also pointed out that there is no recourse under the POFMA law, because the victim will have to go to the High Court to overturn the minister’s decision. The Singapore Court is notorious for being biased towards the government, and it has never once ruled against the PAP dictatorship.
To date, the Lee Hsien Loong dictatorship has issued dozens of POFMA orders against critics, opposition members and even independent news sites. Every criticism has been outlawed by the Singapore government through its new POFMA legislation, where the politicians in power get to decide what is truth.
Fortunately, POFMA is not recognised anywhere else except Singapore. Minister K Shanmugam tried to POFMA a Malaysian civil rights site, but he now faces a Malaysia court order. The PAP minister did not appear in the Malaysia court to contest his charges.
The Singapore government has also repeatedly on 6 occasions issued POFMA orders on Australian Alex Tan. None of the orders has been complied with because the Singapore government failed to get an Australian court order.