SDP five cleared of illegal march

[Sleepyman]

SDP five cleared of illegal march

By Kor Kian Beng, Political Correspondent

 

THREE leaders and two supporters of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) were acquitted in court yesterday of the charge of taking part in an illegal march in 2007.

 

The SDP leaders were Mr Gandhi Ambalam, chairman; Mr John Tan, assistant secretary-general; and Ms Chee Siok Chin, central executive committee member. The supporters were Mr Yap Keng Ho and Mr Chong Kai Xiong.

 

The five were cleared of charges of taking part in a procession without a valid permit on Sept 16, 2007. If convicted, they would have faced a fine of up to $1,000 for the offence under the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order & Nuisance) Act.

 

District Judge John Ng, in a written judgment, said he acquitted the five on the sole ground that he did not consider what they had done a 'procession'.

 

'The prosecution's position appears to be that so long as a group of five or more people walked from one point to another point in a public place to commemorate an event, the people in that group had participated in a procession for the purposes of the Act...I am not able to agree with such a simplistic interpretation of the word 'procession',' he wrote.

 

The walk by the SDP five was held to mark the first anniversary of a similar protest planned for September 2006, when the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings were held in Singapore.

 

The five walked from Hong Lim Park to Parliament House and the Istana before stopping at the Queenstown Remand Prison, where SDP secretary-general Chee Soon Juan was being held. He was then serving a three-week jail term in lieu of paying a $4,000 fine for trying to leave the country in April that year while he was bankrupt.

 

The judge said that in the absence of a definition for the word 'procession' in the relevant legislation, taking the 'natural and ordinary meaning' of the word would be the starting point.

 

Citing two dictionary definitions of the word, he outlined three key features of a 'procession': a group of people moving together; as part of an event like a wedding; and moving in a formal way, in orderly succession and regular formation.

 

The group of five, he noted, had walked mainly on pedestrian pathways, and made ad-hoc stops for toilet breaks and to give out pamphlets. They walked 'casually', sometimes singly, sometimes in pairs or smaller groups.

 

He also noted that the walk 'did not cause inconvenience to the public, affect traffic flow or make noise which disturbed the public peace' - which 'fortified' his view that the law had not been broken, as the law was meant to relate to offences against public order and nuisance.

 

The prosecution could not be reached by press time on whether it would appeal against the judgment.

 

 

[Mechwira]

my interpretation: when you conduct a demonstration which fails miserably, judge will just laugh it off and pretend nothing happened.