Notice too that nobody is alleging actual bias on Ang J’s part. What counsel did was to forward an argument of apparent bias, which is essentially the notion that the public would have some suspicion that the judgment was tainted with bias.

As such, I would support Weijia’s view that Ang J probably shouldnt have heard the case on its merits.

It’s so sad. So very sad that the term, “Without the present government, can we be what we are today”? It’s been used ad nauseam by those who think that they would still be fishermen today if not for PAP . . . Fishing village to first world . . . So what’s wrong with being a fisherman? Happier, maybe, compared to a rat in a rat race? Who knows?

So what are we today?

And who’s we?

You may be happy and grateful for the current Singapore but there are others who, for their own reasons, are disappointed, unhappy and/or ashamed to be Singaporeans. Not that they are Singaporeans but that they have to bear the cross due to the actions and/or inaction of the obscenely paid leaders of Singapore.

Like Harrison and others who commented, I’d like to add that without the People, the Govt is Nothing! If you think Singapore is so rosy, do give yourself and others, maybe your own parents (if you are young enough) some credit and respect for their contribution for the SIngapore that is today!

The only thing I know about Law & Justice is what I learned from Books and TV. Perry Mason, E G Marshall in The Defenders and Justice Pow were my teachers and heroes. The thrill I had when the crooked rich & powerful got caught with their pants down kept me stuck to the books and programmes when I was a kid. Commonsense tells me The Integrity of the Court is heavily dependent on the person presiding -The Judge.

Though The Golden Rule is: He who has the Gold Makes The Rules. The Golden Rule in Singapore may have gone too far. . . . when the Judge is the Jury is the Executor, all at the same time!

Could it be that the FEAR of ONE in the extraordinary Court that caused this Integrity of the Court to be questioned?

I wonder.

feedmetothefish

What a pity! Another faithfully blind supporter singing PAP propaganda. It’s pitiful of you to attribute Singapore’s present status to PAP’s credit.

Daniel said it most fittingly that “Without the subservient and obedient citizen, can the government be what they are today, reaping hundreds of billions of reserve into GIC, Temasek while the citizen continue to eat their bitter medicine?”

In short, it is the collective sacrifices of Singaporeans that brought Singapore to where it is today. Undue credit to PAP is a great injustice to Singaporeans’ contribution.

Why not put it into another way,

Without the subservient and obedient citizen, can the government be what they are today, reaping hundreds of billions of reserve into GIC, Temasek while the citizen continue to eat their bitter medicine ?

but you’ve changed the law on apparent bias already. it’s not whether the fair-minded observer would have come to a different conclusion about the case based on the facts. it’s about whether the fair-minded observer sees a real possibility that the adjudicator will be biased. once again, all the cases you’ve cited states this to be so. Gillies says this. Medicament says this and so does Pinochet. There is no need for real bias. there is no need to be members of the same golf club, class or anything. There can be apparent bias even if the facts show the accused to be guilty! as for your comment on Pinochet, and this case, it isn’t about the judiciary charging Chee. It’s about Justice Ang charging him, then judging him.

wrt to defamation, that’s a whole new issue here and i shan’t even attempt to comment on that. regardless of the (sad?) state of singapore’s defamtion law, I believe it doesn’t detract from the fact that Justice Ang should not have presided over the contempt case.

Perhaps you’d like to run this fact pattern by one of your profs and see what they say? At least it’ll put your mind to rest.

“Without the present government, can we be what we are today”

A fallacy of Post hoc ergo propter hoc. You may as well argue that we are here today because of the arrival of Stamford Raffles or the blessing of Malaysia or the arrival of our great old ancestors from their original homeland and their hard work.

Tenure of office is not a gauge because surely, we know who are employers are and who pay us! To uphold justice one must be above all things and although I am sure all judges try their very best to do that, emotionally, circumstances do allow the freedom of judges to decide how they feel.

Justice is based on freedom and not on directions. Surely the judges do not rely on directions to make decisions. They make them as they deem fit and judges would then be respected. Our judges are respected world wide – no doubt as no other countries would make such comments that our Judges are good unless they are good – and they are good.

Anyway, who funded Chees? Have you noticed how he can despite being sued, still could live well and pay lawyers to pursue their cause! Do they have a case anywhere else besides Singapore?

Without the present government, can we be what we are today – respected by the world over – yet the Chees try to weaken our country’s foundation. We survive the separation and became a world recognised country despite being a small red dot because of LKY and all others. Along the way, they do things that are not pleasant but let’s face it, dont our fathers do things that are unpleasant too and yet we grew up well. God bless Singapore!

(a) the political stability, progress and prosperity of the nation is paramount
(b) if you want to make allegations about the corruption/assorted abuses of the political leadership, you have got to have some sort of “smoking gun” evidence that they have committed such fiendish deeds.
(c) jumping to conclusions on circumstantial evidence ( look who’s head of Temasek! It’s his wife!), is not enough, even if one believes in this in good faith.
(d) this is because if you keep saying that repeatedly, then the general public will actually think there’s corruption, and won’t trust the leaders very much
(e) this is very bad for the cohesion and progress of our nation overall.
(f) since (a) is very much more important than allowing people to jump to conclusions about corruption aloud in the press.

Now the truth is, most democracies adopt some form of this balance. It’s just that in Singapore, the judiciary has lamentably shifted the balance a little too far in favour of the “the public must not lose faith in anyone who happens to be PM” argument. People should be a bit more free to jump to any conclusion they want ( aloud ), based on the circumstantial evidence.

It is also worth mentioning that the only democracy where political libel is more or less the norm in public life is… the United States of America. That was an interesting fact pointed out in a lecture given by Frederick Schauer a couple of months ago.

The apparent bias point still doesn’t sound right to me:

1- Re Pinochet was different. Lord Hoffmann was a director of AI AND AI was trying to get Pinochet indicted for all these nasty disappearances he did.

You can’t really apply that here. You could make the argument that okay, the courts charged Mr Chee in contempt as an institution, and as an institution they “judged their own cause”. But ALMOST ALL contempt of court proceedings work like this anyway. I’m not sure how much of an issue that really is.

2- So let’s consider the issue of whether Belinda should be sitting in considering the facts of Chee’s case. The first thing we ask ourselves is: how did Chee wind up getting charged with contempt of court in the first place? Answer: because his remarks on the face of it, looked like it WAS contempt of court. We can pretty much agree that at the bankruptcy proceedings, it looked as if he said “you guys are not an impartial bunch and you’re all lackeys of Lee Kuan Yew etc etc”.

So the next question: what was Belinda going to do with Chee’s case, these being the only facts before her? Gillies v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions indicates that apparent bias on the facts can be seen by how a judge uses the facts before her. Would a fair and impartial observer ( such as any other judge), come to a different conclusion about contempt of courts on the facts of the Chee case? You have to concede that the answer is…no.

3- Can we all please remind ourselves that “evidence” such as membership of the same atas golf club, or coming from the same schooling alumni, and similar evidence, does not normally constitute bias? See Locabail v Bayfield.

Basically, I think Chee really has no legal case, and he’s just doing this in a calculated attempt to gain political sympathy. Plenty of basis for this statement- see the SDP website.

Oxford- we spend approximately 16 weeks on constitutional and administrative law within three years alone ( and considering the greater degree of development of the law in those areas in the UK, it was a bit of a nightmare to study).

(FYI. I personally think CSJ is guilty of Contempt of Court as I find his line of questioning deviates from the Quantam Damages assessment hearing)

Actually, Chee’s lines of questioning is perfectly in line with in any “comparable” jurisdiction.

You see in this case, assessment of damages, it is Chee’s job to show that Lee’s so-call reputation is not as sterling as Lee claimed. That is why Chee is perfectly in his right to demolish the reputation of Lee Kuan Yew.

So what Chee, in a court, let’s just say that has higher integrity, would have deemed such questioning as appropriate. So basically, what Chee asked was of Lee was too prove that his integrity is so good that he demand very high payout. In the assessment of the damages, the onus is on Lee to prove his own integrity and it is Chee to demolish Lee’s claim. That is how a “proper” court would do.

But with the Singapore court I supposed anything goes!

Thanks for your input! Some points i’d like to point out.

1. sorry for the lack of legal proof, but this was meant for wider reading hence the lack of cases.

2. I doubt your case of In re Medicaments and Related Classes of Goods (No 2) is really as leading as you think it is. may i instead suggest In Re Pinochet. If we talk about pedigree, Pinochet is a House of Lords case, while yours is a Court of Appeal case. Nevertheless,, the two cases are in fact pretty much in line on the law, and i believe they do back up my argument. In re Medicaments, the test was still whether a fair-minded observer would have found there to be a real danger for bias, no matter how slight. In fact, your case serves to show how even the slightest hint of bias will be sufficient to bar a judge from hearing the case.

In re Medicaments, the judge had withdrawn her application for the job and indicated that she will not join them for 2 years of more after the proceedings. The firm had also issued statements that they will NOT hire the judge as there were no vacancies for her, and none in the foreseeable future. Despite all this, she was still barred as the fair-minded observer would apprehend that there was a real danger that R would be unable to make an objective and impartial appraisal of the expert evidence placed before the court by the firm because an observer would not have been convinced that all prospects of R working for the firm at some time in the future had been destroyed or that she might not still hope to work for them in due course.

What then in our case? I believe the facts are clear that there was in fact apparent bias on the part of Justice Ang. Having cited them for contempt, her mind is already “closed” as to the facts on the case. If she did not believe them guilty of contempt, would she have charged them in the first place? Even if she had an “open” mind and was ready to hear the facts again, she will still be tainted with apparent bias.

3. may I know your source for claiming that NUS is “notoriously” light on administrative law? Having no experience in any other university’s teaching I cannot comment on how light or heavy it is, but I personally feel it is at least sufficient. Besides, I believe this would be considered an “easy case”, in that the facts clearly show apparent bias. May I also know which school you are from? By the way, I used MP Jain’s Admin law text, I think it’s pretty authoritative :)

Qwerty and ZZ,

Yupp perhaps it won’t be fair, but at least procedurally it will be better. anyhow, in this case, I believe the situation as it stands proves unfairness. Unless of course, like zz said, the defence of necessity applies :) then it’s perfectly justified that Justice Ang presided over it. However, she could just as well appeared as the prosecution witness, with another judge presiding over it. No law says judges can’t be witnesses. And I believe that’s merely the evidential burden for the prosecution to prove. It doesn’t justify taking this short cut on natural justice. in fact, for every single case, judges rely on written and oral statements all the time since the judge was not there personally. sometimes the court hearing happens months or years after the event. that doesn’t stop them from passing judgments.

But there could be a third possible explanation. The entire judiciary system is biased against the defendants in which case the outcome of the case would ’still’ have been the same regardless of who the judge is.

I am not saying that this is the case. What I am saying is that even if the outcome was the same with another judge, it doesn’t rigourously prove fairness.

However, just to play devil’s advocate, I think what Belinda Ang J did was to employ the defence of necessity, in that she had to listen to the case because it was necessary for her to do so. to quote the comments above, “by hearing the audio recordings and reading of the transcripts, it is not possible for another judge to get a feel of the actual proceedings.” Now we all know that defamation doesnt just depend on the words alone, but also the context in which those words are juxtaposed. Perhaps in that case, it was necessary for the Ang J to hear the case as there were no video or voice recording, and transcripts alone cannot sufficiently convey the expressions and what not that were deemed to be in contempt of court.

If that is indeed the case, perhaps it would be better for Ang J to acknowledge that there is apparent or imputed bias, but that it was necessary for her to continue to hear the contempt proceedings.

It just seems to me to be a very silly argument. Why should Justice Belinda Ang recuse herself from deciding an entirely separate case B involving Mr X just because she charges Mr X with contempt of court based on case A? There is no orthodox principle of English law which supports such an understanding of bias ( at least since the last time I studied this topic, which was about a year ago).

Basically the standard to accuse a judge of being biased ( whether a fair minded and informed individual would think that there was a real possibility of bias) is quite high, even in England. A leading case on bias is a case like In re Medicaments and Related Classes of Goods (No 2) [2001] 1 W.L.R. 700. In that case the judge WAS found to be biased but that’s because she was applying for a job in a firm which was providing expert evidence in the case she was presiding over. There was also another case involving now lord justice Collins of the English Court of Appeal, which said that even membership of the same golfing club isn’t enough to make a charge of bias against the judge stick.

Anyway, I’m sorely disappointed that the writer of this article has chosen to be anonymous. Fear of defamatory suits perhaps?