I read the article, “Political forum reflects on Singapore’s growing pains,” by Belmont Lay, with great interest because I attended the forum as well and stayed throughout.  

While I remember many of the issues brought up during the forum, which Lay reflected, I’d like to disagree with Lay’s recollection of it on a few regards, disagreements which may have been triggered, perhaps by the choice of a few unfortunate words.

First, I found that the replies that the distinguished panellists had - for the questions that unsurprisingly surfaced to probe the lack of political space and communicative freedom for opposition parties and journalists - were confidently expressed, extremely reasonable and intelligent. Their answers were anything but “uneasy.”  

If anything, it was some hesitantly-expressed or else overly-belligerent questions that were put forth by some student members of the audience that really struck me as being “uneasy.”  

To protray Dr. Cherian George as attempting to justify journalism’s “shortcoming,” is a misrepresentation of Nominated Member of Parliament Siew Kum Hong’s nuanced and balanced calls for those concerned with journalistic space, to recognise and work with the realities of politics and journalism-work in Singapore.  

In outlining the realities confronting journalists, however, I did not have the impression that his replies in anyway suggested that: “In other words, the content it (the Straits Times) produces has been determined.”

To end, I intend absolutely no offence to Lay or the editors of The Observer, but only suggest that the staff of The Observer to engage in some self-reflexivity about their representations (if only to ensure that The Observer does not become as “determined” as the reporting of the national newspaper that I suspect many of the Observer’s journalists feel very disinclined towards).  

This is in the hope that The Observer succeeds in becoming a relevant and stimulating student publication.

Edgar Liao

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences