Read Between The Lines (Part 3): The Architecture of Control

In Two Parties, One Problem, we explored how both the ruling party and the opposition stumbled in the face of scandal—Raeesah Khan’s lie, Pritam Singh’s silence, Ridout Road’s opacity, and the leadership gymnastics that followed. Then in Mics, Mistresses and Macallan, we looked at the pattern up close: moral failings met with strategic delay, carefully timed exits, and half-hearted apologies only after exposure was inevitable.

These weren’t isolated lapses—they revealed a political class more fluent in damage control than in accountability. And if the response to scandal is this tightly managed, what happens when the state designs tools to control speech before a scandal even breaks?

That’s where we turn now.

CHAPTER 5 – “LAWS OF CONTROL”

Two Laws That Changed the Game

Over the last five years, two pieces of legislation—POFMA and FICA—have shaped political engagement in Singapore. While both are presented as necessary safeguards, their real-world deployment raises deeper concerns about the balance between security and speech.

POFMA: The Power to Correct

POFMA (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act) empowers ministers to issue correction directions when a false statement of fact is communicated online and deemed against the public interest. A statement is considered false if it is “false or misleading, whether wholly or in part, and whether on its own or in the context in which it appears.”

Its purpose is to counteract false or misleading information quickly and clearly—especially in moments where misinformation could erode public trust, disrupt social harmony, or threaten national security.

But over the last five years, the numbers—and the patterns—invite closer scrutiny. Almost every POFMA direction has been aimed at independent media, civil society actors, or critics of the ruling party. That either says something about the factual rigour of these sources—or it reveals how the law is being used. It’s hard to prove intent either way.

You can find a comprehensive list of these cases on WTC’s POFMA Tracker, or browse the POFMA Media Centre, or the government’s official correction archive at Factually. Taken together, they form a public record of what the state has deemed false—and how it has responded.

Singapore’s highest court ruled in The Online Citizen v AG [2021] SGCA 96 that a correction direction doesn’t, by itself, restrict speech. But whether it amounts to compelled speech? That remains unsettled.

Case in Point: Jom

Some critics argue that POFMA has shifted from correcting falsehoods to policing tone, framing, and dissent. In Jom’s case, the 2023 correction directions appeared to target editorial judgement rather than factual inaccuracies.

One directive objected to their summary of the Ridout Road saga—specifically, for not highlighting other parts of Teo Chee Hean’s 6,000-word speech. But Jom’s summary wasn’t inaccurate; it was selective, due to a 400-word constraint. The issue wasn’t what they said—it was what they didn’t say. A supposed sin of omission became, in the government’s eyes, a punishable falsehood. This is a serious shift. It moves POFMA’s target from verifiable lies to contested implications, based on what a minister believes readers might wrongly infer.

Another directive claimed Jom implied preferential treatment in the Ridout Road leases—yet the article explicitly stated, twice, that “there is no corruption.” The piece criticised the scale of taxpayer-funded renovations and the low rental yield. Not wrongdoing.

A third directive accused Jom of alleging government interference with Instagram, even though the article clearly said there was “no evidence” of such interference and explicitly acknowledged uncertainty about the source of the geo-blocking request.

None of these statements were false. None were malicious. But under POFMA’s current interpretation, it’s not just what’s said that matters—it’s what’s left unsaid, or what the government thinks the public might take away. This is no longer a law protecting against lies. In these cases, it looks to have been wielded as a mechanism for controlling the narrative.

Legally, this is possible because POFMA defines a falsehood as something “false or misleading, whether wholly or in part, and whether on its own or in the context in which it appears.” That gives wide latitude. In Jom’s case, the government argued that the “context” created misleading impressions, even without any explicit false statement. The courts agreed, even if you may not.

So while POFMA was designed to tackle deliberate online falsehoods, its enforcement now extends to omissions, emphasis, and interpretation. Content can be flagged not just for being untrue, but for failing to toe the official line.

None of this negates the need for a tool to fight disinformation. But in a one-party dominant system, the risk isn’t hypothetical. It’s structural. A law designed to protect the public from lies can just as easily be used to shield those in power from scrutiny.

FICA: Control Without Visibility

FICA—the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act—is quieter than POFMA, but far broader. It allows for pre-emptive action, even before anything is published. Individuals can be designated as “politically significant persons” (PSPs), triggering onerous disclosure requirements—without needing a court order or judicial oversight.

The issue isn’t that Singapore wants to counter foreign interference. That’s necessary.

The issue here is how sweeping and unaccountable the law is. FICA gives the government wide latitude, based on vague definitions and opaque thresholds. Terms like “foreign principal” and “collaboration” are left deliberately broad. The effect isn’t just control—it’s invisible control.

Unlike POFMA, which plays out in public with correction notices and court records, FICA operates behind closed doors. Appeals go to a special tribunal, not open court. The public doesn’t get to see what evidence was presented, what standard was applied, or who made the decision. There’s no Freedom of Information Act to demand disclosure. So citizens are asked to trust—but trust in what, exactly?

The first major test came in 2024, when businessman Philip Chan was designated a PSP. Though Singaporean, he had ties to political bodies in China. The government argued this made him vulnerable to foreign influence. But no details of the assessment were released. What evidence was considered? What qualified as undue influence? The public still doesn’t know.

Academics, lawyers, and civil society groups have raised alarms. Under FICA’s current wording, foreign interference could plausibly include anything from co-authoring a research paper to attending a funded overseas conference, from opinion writing to co-organising a public event.

Critics worry it could be used to police associations, chill speech, and silence inconvenient voices—particularly those working across borders or touching on sensitive issues.

FICA and POFMA together function like a perimeter fence around Singapore’s political discourse. But it’s a fence whose boundaries can shift, with no obligation for the state to explain where the lines are drawn or why. It’s about how much unchecked power these laws give, and how little recourse exists when they’re used.

The Structural Risk

To the government, these laws are safeguards: tools to shield the country from manipulation, misinformation, and foreign meddling. But to many—especially younger Singaporeans, and digital natives outside the establishment—they feel less like protection than pre-emption.

They don’t just stop speech—they reshape it, narrowing what can be said, and how. In doing so, they reveal a tension at the heart of the system: Singapore wants the respect of democratic legitimacy without surrendering the tools of technocratic control.

That’s the structural danger. When the power to define “falsehood” or “foreign interference” rests with the very people who benefit from shaping public perception, democratic discourse becomes vulnerable. The line between protection and control blurs.

Singapore often describes these laws as necessary to “ringfence” local politics. But the fence doesn’t just keep threats out. It quietly defines what counts as threat—and who gets to decide. The result isn’t censorship in the classic sense. It’s managerial control. Not banning the message, but managing it. Editing, reframing, designating. Correcting the narrative rather than confronting the issue.

This is the stuff of dystopian literature—not governments that ban speech, but those that edit it; not those that silence opposition, but that “correct” or classify it. Singapore is far from Orwellian extremes. But the architecture of control described in 1984—and echoed in modern critiques of surveillance states—remains uncomfortably relevant. And a government-run site called Factually, where the state gets the final word with “correct facts” only sharpens the comparison.

And making matters worse, it’s asymmetrical. The state can issue corrections or designations in the name of sovereignty, but it has no legal duty to disclose facts or data in return. There’s no Freedom of Information Act. No way for citizens to challenge the narrative on equal terms. In a system that leans so heavily on political trust, that imbalance matters.

Judge For Yourself

Were these real corrections of falsehoods—or moves to shape the narrative? That’s for each citizen to decide. But don’t just read the rebuttals. Read the original statements. Compare them with the correction orders. Ask who is being designated, and why. Weigh the state’s response against the supposed threat.

In a democracy, truth isn’t handed down—it’s contested, tested, and re-examined. If the tools of governance start to override that process, we lose more than the debate. We lose the very ground it’s held on.

CHAPTER 6 – BureACRAtic Breakdown

Double Standards in a Data-Driven State

In a country where the government demands precision from everyone else, it’s the double standards that sting the most.

The ACRA NRIC leak in December 2024 showed just how shaky Singapore’s data governance really is. For five days, personal details—including full NRIC numbers—were publicly searchable on ACRA’s newly revamped Bizfile portal.

This wasn’t a hack. It was a policy error—implemented in error, but not by accident.

A Misread Directive, a Massive Exposure

ACRA had misinterpreted a July 2024 government circular, wrongly concluding that the era of masked NRICs was over. It wasn’t. The Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) later admitted that its guidance was vague, but ACRA had still jumped the gun. The result? Five days of open access. Over 500,000 search queries. No safeguards. No flags.

MDDI later claimed unmasking was always part of the plan—just poorly timed. But that’s not clarification. That’s retroactive spin.

Once discovered, the response was quick. The People Search function was taken offline. Apologies were issued. A press conference was held. A review panel chaired by the Head of Civil Service flagged six major failings: poor risk assessment, weak internal communication, and a fundamental misunderstanding of basic data protocols.

Accountability Without Consequences

Officers were counselled. Performance grades were docked. But no one was formally disciplined. No one fined. No action under binding law. In the private sector, this would’ve been a headline-grabbing data breach with legal exposure and regulatory penalties. In the public sector? HR handles it quietly.

To be fair, the government has pledged stronger public education, promised new safeguards, and relaunched the portal with NRICs removed from search.

But here’s where it gets uncomfortable.

In 2018, the Singapore Taekwondo Federation was fined $30,000 for exposing NRICs. In 2024, the state exposed thousands more—and called it a misunderstanding. That’s not just a policy shift. That’s rhetorical whiplash.

Scrutiny for Some, Slack for Others

The irony? This happened in a state where laws like POFMA demand pinpoint accuracy from media outlets, activists, and citizens. Where misquoting a minister or under-emphasising a statement can result in correction orders.

But when it’s the state that slips, scrutiny softens. SM Teo Chee Hean said officers would be held accountable, but “we should not come down on them like a tonne of bricks.” Fair enough. But it fits a pattern: error, apology, internal review, then silence. So when institutional power isn’t independently checked, who holds it accountable?

Ownself?

The Trust Deficit

The public may not recall the technical details. But they remember how it felt—like someone left the back door open, then told you to change your passwords and move on.

And in a country where data is currency, that kind of trust doesn’t grow back on trees easily.

Rating the Quality of Leadership Over the Last Five Years

What emerges from these six episodes isn’t just a list of missteps. It’s a portrait of political culture under pressure—how power reacts when caught off guard.

Some leaders owned the moment. Others hedged, delayed, or revised the story midstream. In every case, the public watched not just what was said, but when, how, and what that revealed about the people in charge.

This is the real test. Not perfection, but principle. Not flawless governance, but the courage to face failure without spin.

Voters don’t just want outcomes. They want process. Transparency. Accountability. And a trace of conviction—especially when the cameras are off and the headlines have moved on.

As the next election approaches, don’t just ask what politicians promise. Ask what they do when promises crack. Who takes responsibility. Who hides behind procedure. Who stays silent while others mop up the mess.

Because real leadership isn’t revealed in press releases. It shows up late at night, under pressure, when no one’s rehearsed the lines.

And by now, we’ve learned how to read between them.