AMOS TOH
First Year NUS Law, Youngest Life Theatre Awards Judge (in 2008) to date

The Public Entertainments (Amendment) Bill* passed in 2000 did not tread new political ground, adhering to the government’s longstanding doctrine of anticipatory self-defense against indeterminate evils, namely anything “indecent, immoral, offensive, subversive or improper”*. Among these haphazard amendments was a Demerit Point system aspiring to heighten “transparency in the administration of licence” but, as one Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Mr. Zulkifi Bin Baharudin blithely pointed out, was “totally lacking in detail”. This article attempts to reconcile the revised scope of the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act (PEMA)* and new licensing restrictions with the government’s post-twentieth century push for artistic vibrancy, and consequently examine the implications PEMA exerts on the arts.

While the Bill attempted to enhance flexibility of licensing procedures, new powers conferred on licensing officers ultimately retrograded these efforts. The Bill’s amendments eliminated clauses enforcing one-year maximum validity periods for a public entertainment or meeting licence, only to replace them with provisions allowing government officials to reject applications for renewal of such a licence based on consultations with “relevant bodies”* (reference). Removing restrictive licensing clauses and conferring statutory powers upon government officials to restrict these licences is a tautological exercise in scrapping old ways and finding novel ones to impose the same measure of restriction on public entertainments and meetings.

These restrictions are imposed mechanically and across the board, on the basis that any exclusion will undermine “public morality and decency”. Under clauses 4 and 16 of the Bill, the scope of “public entertainment” was revised to include new entertainment media like “computer centre(s)” and “amusement centre(s)”, while making generous concessions for activities like “garden parties” and “charitable distributions”. These trifling technicalities merely scrape the bottom of the legislative barrel for political change, and obscure the government’s reluctance to relinquish any control over civil discourse.

Such a statutory framework appears to run counter to the government’s lofty aspirations to transform Singapore into an “arts and culture hub”, replete with impressive artistic infrastructure and avant-garde festivals and events. However, if one were to consider the then Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s 1995 parliamentary swipes at political activists and freewheeling Western liberals, these efforts cohere with the government’s conservative position on rights discourse. Challenging Western conceptions of democracy, Mr. Lee recognised Singapore as an “ideal development country” rather than a Western-influenced “ideal” society. Singapore’s rule of law was a “valuable economic asset” that “should not deviate and form a different kind of system.” Thus, individual freedoms are only granted insofar as they retain economic value; a fortiori artists can exercise their freedoms as long as it is economically viable for them to do so.

A sense of wariness penetrated both Mr. Zulkifi and Mr. Simon Tay’s responses to the Bill’s amendments in November 2000. Recognising that the expanding scope of public entertainment restrictions applied to an equally wide range of activities, they suggested that the Bill was ill-suited to special classes of activities like arts performances. Mr. Tay cautioned the government to exercise “its powers to impose special conditions for the approval (of licences) wisely”, while Mr. Zulkifi expressed concerns over the lack of “clear boundaries within which the arts groups are allowed to operate”, urging that “(we) must separate arts from politics and make a clear distinction between the regulations for entertainers and that of politicians”.

The distinctions Mr. Zulkifi and Mr. Tay make between arts activities and civil discourse are founded on the bare assertion that an artist’s reach to the masses will forever be restricted, appealing only to certain class backgrounds. Steep ticket prices effectively limit the kind of audience exposed to their works, while traditional misconceptions that the arts are “abstract” and impenetrable keep artistic discourse on the fringes of society. An artist should be entitled to special freedoms because his work, by circumstance, caters to a highly selective audience. Unlike civil discourse, encouraging artistic development through the relaxation of legislative restrictions furthers economic growth policies while barely affecting our “ideal development” principles of law.

Thus, the Bill’s restrictions, while offering unspecified and arbitrary freedoms, foster a climate of uncertainty and fear. As exhaustive records of erratic censorship indicate, artists can never be certain whether their next film, performance or artwork will pass censor authorities unscathed, or be forbidden from even selective viewing. This led poet and academic Cyril Wong to observe that Singaporean artists “have become so caught up in just being able to survive as an artist that they work with censorship (hence creating a lot of dull work), as opposed to against it”.

Some argue that Singaporean artists have created valuable art despite, and perhaps out of such restrictions. And indeed they have. Natalie Hennedige, artistic director of Cake Theatrical Productions, has not only avoided the wrath of censorship authorities but also overcome the reflexive need to self-censor. In articulating her artistic vision, Ms. Hennedige explained that her “productions tend to be more lyrical and allegorical in nature so even when they do broach (political and social) issues they impact on a less direct, more sub-conscious level.”

However, how long and how effectively can artists dance around PEMA restrictions, and more importantly, why should they? These restrictions abrogate not only the right of an artist to perform, but also to fulfill his professional duties. Moreover, PEMA is merely a microcosm of a wider, more perplexingly restrictive climate enforced through the letter of the law. Restrictions on press freedom, for example, have contributed to a dearth of artistic criticism and dialogue. Impressive cultural venues might be built at breathtaking pace, but they will remain hollow vessels if artists cannot truly represent themselves on these stages.

The full version of the Public Entertainment Meetings Act can be found at http://statutes.agc.gov.sg/non_version/cgi-bin/cgi_retrieve.pl?actno=REVED-257&doctitle=PUBLIC%20ENTERTAINMENTS%20AND%20MEETINGS%20ACT%0A&date=latest&method=part.

*Assoc Prof Ho Peng Kee proposed and discussed The Public Entertainments (Amendment) Bill on Nov 13, 2000. The full text of his speech can be found at http://www.mha.gov.sg/basic_content.aspx?pageid=65.