There's no need to - Walter Fernandez, Editor, Today.

Latest update: Agatha Koh, Voices editor, confirmed with me today, 7 Feb, that it was the editor of Today, Walter Fernandez, who said there's no need to publish the SFD letter which responded to comments by 'political analysts' in the Today report. - Jacob

I sent a letter to Today’s letters section, Voices, on behalf of SFD on the morning of Feb 4. The letter was in response to comments by ‘political analysts’ in a Today report titled Group gazetted as political association, Feb 4.

It didn’t get published the next day, Feb 5. I emailed the Voices Editor, Agatha Koh, to ask when the letter will be published. I didn’t receive a reply. I managed to find her contact number and called her directly. She said she received the letter and that the factual error will be amended in the online version of the report. I asked her when the letter will be published. She replied that the editors said there’s no need to. I asked her which editors and she didn’t say.

The letter I sent:

We write in reponse to Group gazetted as political association (Feb 4). We have some queries about the comments from your "political analysts".

1. We like to ask Dr Gillian Koh, who works at the PAP goverment-funded Institute of Policy Studies, whether she has any independent evidence of "foreign" funded institutions interfering in Singapore's politics or is she just parroting the PAP government's political stance and being xenophobic?

2. We would also like to ask if Assistant Professor Eugene Tan who remarked that the Election Department would have looked at the personalities in our ROS application when deciding to gazette it under the Political Donations Act. Is this comment based on evidence or does he have special knowledge of Election Department procedures?

Finally, we like to point out a factual error, it should be 11 pro-tem members and not 10.

Jacob George
Media Liaison
Singaporeans for Democracy (SFD)