Media in Singapore.

SINGAPORE: 'Light touch' on new media, but government alert to radical websites;
Government to restrict access to websites that might pose a threat to Singapore.

Fairly typical of legislation and law enforcement in Singapore: the promise of liberality ("we will leave you alone") but with the right to use extreme measures held in reserve ("but we can and will shut you down if we want to"). Ministerial power is constrained not by stringent legislation but by ministerial discretion. The wording of the statutes grants ministers fairly broad powers to decide when certain freedoms should be curtailed. There has been few if any successful litigations against such exercises of ministerial prerogative.

The Constitution declares the right to free speech and then subsequently conditions the practice of the right.

(Read the whole article)

There is a similar interpretation of the government's simultaneous refusal to repeal the law that criminalizes "unnatural sex acts", and "assurance" that the law will not be actively implemented (i.e. homosexuals will be be persecuted). The government defends this schizophrenic stance with the usual claims of pragmatism: Singapore has to move with the times, but at the same time obey its conservative majority. Others suggest that the law is retained for political purposes (for example, in Malaysia, how Anwar, the political thorn in then PM Mahathir's side, was removed with trumped-up charges of sodomy.)