Part 1. Main Submissions
Main Point #1
There is nothing more important than this first point of my submission. That is the legislators had by amendments on the relevant schedule S585/2008 on 12.Nov.2008 indicating 2 points of corrections which is originated from the legislators. Namely, the boundary definition by
(a) Old Parliament Lane &
(b) East Bank of Singapore River.
This is the result of submissions by defense in this case at the beginning stage of this trial.
These corrections is the acknowledgments by the Legislators, of their mistakes made within the relevant legislations, which all the charges in this case are based on.
This is NOT a redefinition of area nor an update to reflect latest names of these places, because Singapore River had not been changed and Parliament Lane had been changed for already 10 years, and instead this had been mistake made since 2002, that these legislative errors had been made since the very beginning of these legislation.
The necessity of these corrections from the legislators has the most important binding effects for courts of Singapore to consider the erroneous legislation as ineffective, for their intended purposes. The courts does not have the function to make corrected reading of legislation, it is the part of legislators to correct them.
When legislators had failed their purposes of legislation, it should not be the function of courts to substitute the roles of legislators, to impose any corrections or by reading the legislations other than literally. For example, if the legislation error was one of wrongly specifying maximum penalty from 10 stroke of cane to 1 stroke instead, then courts should not impose 5 strokes which is in excess of the standing legislations, and sentences made in violation of erroneous legislation should also be deem as invalid or null & void.
Citizens have no obligation of upholding ineffective legislations nor complying with invalid sentences. Although the intention of the erroneous legislation could be understood.
For the purpose of completeness, I must also highlight that the corrected and currently standing legislation still has yet another mistake, which I had pointed out in the trial, which is the fact that Old Parliament Lane does not have any junction with East Bank of Singapore River. The stretch of Promenade in between Empress Place Building (Asian Civilization Museum) & Old Parliament is still missing from the legislation, and should be inserted into the legislation for the definition of area to be meaningful and comprehensible.
As charges are made out of erroneous legislations, they similarly lack the effectiveness in law, and I plea with the court to have the charges dismissed, as this is the most appropriate resolution with this reason after years of trial. CPC allows judge to dismiss case at any stage.
This is the 1st Page of my unusually short closing submission which is only 5 to 6 pages.
It will be 9:30am 11 March 2010 instead of 8 March 2010. Court #24 at Sub Courts.
I appreciate that DJ Chia is the most patience judge I ever encountered in this LEEgime during this trial from 2008 through 2009 till 2010. But I am prepared to defy conviction and sentence for the 2 charges I face in this Tak Boleh Tahan case, including many options that I might adopt, and which I had never done before.
The sole reason for this which is what entire world can see that the legislation: Miscellaneous Offenses Act (Public Order and Nuisance) (
Prohibition of Assemblies and Processions - Parliament & Supreme Court Order) is made so broken right from the very first day of it legislation beginning from very first version of it's
Description of Area contained in Schedule to the Order which was first made in 30 Oct 2002, and then continued to be similarly broken after revision in 22 July 2005, which is the only version the charge can be based on, and continued to be so broken even after this trial had exposed 2 of it's mistakes, which had been corrected within few months from discoveries found in this trial, that the current version made on 13 Nov 2008 still contain another mistake which I
discovered and highlighted on my blog in Dec 2009, that Old Parliament Lane no longer reach the East Bank of Singapore River since the Singapore river promenade was built so many years ago. Therefore the legislation is erroneous itself which seriously failed to define any area as it had intended to prohibit assemblies and processions which TBT charges were all about, and thus charge relying on it can not stand, and thus
any conviction in accordance to it can not be valid, and if made can not be upheld or complied by lawful citizens and members of public.
I feel bad for DJ Chia to be in the awful position to deliver a difficult judgment caused by the faulty legislation which is not the court's fault. In my closing submission, I emphasized this as the most important issue to be considered in this case, and uniquely this case.
For all the 8 activists who pleaded guilty most of them (except for Ng E-Jay who PG before this was discovered) had PG by ignoring this issue, and all of them pleaded guilty not for anything other than their inability to afford the time needed for this trial spanned 3 years from 2008 to 2010. Their convictions had been made as a miscarriage of justice, for several reasons:
- The law / legislation under which they had been convicted had completely failed to define any area of prohibition.
- The trial for a total of 19 persons and 37 charges (Francis Yong face only 1 charge instead of 2 like the rest) was joint together despite repeated strong objections as well as repeated application to disjoint, that the trial is unfordable and unnecessarily long for most of the defendants. That being forced to plead guilty became the only way for defendants to break away from attending the whole 3 years of trials.
- Their pleads were mostly made under the condition of forcibly ignoring the above given failure of legislation which had became a knowledge of defendants. They totally could not argue about this if they want to break away from the on going trial.
I urge readers to consider this sort of miscarriage of justice, knowing that the legislation is faulty and ineffective but you have to be forced to plea guilty to charges and be punished, consider this against penalty of
imprisonment as Mr Jufri Salim had under went, and imagine if this was a case for death penalty.
I think it may become necessary for me to add on the high price I had already paid by spending 2 nights in famiLEE LEEgime's Cantonment Mata Chu Lock Up, plus attending whole TBT trials during the last 3 years, I might be forced to add on the stake to defy impending verdicts & sentences in order to highlight the incompetence and unjust of famiLEE LEEgime which ministers draws world's highest salaries and yet can fail like this to legislate by-laws to defend themselves at Parliament & Supreme Court areas, against protesting peasants, by using outdated street name like Parliament Lane which changed in 1999, and meaningless LEFT Bank of Singapore River, in attempting to define an area within which they can arrest and charge protesters. This part is highly unusual as compared with other classic unjust and oppressive legislations from Lee Kuan Yew's famiLEE LEEgime.
This time they had clearly made simply obvious mistakes that even school pupils can understand within the laws, then arrested and charged more then a dozen activists with broken law. How to comply with a verdict and sentence that you had broken a law that had been broken by it's legislator while make it?
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