Film Acts Amendment

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Singapore– The Film Acts Amendment has been lauded by some as a step forward. Positive headlines were broadcast in the mainstream media as a liberalization of censorship laws, particularly against political films. The changes defined what was no longer considered a party-political film, including those made by a licensed broadcaster to report news, and an election candidate’s declaration of policies or ideology.

However, The Online Citizen called called it a case of “A Bad Law gone worse”, and NMP Siew Kum Hong said he could not have voted for this amendment in “good conscience”. What are their reasons for this alternative viewpoint? Has the Film Acts Amendment bandied around ingeniously with words, deliberately causing ambiguity in their definitions? What are the other ramifications of this amendment, and how does it affect you?

Decide on your stand by considering carefully the various viewpoints. We present here a very good alternative perspective, courtesy of Choo Zheng Xi, from The Online Citizen:

“The final nail in the coffin of liberalizing the legal regime on online political films was driven in today, as amendments to the Films Act were passed by Parliament.

TOC previously participated in the process of submitting our views, together with other members of the socio-political blogosphere, to the Advisory Committee on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS).

We were pleasantly surprised at the receptiveness of the committee headed by ex Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) chairperson Cheong Yip Seng and Tan Cheng Han SC, who made bona fide efforts to engage bloggers when crafting AIMS’ recommendations to the government. Over more than a year, dialogues, debates, press conferences were held to plot a direction towards liberalization.

The final recommendation from AIMS incorporated several of the suggestions the Bloggers 13 had raised. These included the repeal of Section 33 of the Films Act and further clarity on how the broadly framed Section 35 was to be used…”

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