talk rot baey shot himself n gahmen

[Sammyboy RSS Feed]

An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

MDA Saga: MP Baey indirectly reveals the redundancy of GPCs

DMCA.com June 3rd, 2013 | Author: Editorial
Yesterday evening (2 Jun), MP Baey Yam Keng conducted his usual once-a-month online session to engage with netizens on his Facebook. It is usually held in the evening of the first Sunday of every month.

Given the recent MDA’s new media rulings perceived by many bloggers and netizens as a means to clamp down free speech, many netizens went online to engage with MP Baey on this issue.

In one of the conversations, MP Baey said that sites like TRE, TOC, Publichouse are not required to apply for the new licence:



At one point, Andrew Loh of Publichouse then asked Mr Baey, who is the Deputy Chairman of the Govt Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Communications and Information, if he and Mr Zaqy, the Chairman, have been consulted over the MDA’s new media rulings.

This is a pertinent question since theoretically, GPCs are established to examine the policies, programmes and proposed legislation of a particular government ministry and to provide the ministry with feedback and suggestions. They are also supposed to be consulted by the ministry on issues of public interest.

When GPCs were introduced in the late 80s, Goh Chok Tong, then First Deputy Prime Minister, said that the 3 main reasons for establishing GPCs were:

to increase the participation of MPs in policymaking
to give the public a say in government policies through sitting on resource panels, and
to strengthen democratic institutions in the country.
To everyone’s surprise, Mr Baey replied that GPC was “briefed” with regard to the announcement of the MDA’s new rulings. In other words, the GPC was not “consulted”.

Mr Baey further clarified that the role of GPC is not to “craft or approve” any new regulations from the ministry. However, he said that the GPC’s role is to “reflect the views of the public to the government and propose for it to make any necessary changes”. In other words, it’s acting as some kind of feedback unit. Isn’t the Govt entity REACH supposed to do this?

In any case, shouldn’t feedback be given and the public consulted before the rules are enacted and not after? What is the use of having the GPC? For that matter, what’s the use of having Mr Baey and Mr Zaqy helming the GPC for Communications and Information?

Mr Baey then said that the new MDA rulings is a “symbolic gesture” to send a signal to the blogosphere.


Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.