TOC’s response to erroneous article on TR

Dear Readers,

It has come to our attention that Temasek Review has published an article insinuating that former TOC Chief Editor Andrew Loh had “probably” absconded with TOC funds, in particular donations from our generous donors to help fund the operations of TOC.

This is sheer fabrication. Andrew did not abscond with any funds at all. In fact, Andrew did not have any access to or control over TOC’s funds. We do not intend to dignify that article with any further response.

Having said that, we know that in the wake of GE2011 and the donations made by the public to TOC, there have been calls for greater financial transparency on the part of TOC. We acknowledge the validity of these calls.

In fact, we had drafted an announcement touching on this point earlier, and were in the process of finalising some details before publishing it, when Andrew resigned from TOC. We are now reworking the announcement in light of our changed plans, and hope to publish this revised announcement soon.

Suffice to say that we recognize our accountability to our donors and hope that the details of the announcement will address the concerns of TOC’s stakeholders. We hope that you will bear with us in the meantime.

Yours faithfully

The Online Citizen team, comprising:

Joshua Chiang

Choo Zheng Xi

Leong Sze Hian

Ravi Philemon

Siew Kum Hong

PS. We also believe that it was quite unfair of the article on Temasek Review to refer to Joshua as a “poor sap”. We all agree that Joshua is many things, including being dirt-poor, but the saps definitely deserve better.