Police report filed against FAP for fouling Cooling-Off Day regulations

A police report has been filed against pro-People’s Action Party (PAP) fanpage, Fabrication about the PAP (FAP) for alleging violating the Parliamentary Election Act (PEA) by posting posts on its fanpage that promotes the PAP candidate of the Bukit Batok By-Election during the Polling Day.

Augustine Lee Zixu wrote that he filed the police report on 13 June against FAP for the Facebook posts made on Polling Day. after receiving no reply from the Election Department (ELD) since 30 May.

In his report, Augustine wrote,

I saw a posting on facebook on 27 May 2016 that show evidence that a political fan group Facebook page called “Fabrications About the PAP (FAP)” posted campaigning message to support the candidate Murali. The date and time of the post is 7 May 2016 5:20pm

It says “Vote Murali because he’s working for you. Not because you are part of a political journey.” https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10207565857199098&set=p.10207565857199098&type=3&theater

This post has since been deleted from FAP.

In addition, FAP apparently made another post, also on 7 May, Polling Day, which constitutes election advertising. I refer to the report from this blog: https://andrewlohhp.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/why-is-election-department-silent-on-pro-pap-facebook-pages-post-on-polling-day/

The post shows a quotation from Dr Tan Cheng Bock which criticises one of the candidates in the by-election, Dr Chee Soon Juan.

This post has also since been deleted.

However, according to ELD’s way of interpretation, these posts were clearly in breach of the rule against election advertising on Polling Day.

As FAP has 84,939 likes on Facebook, this is a serious breach of election advertising rules. It is the same breach for which Teo Soh Lung and Roy Ngerng are being investigated.

FAP being a political interest group openly transmit their political view has more political influence compared to individuals’ transmission. The election rules states that “The transmission of personal political views by individuals to other individuals, on a non-commercial basis, using the Internet, telephone or electronic means;”

Please take the necessary actions against all the admins of FAP, one known author of FAP is Jason Chua:

According to the above-linked Straits Times report on 16 Sept 2011, Jason Chua is the creator of FAP and is a 46-year-old who used to work as a software engineer.”

Till today, Augustine has yet to hear from the Singapore Police in regards to his police report.

On 31 May, Roy Ngerng Yiling and Teo Soh Lung were extensively investigated for their alleged offence for posting posts on their Facebook account during the recent Bukit Batok By-election Cooling Off Day and had their homes raided with no search warrant. This was just days after ELD filed police reports against the two individuals on 27 May.

Apart from the police report on FAP, another individual, Teng Yong Ping made a police report against the PAP team at Nee Soon GRC on 29 May about alleged breach of election advertising rules during General Election 2015 and in the Bukit Batok by-election. He had previously written to ELD about these breaches and has yet to receive a reply. TOC had also written to ELD about the breaches during the General Election but no reply has been received till date.

The two jointly issued a statement, saying, “We hope that the police will treat all violators of the law in a fair and equal manner. We have brought the above matters to their attention and ask that they take the necessary actions.”

Posting election advertising during Cooling-Off Day and prior to the closing of ballots of Polling Day is an offence under the Parliamentary Elections Act. A person found guilty of doing so may be fined up to $1,000, jailed for up to 12 months, or both.