Singaporean Style justice has just been meted out to a businessman for a traffic offence in which he was sentenced to six weeks in jail. Consider the following salient points of this case versus that of Dr Woffles Wu.
1. The businessman (Mr Seah Hock Thiam) did not himself commit a traffic offence. The public were in no danger. Dr Woffles Wu's original offence was for that of SPEEDING in his Porsche. And he committed the offence TWICE. The public could have been seriously hurt.
2. Mr Seah's offence was for that of abettment. He got his driver to find people to take the ILLEGAL PARKING offence rap for his friends. Dr Woffles Wu abetted an elderly employee of his to take the rap for his SPEEDING offences. TWICE.
District Judge Liew Thiam Leng justified his sentencing as follows:
Getting someone else to take the rap would undermine the points demerit system potentially permitting people who would otherwise be suspended from driving to continue driving and hence pose a danger to the public. I do not see how Dr Woffles in getting his employee to take the rap for him does not undermine the points demerit system!
Dr Woffles Wu was charged under the Road Traffic Act which carries much lower maximum sentences. (He was eventually fined $1000 six years after the offences were committed). Mr Seah's sole charge (abettment) was apparently of a 'more serious' nature and was charged under another act carrying heavier maximum sentences. Why wasn't Mr Seah charged under the lesser act?
After all, he did not personally commit any traffic offence, just that of abettment. Dr Woffles on the other hand committed BOTH traffic offences (speeding) and abettment, which even under the lesser act provided for a maximum custodial sentence of 6 months other than the maximum fine of $1000. Not to mention that Dr woffles was a REPEAT offender.
The justice highlighted another difference between the two cases saying that Dr Woffles did not give any monetary award to his employee to take the rap for him (thus apparently justifying Dr Woffles lighter sentence). Do we even need to highlight the fact that an employer does not need to give additional monetary inducement to get an employee to do something illegal like this as there is always the implied threat/potential of dismissal/loss of promotion that an employer holds over their employees?
Justice Liew further justified the sentence he meted out by saying that such cases (abettment) 'usually attracted a jail term'. Yet in the case of the Pastor charged with violating the three quarter tank rule and lying about it, former Chief JUstice Chan Sek Keong set aside a custodial sentence and imposed a fine instead. The 'usual' sentence in the past 62 out of 64 cases had been a custodial sentence. So the former Chief Justice decided to NOT follow 'usual' sentencing while Justice Liew decided to follow usual sentencing and on rather shaky grounds at that.
The former Chief Justice said that the jail term for the Paster was "inappropriate and disproportionate" to the gravity of the offence and should not be the norm for a first offender in such a case. We would like to remind Justice Liew that Mr Seah is also a first time offender and in all respects, his offence is lesser than than committed by Dr Woffles.
If Mr Seah fails in his appeal against his custodial sentence, the greater tragedy would not be that his lawyer is possibly incompetent, but that Singaporean justice is in danger of descending into farce, the kind that used to be associated with 3rd world banana republics where justice is a negiotable quantity rather than one impartially based on law and precedence.
I would venture to say that justice inconsistently applied is not justice at all. That is NOT to say that sentencing should be immutable but that any change with precedence must be CLEARLY justifiable. In these cases, I don't think so. What do you think?
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