In Parliament on Sept 2: Proposed changes to 30-year-old law safeguarding religious harmony

SINGAPORE — Three decades after it was brought in, the law safeguarding racial harmony could be updated in a bid to tackle hate speech and other new threats arising from the proliferation of social media platforms. These proposed changes will be introduced at the next sitting of Parliament on Monday (Sept 2).

Other issues that will be discussed include the impact of the new Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) scoring system on students who are exempted from taking mother tongue languages, with some parents raising concerns that their children will be unfairly marked down.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced that changes to the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act will be tabled. While the Act — which was passed in 1990 and took effect in 1992 — has never been invoked in the last three decades, the situation has changed significantly, he said.

Mr Lee noted that the proliferation of social media has made it much easier for people to cause offence through spreading vitriol and falsehoods, and for others to take offence.

Similarly, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam has repeatedly raised concerns over the “coarseness in public discourse” taking place on social media platforms with regard to issues on race and religion.

The Act allows the Home Affairs Minister to issue a restraining order against a leader or member of any religious group, if the minister is satisfied that the person has committed, or is trying to commit, any act that might incite “enmity, hatred, ill will or hostility between different religious groups”, or that promotes a political cause under the guise of propagating religious beliefs.

PSLE SCORING SYSTEM, MOTHER TONGUE EXEMPTION

Based on the parliamentary order paper released on Friday evening (Aug 30), other issues that Members of Parliament (MPs) will raise at the upcoming sitting include concerns by parents that their children who are exempted from taking mother tongue languages will be disadvantaged by the new PSLE scoring system that takes effect in 2021.

Under the new system, students exempted from taking mother tongue languages will be given a relatively low score, similar to students taking the Standard-level equivalent for Foundation-level subjects.

This has raised the ire of some parents. Some started a petition calling on the Ministry of Education (MOE) to change the scoring method. The ministry has argued that it would be unfair to give those students a higher score since they did not take mother tongue subjects. MOE added that the rationale of the scoring method is to underscore the importance of studying those subjects.

Among the MPs raising the matter is Ms Denise Phua, MP for Jalan Besar Group Representation Constituency (GRC). She will be asking about the impact on PSLE results, course eligibility and school choices between the current and new scoring system for students eligible for mother tongue language exemption.

Ms Phua, who also chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education, is also asking whether MOE will consider delaying the implementation or consider an alternate scoring system for those exempted from taking mother tongue languages.

On other matters, some MPs are concerned about the rising number of dengue cases this year, while others are asking about the midges outbreak at Pandan Reservoir, which occurred earlier this month.

West Coast GRC MP Foo Mee Har will ask about the factors contributing to the midges outbreak, how the recent outbreak compares to previous similar cases and why national water agency PUB has yet to find a permanent solution to these occasional outbreaks.

HOUSING FOR SINGLE UNWED PARENTS

Nee Soon GRC MP Louis Ng will table a private motion on providing housing for single unwed parents and their children. In September 2017, Mr Ng had called for a reform of the public housing policy for single parents and submitted a petition to the Government seeking a more inclusive approach. That petition was turned down in November that year.

The petition had called for amendments to Sections 47 and 65 of the Housing and Development Act so that people with legal custody of a child will not be restricted from buying a government-built flat, regardless of their marital status.

Essentially, Mr Ng wanted the authorities to recognise unmarried parents and their children as a family nucleus so that they could be eligible for public housing schemes.

Several months after the petition was submitted, the Government announced during the Budget debate in March last year that divorcees can buy or own a subsidised flat immediately upon ending their marriage, rather than wait three years under previous rules.