Manpower minister rejects SDP’s application to cancel correction directions

SINGAPORE — Manpower Minister Josephine Teo has rejected the Singapore Democratic Party’s (SDP's) application to cancel three correction directions issued to the party, over an article and two Facebook posts that the Government said contained falsehoods and a misleading graphic.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said that it received the SDP’s application to cancel the directions on Jan 3.

“After careful consideration, the Minister for Manpower is of the view that the application does not provide sufficient grounds for the cancellation of the correction directions,” it said on Monday (Jan 6).

SDP has been notified of the minister’s decision, the ministry added.

SDP RESPONDS

In a statement on its website on Monday, SDP argued that the MOM did not provide any grounds for its decision, and that the ministry's response "is not a rational answer as the SDP had submitted a detailed account – including analysing MOM's own statistics – of the reasons for the statements in our posts".

The party added: "The MOM's non-answer leaves the SDP no choice but to pursue the matter in court." 

THE CORRECTION DIRECTIONS

The correction directions issued on Dec 14 pertain to an article published on SDP's website dated June 8 and titled “SDP population policy: Hire S’poreans first, retrench S’poreans last”. The posts concerned the employment of Singapore and foreign professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs).

Last month, MOM said that the posts had contained falsehoods. An article was also published on government portal Factually to rebut SDP’s posts, showing graphs and statistics from MOM that dated back to 2015.

The ministry took issue with an infographic on SDP's Facebook page depicting falling PMET employment for residents here, and a line in the article which read, “The SDP’s proposal comes amidst a rising proportion of Singaporean PMETs getting retrenched”.

MOM had said that employment of Singapore PMETs has risen since 2015, citing its Comprehensive Labour Force Survey. The Factually website stated: “In fact, as a proportion of the total local workforce, the local PMET share has increased from 54 per cent in 2015 to 58 per cent in 2019.”

There is also no rising trend of PMET retrenchments among residents. “The number of local PMETs retrenched in 2018 was, in fact, the lowest since 2014. Local PMETs retrenched as a proportion of all local PMET employees has also declined since 2015,” MOM said previously.

In a statement on Jan 2, SDP argued that its two Facebook posts and the article had been “true and correct”, and urged the Manpower Minister to apologise.

Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), which kicked in last year, organisations or individuals who want to challenge a minister’s correction order can apply to the Government and, if the application fails, to the courts.

In defence of its posts, SDP said that “MOM had accused the SDP of making statements that we did not make or cited different sets of data which it then used to accuse the SDP’s post as false”.

Regarding the graphic, SDP said that it was clearly about unemployment of Singapore PMETs, but said that in its correction orders, “MOM changed it to ‘retrenchment’ — two different subjects — and then accused us of making a ‘false statement of fact’”.

Citing data that the party insisted came from MOM, SDP then said that the number of unemployed Singapore PMETs between 2010 and 2018 has been rising.

The party added that its article, which stated that there was a “rising proportion of Singapore PMETs getting retrenched”, was factual because it had referred to the proportion of Singapore PMETs getting retrenched to all Singapore workers who had been laid off.

However, MOM’s directive was based on Singapore PMETs retrenched “as a proportion of all local PMET employees”, SDP said.

“As one can see, the SDP’s post and MOM’s statement are based on two separate and distinct sets of information — both of which are true depending on which denominator is used. How can the MOM choose a different statistic and then use it to say that the SDP’s post contains ‘false statements of fact’? Again, this is an abuse of Pofma,” the party said.

Again, referring to MOM data dating back to 2010, SDP said that there is “a rising trend of PMET retrenchments in Singapore”, rebutting a statement on the Factually website that there is no rising trend in such retrenchments.