Singapore has tightened its grip on Internet content in the run-up to the next election by ordering a current affairs portal to register as a political website.
Sintercom - which runs chat rooms, a speaker's platform and the Not ST section as an alternative to the pro-government
Straits Times
newspaper - has sent in the registration forms but now faces questions of how it will comply.
"We will try to hold fast to our belief and principles as much as we can as new problems crop up," the organisers said in a statement posted on the site at www.sintercom.org.
"If future problems are too numerous or too insurmountable, we could still close down Sintercom. Of course, we hope that day will never come." Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, launching the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) website last month, said new political guidelines were needed as the last election in 1997 was run under rules that pre-dated the Internet.
"Limits are necessary because, while the Internet has great potential and utility, it also has its dangers," Lee said.On the Internet, information and disinformation are disseminated equally quickly and are not always easy to distinguish.Lee - who is also a brigadier general, chairman of the central bank and son of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew - did not specify what sort of limits might be imposed.
The PAP, which has dominated parliament since Singapore's formal secession from Malaysia in 1965, is expected to call an election this year ahead of the August 2002 deadline.