There was just a handful of retirees at Speakers' Corner in Hong Lim Park having their habitual morning gathering at a table just behind a police station, where aspiring orators must first register in order to speak.

Four persons signed up to speak Monday on the occasion of the corner's anniversary, including S. Kunalen, vice chairman of the opposition Singapore People's Party, a notice board outside the station showed.

Other government critics were staying away from the centre, located in a quiet patch of greenery on the fringes of the financial district.

"We've said from the onset that it is basically a sham," said Chee Soon Juan, secretary general of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP).

"What the government is trying to do is show to everybody the world over that we have got a speaker's corner like Hyde Park in London. It is just a window dressing," he told AFP.

"As far as we are concerned, it's dead and buried," said the SDP chief, who has been jailed and fined in his campaign against the ruling People's Action Party (PAP).

Singapore has been governed by the PAP since self-rule was granted by the British colonial government in 1959. The island became fully independent in

Since its inception in September 2000, critics have dismissed Speakers' Corner as a mere gesture by the PAP to show it is tolerant of dissent.

They complain that the site is unlikely to encourage Singaporeans to speak out due to a raft of restrictions.

Only Singaporean citizens are allowed to speak. Topics relating to religion are banned, and so are issues which may incite racial disharmony.

Speakers must use one of the multi-ethnic state's four official languages -- Malay, Mandarin, Tamil or English.

Speakers are also barred from using sound amplification devices.

Sinapan Samydorai, president of the local civil rights movement Think Centre, believes Speakers' Corner is not a total failure, noting that "the present focus of the people would be jobs and economic security."

Sweeping changes to the national social security system were announced last week, the latest in restructuring exercise undertaken by the government in a bid to shore up the island's global competitiveness.

With the jobless rate running around five percent -- a very high level for an economy long used to virtually full employment -- Singapore's workers and professionals are seeing their pay packets and pensions reduced.

"Our priority must be to save jobs for our people," Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told parliament, where a debate on the economic reforms was attracting far more attention than anything being said at Speakers' Corner.

Part of the government's long-term agenda is to generate more creativity and entrepreneurship among Singaporeans long used to a "nanny state" led by the PAP, but Speakers' Corner is now largely seen as a hangout for retirees with a lot of time on their hands.

"I won't consider it a total failure," civil rights activist Samydorai said.

"At least it is a sign that the government is opening up in terms of allowing people to speak ... although it is not as much as people want them to," he said

                                                      Home