It is named after the famous Speakers' Corner in London, but it is not so much a replica as a mockery.

Every Sunday in Hyde Park, in all weather, Marxists compete for audiences with Christian fundamentalists and eccentrics.

Hecklers give them a hard time while anarchists try to shout everyone down.

For a century and a half Speakers' Corner has been the symbol of unfettered free speech. Some of the greatest radicals and subversives have mounted wooden crates to speak there: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels denounced capitalism. Christable Pankhurst campaigned for the vote for women.

And it inspired imitations in the colonies. A Melbourne anarchist Chummy Fleming, started Speakers' Forum on the Yarra bank in the 1890s. It hosted John Curtin, seethed during the Vietnam War but fell silent in the 1970s. Sydney's Speakers' Corner, in the Domain, sprang up in 1878 and is still alive, though only just.

Much demagoguery has moved instead to the AM band, and most eccentrics now are online. Debate occurs freely in the papers and on television. The special privileges of speakers' corners as a haven have become the norm throughout liberal democratic societies.

Singapore's government has decided that it likes the idea of a speakers' corner. But it will have free speech Singaproe style: "We will let people say whatever they like to say," explained Home Affairs Minister, Mr Wong Kan Seng, "except for things that will offend the law, or offend religious or racial sensibilities, or anything that is libelous. Then, of course, they will be subject to lawsuits by the people whom they libel."

The most vigilant users of the libel law in Singapore are its political leaders. Singapore's ruling party has been spectacularly successful in persecuting political opponents simply by the brisk use of libel suits, unerringly decided in favour of the government on punitive terms by a deeply sympathetic judiciary. And before you take your soapbox to Singapore you should know of a few other stipulations. You'll need a licence. The police may record your views. And you are liable to detention without trial if you are deemed a menace to public security.

In this way, Singapore will acquire yet another of the emblems of a libel democracy without its substance. Indeed, it has all the mechanisms of a democracy without the libel values which give them meaning.

So the rich city-state allows the people to vote - democracy - but it is illiberal - it persecutes the opposition, muzzles the media and threatens to abandon public spending in any district that dares vote for alternative parties. And where Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew pioneered the illiberal democracy, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamed is adroitly following.

When a judge in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday (August 8) sentenced Mahathir's former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim to none years in jail after he was found guilty of sodomising the family chauffeur, it was textbook application of Lee-style authoritarianism.

The verdict was apparently the objective outcome of the normal workings of the justice system, but it was, in fact, manipulated by the Prime Minister as an act of political repression against a rival. Mahathir fixed the judiciary more than a decade ago. When a genuinely independent Lord justice of the Supreme Court challenged him, he simply purged the court. Note that he did not abolish the court or overtly crush it. He and Lee are careful to keep the outward forms of the institutions of liberal democracy that they inherited for their British colonial masters. They just gut them skillfully from the inside.

A look across the rest of south east Asia raises some troubling questions about the future of democracy in the region.

In the Philippines, the hard-won advances of the post-Marcos decade are being squandered by the semi-literate drunkard and former actor, Joseph Estrada. Business people report that corruption and cronyism are approaching the proportions of the Marcos era.

In Thailand, although the government of Chuan Leekpai is considered honest and hardworking and is making progress, most politicians and their parties are for sale to the highest bidder.

And Indonesia is still in the very earliest phase of its democratisation. The developments there during the week are not cause for despair. The parliament is entitled to demand accountability from a bumbling president.

And the decision by the president, Abdurrahman Wahid, to hand day-to-day administration to the vice president, Megawati Soekarnoputri, is a tactical concession to head off more severe censure. It is also entirely natural that after half a century of authoritarianism an evolving system of democracy will need to make accommodations and adjustments. But, still, the larger question remains: can democracy work in Indonesia? If democracy fails, the generals will take the opportunity to reassert power.

An expert on south east Asia, Professor Richard Robison of Murdoch University in Perth, says the state of democracy in the region is a worry, yet he thinks it will develop with time. "You find that the democratic systems and markets in south east Asia are very similar to the way they were in Europe and North America in the 18th century, he says.

How will south east Asian democracy evolve? It would be an interesting subject for debate at Singapore's speakers' corner. Don't forget your licence.