As around 20,000 visitors were arriving for the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, anti-globalisation activists found that they were definitely not welcome.

Even the World Bank reacted angrily when it discovered that Singapore had banned 28 activists from entering the country, apparently going back on an earlier agreement.

And a leading opposition politician found himself being sued for a third time by the Government for defamation.

As our South-East Asia Correspondent Karen Percy reports, Doctor Chee Soon Juan got into trouble after exposing a lack of accountability over a financial scandal at the National Kidney Foundation.

KAREN PERCY: When Doctor Chee Soon Juan wrote about the lack of transparency and accountability in Singapore, he might have thought he was pointing out the obvious.

He was referring to a financial scandal at the National Kidney Foundation, where an audit found that more than 50 per cent of all donations were misused.

But his comments, written in the March newsletter of his Singapore Democratic Party, raised the ire of his political rival, the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who promptly launched a defamation suit.

CHEE SOON JUAN: The matter was awarded to them in Chambers without even a trial, where we were not allowed to call for witnesses and cross-examine.

KAREN PERCY: It's not the first time the Government has sued Doctor Chee, and it's unlikely to be the last time.

In fact, Doctor Chee is organising a protest on Saturday, and he's fully expecting another run-in with the authorities.

CHEE SOON JUAN: We will be arrested. The Government has made that clear.

And I've been arrested already before for just speaking in public without a permit. And the law here says that any five or more people gathered together would constitute an illegal assembly.

But, you know, that is what autocrats do. They ban, they prohibit.

KAREN PERCY: Do you expect that the authorities might try to prevent your protest?

CHEE SOON JUAN: I don't know. They may resort to preventative detention, I don't know.

But they will have to make their own plans, because I'm just busy with ours.

KAREN PERCY: And the prospect of thousands of anti-globalisation protestors coming to town for the IMF World Bank's annual get-together hasn't given the country's political leaders any reason to change their minds.

Not only are protests being stifled, but demonstrators are having a hard time even getting into Singapore, with 28 activists from organisations which have been given permission to attend the Forums being stopped at the border.

The World Bank and the IMF have found themselves in the unusual position of trying to encourage a softer line from Singapore.

For Dr Chee Soon Juan, and local democracy advocates like him, it shows up the inadequacies of his country's democracy.

And the case he's just lost, he says, should serve as a warning for the financiers and the economists who are gathering in Singapore.

CHEE SOON JUAN: These are serious, serious questions. Not just, you know, for people in the political arena to look into, but for commerce and trade.

Without a system that is open and transparent, democratic, I think everybody is looking for trouble when they try to focus just on business and doing business in Singapore.

HAMISH ROBERSTON: Dr Chee Soon Juan, an Opposition leader in Singapore, ending that report by our South-East Asia Correspondent, Karen Percy.

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