Earlier this week, the Woffles Wu saga was given an airing in parliament thanks to MP Sylvia Lim's question. Unfortunately in what followed, Minister for Law, Mr K Shanmugam intead of clarifying the matter, left yet more questions in its wake.
At stake apparently is the reputation of the AGC, (the public's interest notwithstanding). We are sure Mr Shanmugam as the Law Minister, would agree without reservation that: No One Is Above The Law. A necessary corollary to that assertion would be: No One Is Above Being Questioned. So while the Office of the AGC may be sacrosanct, the person occupying that office is not.
If this is not the case, then how would Mr Shanmugam reconcile this with the government's action against City Harvest Church's pastor, Hong Kee? Is Mr Shanmugam implying that in this particular case, the government is actually questioning the sancity and authority of the Church/God (and not Hong Kee himself) in the use/misuse of its funds? I'm sure the congregation of CHC (and other Christians outside of it) would love to have that point clarified.
In the Woffles Wu case, the seemingly light sentence he received for two speeding offences and associated abettment of his employee to take the rap for him, raised questions of favouritism in the application of the law. Unfortunately for Woffles, he is a well known personality, possibly well connected and relatively wealthy. If he had been an unknown member of the public, all these questions of favouritism would not have arisen precisely because he would not then be in the position to induce a lighter sentence.
One is left further mystified by the choice of past cases that Mr Shanmugam chose to use to support the view that the sentence given by the AGC to Woffles Wu was within the norms set by these cases. Of the six cases mentioned, only one had a speeding offence. All had documentary issues, either driving with an invalid licence and/or no proper insurance. This has no relevance to the Woffles Wu case. We need to compare apples with apples.
In one of the AGC's earlier clarifications to the Woffles Wu case, it justified the sentence given by saying that Woffles Wu only exceeded the speed limit by a 'little'. In the latest clarification on Friday (Aug 17), we finally had a figure to one of the speeding offences: 95km/h on Lornie Rd which had a speed limit of 70km/h. The other offence was for a speed of 91km/h (presumably on the same road, no mention of it was made). Little or not, it would appear that the offence of abetting someone else to take the rap does not carry much weight in deciding the sentence.
But in another traffic offence case reported in the press a few weeks ago, a couple of men who had a friend who got another friend to take the rap for an illegal PARKING offence(!!!) were given much heavier fines (and possibly a custodial sentence as well, I can't remember the full details) than what Woffles Wu got for speeding AND abettment.
In a more recent case, that involving one of the leaders of the Loyang Tua Pek Kong temple, the offender was given a custodial sentence on top of a $5000 fine for getting a friend to arrange for someone else to take the rap for his wife's traffic offence of beating a red light (whether she was speeding while doing it was not mentioned). District Judge Wong Li Tein said that the offence of beating a red light was not a serious one, but that the crime was in getting someone else to bear the penalty of the offence. So it would appear that the offence of abettment warranted a heavier sentence.
Just based on the offence of abetting someone else to take the rap for a traffic offence, it would seem Woffles Wu got off very lightly (compared to the two cases above). I would say in Woffles Wu's case, his abettment offence is even more serious because he got an employee to take the rap. A friend or a friend of a friend can refuse to take the rap with little or no consequence. But an employee would feel coerced to comply because of the employer-employee relationship. From a layman's perspective, this should warrant a heavier (even a deterent) sentence!
So, Mr Shanmugam's reply to MP Sylvia Lim's question has not resolved the issue, but instead has created yet more questions on whether the law is even consistently applied, let alone whether favouritism was involved in Woffles Wu's case. Even more surprising was his admonishment of MP Sylvia Lim "to look at issues without having to inject politics into it". Sylvia Lim was merely putting forward a question of public interest, something which MPs of Mr Shanmugam party has apparently decided not to so do.
Which brings us to MP Hri Kumar. He was among the first few people to comment on the Woffles Wu case. For some reason he has now gone silent. Why? Is he now in possession of some facts that has resolved his initial concerns regarding the case? If so, could he address parliament to give his understanding of the case and perhaps enlighten the public?
What we are concerned is that the party whip may have been imposed on Hri Kumar to refrain from further discussing the issue. If this is so, we need an explaination from perhaps, the Speaker of Parliament as to why this should be so. This is a matter of public interest and as an MP, Hri Kumar took an oath of office to we're sure: serve the people of Singapore. Gagging him in this instance would be quite far from the spirit and letter of that oath.
And amidst all of these hullabaloo, one niggling question still remains unanswered: Why was Woffles Wu's case delayed for a period of almost six years? On this one question alone, all issues regarding this saga could potentially be resolved.
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