Speakers’ corner in Singapore’s Hong Lim Park tends to lack the clamorous atmosphere that its name might suggest.
On one afternoon last week, the immaculately kept park — the only place in the city state where Singaporeans can protest without a police permit — was empty except for a few lost tourists. Offenders who break the strict rules governing demonstrations here can risk up to six months’ jail.
The regulations are typical of the carefully controlled political system in Singapore, where the ruling People’s Action party has won every election since independence in 1965 by a margin of 60 per cent or more. Yet despite the PAP’s stranglehold, there are signs that protests in the rival Asian financial centre of Hong Kong over the past five months have unnerved Singapore’s ruling class.