Regulation of political commentary on the Internet in Singapore

There has indeed many issues brought up on the matter of freedom of speech in Singapore. Singapore’s government had strict guidelines for the discussion of such matters. Sensitive topics about politics could land the person right into a fine or sometimes direct prison admission. Such examples could be seen from websites such as talkingcock.com, Mr Brown Shows, where many political issues were brought up often in a satirical manner. Although Singapore’s government does allow comments on Singapore’s politics to be published online, such as in blogs and websites, or even made into videos, they were strictly controlled, especially during the election period, in which such ways of “expressing” yourself is BANNED.
I feel that the main reason behind the strict control of such political podcasts is that the Internet is a very powerful tool that can be used to spread a lot of information around rapidly. Even if the information is only partially true or even stories that were spun up, the Internet can make thousands of people see these “tales”, and people tends to believe what the Internet says, as they feel that “if it is wrong, why would it still exist?” This could often lead to chaos as it is nearly impossible to completely get rid of the stories, and even by succeeding in doing so would often lead to more stories being written.
{
X: eh, you know why that blog was being banned anot?
Y: huh? why hah?
X: cuz what it says is true what! Otherwise why the government wan ban it for? of course is they guilty then go remove lo!
Y: eh possible leh! I go tell my friends.
}
Such simple dialogs can create another brand new story, which is worse if either X or Y post it onto his/her blog, then the story will spread…
Also, there’s the issue of “edit and pass”, in which what one passed to another, may not be completely “copied and pasted” from the source, as everyone knows if a simple sentence if passed from one person to another, the end “product” will often be completely different from the beginning sentence. For example:
{
A: I have a pen.
B: I have a pen.
.
.
.
Z: ‘I’ has a pen.
}
The above example is when somebody in the row understood the “I have a pen” wrongly and took it as the person ‘I’ has a pen and passed it down. So the simplest result would be someone saying someone else has a pen when the original sentence is “I have a pen”. Just imagine somebody passing around chunks of rumour around and the whole thing just “screwed up” to give something even more “rumourous”, which maybe went back to the person who passed the rumour, who took it as a new rumour and passed it on, only turning it into even newer rumours. GET CONFUSED MUAHAHAH.
However, I feel that the government should not be that strict on such issues. The most basic saying is if you have done nothing wrong, why fear about anything at all? All the government has to do is to be “nice and sweet” to its people and tada, nobody complains.
That of course only happens in a Utopian society, every government has its rights and wrongs. Even so, the government should take these bunch of “mixed up crap” as suggestions for improvements and criticizes from the public could help the government to be a better one. If the citizens are not satisfied with a certain political plan, most of them will leave a commentary to criticize it. Thus, the leaders can find out what is wrong with the plan and try to improve it. In fact, most people will choose to tell their actual thought on the Internet since they feel safer in the virtual world, until they realised that their IP address could be checked that is…
Hence, I feel that political podcasts should not really be restricted so tightly, since this is a good way for the government to learn about any flaws in their plans or any “mistakes” made in which the public is not happy with.