On Wednesday, Mothership.sg reported about some curiously-intensive police investigation into former SDP member and candidate Teo Soh Lung as well as blogger Roy Ngerng on a number of Facebook posts they published on Cooling-Off day, during the Bukit Batok by-election.

On Wednesday evening, the police and the Singapore Elections Department (ELD) put out a joint statement in the wake of significant online backlash and a statement of concern from the Workers' Party.

Here is the statement by the police and ELD in full:

"The rules relating to Cooling-Off Day have been in place since 2011. In the various elections since GE2011 right up to GE2015, there have been some breaches of the Cooling-Off Day rules. The approach that has been taken has been to give warnings in respect of these breaches. In some of the cases, the breaches were found to be unintentional.

Despite the fact that the rules relating to Cooling-Off Day had been publicised several times, and reports of past breaches had also been made public, we observed what appeared to be deliberate and serious breaches of the rules under the Parliamentary Elections Act (PEA) during the 2016 Bukit Batok By-Election. These breaches took place inspite of the advisory that the ELD issued prior to Cooling-Off Day, and a subsequent reminder on Cooling-Off Day against such activities.

Various persons and sites published online posts in contravention of the PEA. For example, The Independent Singapore continued to post such material even after receiving a specific reminder from the Assistant Returning Officer not to do so. Given the blatant disregard of the PEA in the 2016 Bukit Batok By-Election, the Assistant Returning Officer decided to make police reports so that the Police could investigate.

The Police are currently conducting their investigations. As part of the investigations, the Police need to examine for evidentiary purposes electronic devices used to publish the online postings. As such, these devices had to be seized. Upon the completion of their investigations, the Police will address the Attorney-General’s Chambers with their recommendations."

Their statement left out a few things, however, which we'd like to seek clarification on:

1. In the past, the authorities have given "warnings" in the wake of breaches of the cooling-off day rule.

In other words, the police seems to be saying that this is the first time they have investigated cooling-off day breaches to such an extent.

2. In "some" of the incidents that happened prior to this latest round, the offenders' actions were "found to be unintentional".

So... there may have been some previous incidents that resulted from deliberate action.

However, as far as public knowledge goes, we aren't aware of past instances where other individuals or entities had faced similar treatment to what the parties in the course of investigations are experiencing this time round.

3. The ELD observed "what appeared to be deliberate and serious breaches of the rules", in spite of ELD's pre-Cooling-Off Day advisory and follow-up reminder on the day itself.

It is true that ELD sent a pre-Cooling-Off Day advisory and reminder to online sites, including Mothership.sg.

We aren't sure, however, whether ELD sent the same notice to the parties being investigated, especially Teo and Ngerng.

4. They listed The Independent Singapore as an example of their description of "blatant disregard of (the laws governing the by-election)", explaining that the Assistant Returning Officer specifically reminded them not to do so.

Okay... But the Assistant Returning Officer additionally decided to report Teo and Ngerng to the police.

We understand that the police investigations are still underway, and so they may not be able to reveal all their findings yet.

Nonetheless, we do hope the police will take these questions into account when they address the Attorney-General’s Chambers with their recommendations when they're ready to.

Also, the questions we asked in this story still stand.

Related articles:

Workers’ Party ‘concerned’ with how Cooling Off Day investigations are being conducted

Police seize computers, phones of individuals implicated in alleged cooling-off day breaches

Here are the posts that allegedly violated the Bukit Batok by-election cooling-off day rules

Top photo: Screenshot from Jeannette Chong-Aruldoss's Facebook video.

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