With regards to the whole domestic workers issue bit, I grant that the true picture is a little hard to determine (although the Transient Workers groups might have something), however, it’s worth noting that,
1. employers were never under a legal obligation to even give their maids time off (and as a fact, few did, or only did so after years of service)
2. what is established as law merely reflects what is set out on paper and does not necessarily reflect what’s happening. Thus, saying the law protects them is pretty much an argument in vacuo.

This burden-of-proof reversing is favourite tactic of the PAP and its apologists. On an issue involving incursions into liberty, any society which accepts that the self-directed pursuit of the happiness of its citizens would require compelling proof of the necessity for the intrusion. In Singapore, because the ruling elite (and the dominant terms of mainstream discourse, which they control) conceptualise the individual person as a tool for their own goals and vision of society, they are constantly demanding a showing that there is some benefit to preventing them achieving their own goals whenever someone dares contradict them. And since they have done their best to choke the circulation of conceptions of the good, this challenge is rarely met.

GCT’s remarks on the free press were a classic example of this, when he mentioned that there was no proof that a free press led to economic efficiency or good governance. But it was just so much sophistry. The burden has to be on those who would shut people up to show that shutting them up has a point, not the other way around.

The truly depressing thing is how completely they have managed to achieve a position of dominance in cultural terms, so that so many people have come to accept the notion of themselves as ‘digits’ in a greater system, not recognising that this system is only the private project of a few oligarchs.

Hi Wannabe Lawyer Nice critique…but I think that the answer to your question is already found in Andy Ho’s original post (which you quoted). He argued that having laws that are not enforced is logical because (a) it has a signalling effect, and (b) it is not enforced in practice anyway (so his point is: why make such a big fuss about something that is almost never enforced). To win the argument, (I think) you would have to argue convincingly that the signalling effect is not needed, or in fact, bad for society; you can’t bypass his ’signalling effect argument’, cos it’s quite central to what he’s saying (disclaimer: just my interpretation).

Next, I think that domestic workers are not treated as badly as you seem to suggest. The newspapers tend to sensationalize things. Those who are treated quite well and are happy working for their employers are hardly ever featured in the newspapers, don’t you think so?

Anyway, there’s actually a very ‘good’ reason for s. 337 to exist. Basically our rape provision is very very behind the times in that it is rape ONLY if there is penetration of the penis into the vagina. Nothing else. So only males can rape and only females at that.

So without s. 337, you could not charge a person who said forced another to perform forced fellacio or insertion of an object into any orifice except with say Hurt which brings with itself a much much lower penal sanction. But of course, the logical reform to make is to transform rape into the modern sexual assault provision as in nearly everywhere else in the world.

For a more extensive treatment, including the relevant provisions, http://noself.blogspot.com/2005/04/bbc-news-europe-analysis-turkish-penal.html