SINGAPORE ARMED FORCES (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

2.50 p.m.

The Minister of Defence (Dr Goh Keng Swee): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The Singapore Armed Forces Act, 1972, has been in operation since June 1972. Experience in implementing the Act during this period has shown that it is inadequate in a number of respects in dealing with new problems that have arisen and requires to be amended. Accordingly, this Bill is before us.

The Bill extends the jurisdiction of courts-martial to SAF personnel who have committed the offences of murder, culpable homicide not amounting to murder, waging war against the Government and offences against the President. This is to ensure that if there is a repetition of last year's incident in which a soldier shot and killed an officer, such offences will be tried swiftly and punished swiftly. A court-martial will, however, try a case of murder or culpable homicide not amounting to murder only if all parties, victim and accused are SAF members. These are grave offences. In view of this, it has been provided in the Bill that the President of a court-martial trying these offences will be appointed by the Chief Justice and will be a Judge of the Supreme Court. An additional safeguard is that in such cases an appeal will be determined by a specially constituted Military Court of Appeal composed of three Judges of the Supreme Court.

Courts-martial inflict sentences of between two months and 24 months detention for absence without leave (AWOL) depending on the length of AWOL. Detention for insubordination, disobedience, and so on is also for similar lengths. It is doubtful whether long detention sentences are appropriate for these offences, taking into account the nature of the offender, usually a poorly educated teenage national serviceman. Keeping large numbers of soldiers under detention is also costly in terms of food they consume and the administrative staff needed to house and look after them.

In view of these facts the Bill provides that such offenders will be sent to a disciplinary barrack for a short stint, where offenders will be subject to a harsh regimen. Such detention would serve as a more effective deterrent than present detention under conditions of well-fed idleness. Detention in the disciplinary barrack can only be awarded by courts-martial and will be for a short period not exceeding three months.

A harsh regimen in the disciplinary barrack is bound to encounter resistance and, unless these instances are handled firmly, the system will break down. In view of this, the Bill empowers the officer-in-charge of the disciplinary barrack to inflict corporal punishment for offences such as mutiny, escape or attempted escape, assaulting a disciplinary barrack officer, and such like offences. This power is similar to that given to the Superintendent of Prisons under section 54 of the Prisons Act (Cap. 79). Certain additional safeguards, which I shall enumerate below, have, however, been provided when corporal punishment is to be inflicted.

National service intakes cover all strata of society, including those of low education and intelligence. Past experience shows that recalcitrant offenders belong to this group and existing forms of punishment have not been adequate as a deterrent. In view of this, apart from detention in the disciplinary barrack, the Bill provides for corporal punishment of incorrigible offenders committing the offences of prolonged absence without leave, desertion, escape from custody, disobedience of order, disobedience of general orders and insubordination. Care has, however, been taken to ensure that punishment administered under these regulations will not be of the kind administered to hardened criminals. Firstly, such punishment will not cause bleeding or leave permanent scars. Secondly, the Bill provides that all such punishment must be approved by the Armed Forces Council before it is carried out.

The present limit for dealing summarily with offences is six months from the date of the commission of the offence. This limit has caused problems in dealing with those reservists who fail to report for routine or occasional reporting, in-camp training, etc, and who cannot be traced till after six months. There are also instances of negligence in stores administration and other similar work being detected by MINDEF's Internal Audit or by Boards of Inquiry. However, in some cases, by the time the offence is detected six months have passed and the offender has been released from full-time national service into the reserve. Often these offences do not merit a court-martial but because of the six months limit they cannot be tried in any other way such as by summary proceedings. The Bill therefore extends the period of summary dealing to three years for offences committed by reservists and those committed within six months prior to the date that a serviceman is released from the SAF.

Two other amendments deserve attention. One of these empowers the Armed Forces Council to review a case on its own initiative even though no petition for a review has been submitted by a serviceman. The other provides that a serviceman under open arrest will not lose his pay.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. - [Dr Goh Keng Swee]

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.