An Own Goal

What drama! On the first day of the hearing for what has been dubbed the "Hougang by-election case", drama filled the court when Mr Wong Siew Hong tried in vain to stop the case from proceeding. Lawyer M Ravi was to argue a case at the High Court on whether the Prime Minister of Singapore has unfettered discretion in deciding whether and when to call by-elections when Mr Wong who was a representative of the Law Society, showed a letter to the judge from Mr Ravi's psychiatrist, Dr Calvin Fones Soon Leng.

The letter stated that Mr. M Ravi is currently unfit to practice law due to a relapse of bipolar disorder.

However the drama quickly turned into confusion when Mr Ravi openly questioned the letter from the psychiatrist. The letter stated that Dr Fones reviewed Mr Ravi on May 14 "following the concerns expressed by his friends" but Mr Ravi claimed that the date should be July 14 and he only saw the doctor for 10mins on that day. Not only that, Mr. Ravi claimed that the doctor never told him of any concerns he had of his health. Mr Ravi also insisted that this letter was just a ridiculous conspiracy against him to block him from arguing the case.

If that wasn’t enough, the Law Society then publicly hung Mr Wong out to dry when it said that Mr Wong acted on his own and that although Mr Wong is the appointed lawyer to represent the society to liaise with Mr Ravi and Dr Fones in regard to Mr Ravi’s condition, there was “no application whatsoever by the Law Society to in any way prevent Mr Ravi from appearing in Court”.

Now everyone in Singapore is asking what in the world prompted Mr Wong to go down to the High Court (on his own) to present a letter from Mr Ravi’s psychiatrist Dr Calvin Fones when he did not get any go ahead from the Law Society? Also how could the doctor send the letter, which was wrongly dated, to the society without informing his patient first?

So rather amazingly, it’s the Law Society and its member Mr Wong Siew Hong that are in the hot seat right now. Not only is Mr. Ravi not in trouble, he came out smelling like roses! In short, if this was an attempt to block the case from being heard, as alleged by Mr. Ravi, it was so amateurish done it was a bad, bad own goal.