The Minister for Manpower last night issued a new correction direction to the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) under the fake news law. This came after the Court of Appeal set aside part of an original direction given to the opposition party for a falsehood that had to do with the employment situation in Singapore.

SDP had been issued three such directions on Dec 14, 2019, under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, or Pofma, for false statements in its Facebook posts and in an article on its website titled SDP Population Policy: Hire S'poreans First, Retrench S'poreans Last.

The directions had taken issue specifically with the first statement - "local PMET retrenchment has been increasing" - referring to professionals, managers, executives and technicians, as well as the second statement - "local PMET employment has gone down".

SDP had applied to the High Court to set aside these directions, arguing, among other things, that its second statement was referring only to Singaporean PMETs and not "local" PMETs, which would include permanent residents.

However, the High Court upheld the corrections orders, ruling that SDP's statements were false based on the Ministry of Manpower's (MOM) statistics.

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's findings on the first statement about local PMET retrenchment. In fact, the data - which SDP did not challenge - showed a decline, rather than an increase in local PMET retrenchment.

But the court allowed part of SDP's appeal involving the second statement, agreeing with SDP that "local PMET employment" as used in the infographic in the party's Facebook post is to be understood as referring only to Singaporean PMETs, rather than both Singaporeans and permanent residents. This rendered the correction direction inaccurate, since it referred to PMETs who were both Singaporeans and permanent residents.

MOM said yesterday that even if SDP's statement was referring to just Singapore citizens in PMET jobs, the claim that such employment has gone down is still completely false. The number of Singaporeans employed in PMET jobs has increased steadily from 2015 to 2019, from 929,700 in 2015 to 958,400 in 2016, 974,800 in 2017, 1,009,600 in 2018 and 1,050,300 in 2019, said MOM.

"(Thus), the Minister for Manpower has instructed the Pofma Office to issue a correction direction to the SDP in relation to this false statement of fact," said the MOM.