Iris Koh & M Ravi Allegedly Break Presidential Election Cooling-Off Rules, Police Reports Filed
The Elections Department of Singapore (ELD) has filed police reports against Iris Koh and M Ravi, according to a press release.
The Assistant Returning Officer claimed that the Healing the Divide founder and suspended lawyer both broke cooling-off rules in the Presidential Election.
During the period when the ELD allowed no campaigning or advertising, Koh and Ravi both posted videos on social media.
TikTok and Meta disabled access to those videos in compliance with the ELD.
ELD files police reports against Iris Koh and M Ravi
During the recent Presidential Election, the cooling-off period began at midnight on 31 Aug. It lasted till the closure of polling at 8pm on 1 Sep.
During this period, the ELD disallowed campaigning and election advertising.
This included online content that “can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or prejudice the success of a candidate at an election,” said the ELD in a press statement.
They also issued reminders of these prohibitions, including on local media.
Despite this, founder of Healing the Divide, Iris Koh, published two duplicate TikTok videos on 31 Aug.
The videos were concerning M Ravi’s appeal to disqualify Mr Tharman from running for President.
Source: @iriskoh11 on TikTok
Suspended lawyer M Ravi subsequently reposted Koh’s video on Facebook the same day. He then proceeded to publish three more videos with similar content.
On 1 Sep, he further published a fifth video and a post, both violating the ELD’s rules.
Source: Ravi MRavi on Facebook
Video access disabled by Meta and TikTok
The Assistant Returning Officer thus issued Corrective Directions to TikTok and Meta. The companies complied and disabled access to those videos and posts in Singapore.
Due to these alleged breaches of the ELD’s rules, the Assistant Returning Officer filed police reports against the two accused.
“The Police may conduct investigations to establish whether offences have been committed,” stated the ELD.
Offenders can be fined up to $1,000 or jailed for not more than 12 months, or both.
The target of their videos, Mr Tharman, won the Presidential Election with 70.41% of the votes.
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Featured image adapted from @iriskoh11 on TikTok and Ravi MRavi on Facebook.
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