Fundamentalist coup at women's rights organisation in Singapore

[Celsus]

It had to come to this... the Christian Right have officially reached our shores:

What happened (http://we-are-aware.sg/what-happened):

On March 28, AWARE was taken over by a group of newcomers who had only recently joined the organisation. 102 people turned up for AWARE's annual general meeting (AGM), which had been relatively less well-attended in the past. 80 of these attendants had only recently joined AWARE between January and March 2009.

When the election of office bearers began, almost every position was challenged by a member of this group. 9 out of 12 of the executive committee memberships went to newcomers, who were voted in by wide majorities.

Claire Nazar nominated by out-going President, Constance Singam, was the only one voted in unopposed. She resigned the Presidency 11 days into office. Josie Lau was subsequently appointed by the new Exco to take her place.

There are wide-ranging suspicions that this "leadership grab" has been orchestrated by women seeking to use the name and the resources of a well-respected institution to further their own agenda.

These concerns have been expressed not only by onlookers, but by older members of Aware.

* The new group at the AGM felt that it was not relevant to make known their “religion and views on homosexuality”.
* Except for Jenica Chua (and old AWARE members, Caris Lim and Chew I-Jin) other members of the new Exco joined AWARE only in the last five months; none of them has served in AWARE committees nor participated in AWARE initiatives as volunteers.
* The new Exco has terminated all the current heads of the AWARE sub-committees, including Braema Mathi, Chairperson of AWARE's CEDAW Committee (CEDAW stands for Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, an international bill of rights for women adopted by the UN).
* The new Exco has kept ex-President, Constance Singam out of Exco meetings, which is unconstitutional.
* Constance Singam and Claire Nazar have resigned from the new Exco on the grounds that their advice and direction have been totally disregarded by members of the new Exco.
* The new president, Josie Lau and 5 other Exco members belong to the same church, Church of Our Saviour. Given this, it is very likely, in our view, that they have acted in concert to take over AWARE. We do not know why as they have refused to disclose their reasons to either members of AWARE or to the press and this makes us even more worried. They, or persons whom they have been associated with, have written homophobic letters to the press. While that is their personal conviction to which they are entitled, we do not want AWARE to be made into a vehicle for any hidden agenda.
* Josie Lau, was in charge of the DBS Charity Drive in support of Focus On The Family, US-based Christian organisation that is opposed to abortion and equal rights for sexual minorities. This created a controversy last year which was well-documented.
* 160 members, including former AWARE committee members and founder members, petitioned for an extraordinary general meeting to consider a vote of no confidence in the New Exco on the basis that the New Exco has not acted and is not acting in the best interest of AWARE; does not appreciate or share the values of AWARE and does not have the requisite experience of carrying out AWARE's work or is otherwise inadequate to further AWARE's objectives. An EGM will be held on 2 May 2009.
A sad day in Singapore that the leading gender rights organisation in the country has been destroyed because of the selfish concerns of a few fundamentalists.

Please help to show your concern at the Facebook page here (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=72296674515) (link to online petition inside) and spread the word around.

Edit: Coverage in our national press (http://news.google.com.sg/news?um=1&ned=en_sg&hl=en&q=aware+josie&cf=all&scoring=d)

[Monad]

Just kick the fuckers out. If they don't respect or agree to abide by the principles or aims of the organisation what place to they have in it? If they lied when they signed up that is also grounds for expulsion. This is clearly nothing more than a wrecking attempt and resource grab but surely the membership of the organisation is bigger than a bunch of fundies?

[HinduWoman]

Constance vigilence!
This means that all members of such groups must attend meetings regularly and be always on the lookout.

[Celsus]

Just kick the fuckers out. If they don't respect or agree to abide by the principles or aims of the organisation what place to they have in it? If they lied when they signed up that is also grounds for expulsion. This is clearly nothing more than a wrecking attempt and resource grab but surely the membership of the organisation is bigger than a bunch of fundies?
They control the entire Executive Committee - only one (relatively low-ranking) position is held by a long-standing AWARE member - assistant treasurer

It is a relatively small organisation, so the Church of our Saviour were able to register new members en masse then engineer a legal coup by voting out the entire 'old guard' with just over 140 votes.

[Monad]

Just kick the fuckers out. If they don't respect or agree to abide by the principles or aims of the organisation what place to they have in it? If they lied when they signed up that is also grounds for expulsion. This is clearly nothing more than a wrecking attempt and resource grab but surely the membership of the organisation is bigger than a bunch of fundies?
They control the entire Executive Committee - only one (relatively low-ranking) position is held by a long-standing AWARE member - assistant treasurer

It is a relatively small organisation, so the Church of our Saviour were able to register new members en masse then engineer a legal coup by voting out the entire 'old guard' with just over 140 votes.

They joined and acted under false pretences - how is that a legal anything? This should be put to the entire membership or are you saying they now outnumber the membership as a whole?

[Celsus]

They joined and acted under false pretences - how is that a legal anything? This should be put to the entire membership or are you saying they now outnumber the membership as a whole?
Well there's no requirements that you must behave in a specific way, or believe specific things, when you join. Its aim was to be as inclusivist as possible, especially given the multi-cultural (and relatively conservative) nature of Singapore - so conservative Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists or atheists, could all join. The problem (the old ExCo have acknowledged) was being too trusting. And perhaps not a robust enough constitution. What the new members did was (probably) legal, but the concern now is preserving the integrity of the institution.

Currently there's a membership war and hundreds of new members have joined in recent days ahead of an extraordinary general meeting to be held on May 2. So it's currently a fire-with-fire situation, given the ambiguous nature of the constitution.

I've been mostly a neutral party in this, related in no way to AWARE other than the former president once teaching in the school I was in 20 years ago, and won't be in the country for the meeting. I am not an AWARE member, though I've a close relation to a lot of human rights organisations having worked with several in the past.

Instead of finding fault though, it's time to look at how civic organisations can prevent this type of strong-arm tactics, raise awareness (as hinduwoman stated) and warn others about the potential divisiveness of such an issue and the lengths at which they will go to to control the agenda.

[Monad]

They joined and acted under false pretences - how is that a legal anything? This should be put to the entire membership or are you saying they now outnumber the membership as a whole?
Well there's no requirements that you must behave in a specific way, or believe specific things, when you join. Its aim was to be as inclusivist as possible, especially given the multi-cultural (and relatively conservative) nature of Singapore - so conservative Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists or atheists, could all join. The problem (the old ExCo have acknowledged) was being too trusting. And perhaps not a robust enough constitution. What the new members did was (probably) legal, but the concern now is preserving the integrity of the institution.

Yes I guess if the constitution was not robust enough in the first place they could be "technically legal". But surely lying about or not disclosing your true position and platform in an election renders that election invalid? Anyway I wish them luck in their EGM - what those fundies did is outrageous and indeed a warning as to how underhand and duplicitous these unprincipled people can be.

[Celsus]

Well this story has a somewhat happy ending. Unfortunately I was in South Africa at the time so I didn't get round to posting an update: On May 2, they held an extraordinary general meeting in which a vote of no-confidence was held decisively against the new executive committee (by about 1600 to 800 - yes the numbers had swollen to over 2000 attending from the 100+ of the original vote). They subsequently resigned and a new committee was immediately voted in, with much of the 'old guard' reformed.

Unfortunately, Singapore has since shown its conservative colours again, in this case the complaint that led to the takeover of AWARE - their alleged 'support' for homosexuality led to a review of sex ed in schools, and AWARE's programme was suspended pending review.

I'm sure there'll be more to come from the Christian Right on this, but the debate has awakened civil society a tiny little bit, and perhaps one day Singapore will be able to discuss sexuality from a rights-based perspective rather than a My Morality(tm) one.

[Monad]

Well this story has a somewhat happy ending. Unfortunately I was in South Africa at the time so I didn't get round to posting an update: On May 2, they held an extraordinary general meeting in which a vote of no-confidence was held decisively against the new executive committee (by about 1600 to 800 - yes the numbers had swollen to over 2000 attending from the 100+ of the original vote). They subsequently resigned and a new committee was immediately voted in, with much of the 'old guard' reformed.


Yay! Good for them - I thought that putting it to the membership would lead to this - now perhaps it has woken a lot of people up who were less involved before

Even if on the political front there have been setbacks consciousness raising is often just as important and in the long run more so.

[court and spark]

It had to come to this... the Christian Right have officially reached our shores:

[quote='We are AWARE']What happened (http://we-are-aware.sg/what-happened):

That page has been removed from the site. There is a new page on the site with an "explanation."

[Celsus]

Yay! Good for them - I thought that putting it to the membership would lead to this - now perhaps it has woken a lot of people up who were less involved before
Interestingly, the vast majority (80% or more) who attended the EOGM were brand new members, signed up in the month since the coup occurred. From the papers, I understand there were less than 200 members of AWARE prior to the debacle. So the Christian Right got a taste of their own medicine (there was even an attempt to pull the ladder out from under their feet when they complained publicly to the press that so many people were signing up with intention to vote against them, since they obviously weren't from their church).

Some new members, such as a group of Muslim women, who might otherwise have been sympathetic to a stance against homosexuality, evidently saw the greater harm from a secular organisation being dominated by a narrow-minded religious group. Hopefully the lessons are being all taken in.