Of TRE, back to the days of the Wayang Party Club?

A long time ago (circa 2004 - long is relative over the internet), there was an online socio-politicial site that used unorthodox means to create awareness. The site would report news that were meant to be the heartfelt sentiments of people like you and I, i.e. we the people that the other people high up in the ivory towers who will conveniently forget for 4 years until the general elections are due. The site would report accounts of hard truths that no mainstream and other socio-political sites would even attempt to report on.

What OB markers? If you and the other Singaporeans feel it, we will report it! They had walked the ground with video cameras to ask for the sentiments of voters and reported the shortcomings of Ministers. They were the unsung heros of the local blogosphere.

Oh boy, the popularity of the site soared! It was not difficult to see why. Anyone could lend their voice to the site and be a contributor, ergo, everyone could be heard. The site posted accounts in both English (think tabloid) and Mandarin (think Lian He Wan Bao). It did not matter if the contributor's grasp of language was not strong. What was important was that the articles contained key issues that struck a chord with people like you and I. On top of everything else, the owners of the Wayang Party site promised that all commenters are anonymous. The site was hosted outside of Singapore. According to the site owners, they were untouchable. This was also one of the reasons why the site had to ask the public for monetary contributions so as to sustain the site.

Of course, the site also had it's shortcomings. Because everyone could be heard, it meant that any sort of article could be published. For that same reason, it meant that most of the articles were taken as it is with minimal attempts to verify its content. All the other more established sites were quick to disassociate from the site. Wayang Party lacked accountability and transparency, the same issues that they were accusing the government of. There were little credibility in their reports. Their reports were based on sensationalizing one single detail which were often snowballed to attempt to inflict an avalanche on the people in white (surely they know that snow blends with white). Worse still, Wayang Party operated as faceless site. The other sites did not even know who they were up against.

In short, it became a populist blog. The people behind the site were quick to rename the site after each significant political progression. It started as Wayang Party, became Temasek Review, and then the current, Temasek Review Emeritus (TRE).

Eventually, The New Paper revealed that a certain Doctor Joseph Ong was behind the site. Next, Richard Wan, moderator of TRE was reported as being involved with other faceless people based abroad.

In a quick turn of events (circa August 2011), after Richard claimed that he was "harassed by TR" and swore to leave the site, Richard is actually still with TRE in a recent forum that was held in conjunction with Social Media week (February 2012). Apart from Richard, the rest of the team remains faceless. We do not even know if the other five editors exist. Currently, this attempt to have be "accountable" does not seem to be working out well at all for TRE. Given it's gureilla tactics, Richard has opened up TRE to several potential defamation suits. Also, it is difficult to ignore the fact that TRE's rebranding was somehow in time to expose the Yaw Shin Leong's affair. With a supposedly pro alternative voices site like this, who needs the men in white to fix the opposition? Some say, TRE is now part of the men in white.

So is TRE back to the days of the Wayang Party Club with all these nameless shadows lurking in the dark? I think so. But this time around, they have a fall guy. why are these people opening TRE up to possible defamation suits? Only time will tell how far an apology can take TRE.