The fact that Singapore is a multi-racial country makes her even more vulnerable to racial and cultural discrimination amongst the people. Here in Singapore, the Chinese people form the majority. It is important that the government does not permit special privileges only to the majority in order to safeguard social cohesion. Likewise, the freedom of expression should not be unlimited because this will result in the Chinese population having more power to state whatever they wished publicly since they form the majority here. Hence, the views as mentioned by Szilagyi should be adopted.
It is true that Singapore claims herself to be a democratic country. Naturally, her people would assume that full freedom of speech is practiced. However, the government should also practice censorship. Freedom of speech has its own pros and cons. It does allow the people to have a say in the society. Freedom of speech is a privilege. However, without government control, this privilege tends to be abused by the people. As mentioned by Szilagyi, “once messages are out in public, they develop a life of their own and become subject to multiple interpretations, and often manipulation that serves political agendas”. A harmless message written by someone without any bad agenda could easily be interpreted wrongly by the readers. After all, the readers decide what they are reading. And once this happens, there may be dire consequences threatening the peace of a nation. Adopting a system of democracy where freedom of expression is fully unlimited as suggested by Singer would easily result in inter-religious tensions. This is so because the people would have the right to voice out all their thoughts without caring if any one would be offended by his or her stand. This may also lead to the verbal form of open discrimination against different religions and races. As such, the people would feel unsecured and fear that the other party might try to destroy their religious believes. Racial tension would escalate and the social cohesion of a nation would then be threatened.

Updated@5:12 AM
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