JANUARY 25 — On the last day of the New Year celebrations, many families head to the void deck to join in the festivities with bright lanterns.

My uncle has long made it his tradition to head downstairs too and take in the sights and sounds with friends and a can of Carlsberg.

Now, with the Singapore parliament considering tightening alcohol regulations to include a ban on drinking in public places from 10.30pm to 7am — he and many others like him won’t be able to do so anymore.

By public places they mean the streets, void decks under HDB flats, parks and possibly the dormitories used by low-income workers but not bars, coffee shops, restaurants or homes. 

On the face of it, this might seem a relatively inoffensive piece of legislation; there are similar bans in other cities around the world and the ban still leaves rather a lot of places you can drink in 24 hours a day.

If the new law is passed, people will no longer be allowed to have a beer whenever they want at the void decks of these HDB flats. — Picture by AFP

The truth, however, is that this is just more of the poor, unwarranted and thoughtless law-making that has come to characterise Singapore’s public policy of late. 

By any objective standard, this city doesn’t have a major street drinking problem. The alcohol consumption rate is low; at two litres a year per capita as opposed to over 12 in South Korea and 10 litres in the UK. 

Also, as our government constantly reminds us, this city has some of the lowest crime rates on Earth so whatever drinking is going on is hardly leading to serious problems. 

The limited problems we do see from public drinking — young people (or older people) hanging out in particular areas with their beer cans and bottles making noise and a mess — can easily be dealt with under a host of existing regulations.

There are already laws prohibiting public drunkenness, littering and of course famously draconian laws limiting public gatherings. 

Nuisance and noise laws can also be applied and the country has already set a precedent for no drinking zones which can be used in trouble spots.

For those who argue this will only move the problem — again the government has plenty of legal and policing tools in its arsenal to control a couple or even dozens of drunks.

Basically, this is already one of the most tightly regulated spaces in the world so why on Earth would anyone welcome yet more legislation? 

For decades, Singaporeans have had the freedom to open a can of beer 24 hours a day and no major harm has come of it.  I’m not going to go into the Little India riot as that had as much to do with worker rights, migration, policing and community relations in Singapore than alcohol. 

But for ordinary Singaporeans, the freedom to nurse a drink with a picnic or sip a beer under the block in the evening is something we’ve long enjoyed.

And typically, in a nation with immense wealth disparities, the loss of this freedom is going to effect the poor most of all — those who cannot afford to continue drinking in the clubs and bars whose $30 (RM80) cocktails will be on sale long into the night. 

It’s going to affect people like the uncles I’ve seen gather regularly under my block with cards and a six pack for about 20 years.  I can just see this merry bunch now well into their 70s, slapped with $1,000 fines just for doing what they’ve been doing for years. 

Which is what makes this legislation awful. Good laws protect the weak — this penalises and threatens them; foreign workers, the poor, the elderly, people who live HDB flats — because, of course, the poolside or lobbies of your condo aren’t a public space. 

This is a ban that largely benefits the well-heeled denizens of Robertson Quay, it would seem according to one privileged perspective I found in the local media: http://news.asiaone.com/news/singapore/noise-litter-vomit-its-about-time-we-restrict-public-drinking

Here’s the thing, most Singaporeans don’t live in Robertson Quay. Most of us don’t step over broken glass and vomit on the way home because we don’t live in expensive neighbourhoods in the centre of the city next to thriving night spots — so why should we let your irritation disrupt our freedoms?