TWO press conferences, two mysterious characters, both dressed in black, sitting at far ends of the table, seemingly apart, yet keeping an invisible hold on things.

On Thursday night, at the press conference of the new exco, Dr Thio Su Mien, mother of Nominated Member of Parliament Thio Li-ann, was a picture of calm and serenity amid the red eyes and quivering voices of the exco members.

Last night, a man sat sternly at one end of the long table, where 10 members of Aware sat smiling.

He was Mr Mark Goh, a lawyer, introduced by the old exco as 'our legal adviser'.

They had promised openness and transparency. It made the presence of the man odd and unexpected.

Before the press conference began, he had given a briefing to all the members of the old exco, largely out of sight of reporters, who had taken their seats inside the room.

Throughout the two-hour-plus press conference, Mr Goh sat there, dressed in a no-nonsense attire of black shirt and ripped jeans, watching the proceedings with hawk eyes.

Amid the easy banter and pally jokes, he listened, mostly stoic.

From time to time, as the ladies elaborated on their answers for the media, venturing into uncertain territory, they slowly turned their eyes to him, looking for approval.

Silence would mean approval.

Disapproval would come in a short, sharp interjection.

Former president Dr Kanwaljit Soin was describing the takeover when she paused in mid-sentence, looked to Mr Goh, and finally finished wrapping up her sentence cautiously:

'...shall I say it... a slightly stealthy takeover...'

Later, when The New Paper probed the panel on the relationship of Dr Thio to the old exco, Mr Goh stopped the panelists' answers in mid-sentence.

'We are not here to talk about Dr Thio,' he said curtly.

His was the steel beneath the ladies' smiles.

Later, as the media congregated to interview MsSchutz Lee, the Aware Centre manager who was sacked on Thursday night, Mr Goh stood beside her, stern like a bouncer.

He stopped her in mid-sentence once, as she was elaborating on the reasons behind her sacking, saying that whatever she had just said would be off the record.

Mr Censor?

Then, leaning over a reporter from Today newspaper, he said: 'Strike that out.'

The man was there for good reason.

'In this potential war of words, we do not want to say anything that will open us up to legal action,' said former Aware vice-president Margaret Thomas.

Dr Thio is, after all, a former law dean and her daughter a law professor at the National University of Singapore.

'The openness and transparency is still there,' explained Ms Thomas.

'We have nothing to hide. We make available the facts... these are the values that Aware has held on to throughout the years.

'If it is something we are able to talk about, we will. But if we are not able to, we will also say so openly.'

But for a couple of hours last night, it almost didn't seem so.

This article was first published in The New Paper.