President Claire Nazar quit; set off chain of events
FOR almost two weeks after Aware's annual general meeting (AGM) on March 28, there was silence.

A new team had taken over the 25-year-old women's group in a stunning coup, but nobody was talking.

Not the old guard, who were reeling from the shock of seeing a large group of new members elect a group of unknowns into power. The new women in charge were not speaking either.

Then something surprising happened, setting off a trail of dramatic events: Former lawyer Claire Nazar resigned as president just 11 days after being elected unopposed.

The Straits Times broke the news on April 10. A couple of days later, group of long-time members and their supporters called for an extraordinary general meeting to overthrow the new team.

Mrs Nazar, a member of the Association of Women for Action and Research for over a year, had been nominated by outgoing president Constance Singam. Mrs Nazar in turn nominated six new committee members, including Ms Josie Lau.

After she quit, Ms Lau became president. Her appointment made headlines because DBS Bank, Ms Lau's employer, immediately rebuked her publicly for ignoring her bosses' advice against taking office in Aware.

That recalled a controversy last year when a DBS credit-card charity campaign, spearheaded by Ms Lau's marketing team, went awry.

The beneficiary was the organisation, Focus On The Family, which upset homosexuals and lesbians, who called for a boycott of the bank, saying the charity's parent body in the United States was anti-homosexuality.

Ms Lau is married to Dr Alan Chin, who stood out at the Aware AGM, where he helped to count votes.

In the absence of information from the new team, Internet and file checks showed that Dr Chin and some new executive committee (exco) members had expressed strong views against homosexuality in letters to newspapers.

New assistant honorary secretary Jenica Chua had also written to The Straits Times Forum page, criticising a Nominated Member of Parliament for tabling a petition in Parliament in 2007 to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalises homosexual sex between consenting men.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.