Thank you for your observations!
We follow the "school" of Richard Gilbert, Keiko Imaoka, Dylan Welch and others.
You can find an explanation of the reasons why we think that 5-7-5 is "too much" for English here.
The opening haiku is a gendai, moreover it comes from a Singapore author who expresses himself in English. We like to show different takes on haiku from different ages and different cultures, the rules of the contest can be different from that.