Why are people sued for defamation!

Why are people sued for defamation!

by Patrick Lee Song Juan on Monday, February 20, 2012 at 6:57pm ·

Lately, there were two letters of demand from PAP to sue, first Alex Au of Yawning Bread ..because of one article comment by someone on his Blog...Naturally, Alex (a friend of mine) got to bear the responsibility..He was sued by Foreign minister Shanmugam for baseless allegation of a comment by a morally no courage guy who dared not even put his real name on Alex's Blog. Alex Au, in the end, issue an apology on his Blog and removed the offending comment..All's well that ended well.


Today, Temasek Review Emeritus (TRE) got sued by PM LHL for a unfounded write on his wife Ho Ching, incidentally is the CEO of Temasek Holdings..not Temasek Review, haha! And by the news I heard at 5 pm today, TRE had issued a statement that they would withdraw the offending article and comply by PM's lawyers demand of taking out the article and posting an apology on TRE to equal to the time and day..-TRE had posted that article...Fair demand!


Singapore is an open society...many things are open..but many things too are not so open for scrutiny..We need to be more cautious in what we wrote or what we alleged (must have solid proof for any such allegation)...So, S'pore practises our own form of fair justice as deem by our government..and who can default them, when we have no basis to retaliate. Remember, we are a democracy, but we are not Uncle Sam's America. We have not reached there yet..And we will never attain that height. If we do, S'pore may or may not be that peaceful. We need to understand the governing of the government!


Whoever is in power, the power lies in their discretion of judgment. So, let us not go beyond the benchmark of discernment! As we recall those years of happy sue-ing by PAP against opposition during campaigning and after the elections. Those years was a real scarce for the oppositions. J BJ, Tan Liang Hong, Francis Seow and Chee Soon Juan all tasted the brunt of lawsuit on the happy trigger of PAP...and the worst would be those political detainees of ISA..It is that power is the justice!


We do hope that that era of fear is over..And we sincerely hope as responsible citizens , we can disseminate news accurately and without bias!


We will be on the road to civilization in the internet age!