Blogger to pay US$150,000 for libel against Singapore’s PM

A 34-year-old blogger Roy Ngerng has been slammed with libel against Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

The blogger has been ordered to pay the sum of S$150,000 (3.8 million baht) in installments over the next 17 years, his lawyer said Monday.

 

Under the agreement with the prime minister, Ngerng’s lawyer Eugene Thuraisingam told AFP that his client would pay S$30,000 by Wednesday to cover the costs of an assessment hearing.

 

To pay the actual damages the blogger would then fork out $100 a month for the next five years before the amount increases to $1,000 a month until the amount is paid, which would take a total of 17 years.

 

 

The blogger was found guilty in November 2014 of defaming Lee after accusing him in a blog post of misappropriating state pension funds.

 

A source familiar with the case told AFP that Ngerng had initially asked to be let off the remainder after paying S$36,000. But this was rejected by the prime minister, who agreed to the payment in installments.

Singapore has consistently ranked highly in surveys as one of the world’s least corrupt countries, but rights groups say its leaders have used financially ruinous defamation suits to silence critics and political opponents.Singaporean leaders maintain that the lawsuits are necessary to protect their reputations from unfounded allegations. The blogger initially offered S$5,000 as compensation to Mr Lee, who rejected the amount.
After being sued by the prime minister, Ngerng was fired from his government hospital job for administrative reasons which he did not contest.
He successfully raised more than S$112,000 through crowd-funding but the cash ran out during his defense.

The local media in Singapore is tightly controlled, leaving bloggers and other online commentators as the strongest critics of the long-ruling People’s Action Party.