Blogger Roy Ngerng Yi Ling has been served with a letter of demand by lawyers for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The letter from Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, of Drew and Napier LLC, who is acting on PM Lee’s behalf, points to an article Mr Ngerng had written and published on 15 May.
The article was titled, “Where Your CPF Money Is Going: Learning From The City Harvest Trial”.
In it, Mr Ngerng drew comparisons between the case of the leaders of the said church, and the government’s management of monies in the CPF and the GIC, of which PM Lee is chairman.
“The article means and is understood to mean that Mr Lee Hsien Loong, the Prime Minister and Chairman of GIC, is guilty of criminal misappropriation of the monies paid by Singaporeans to the CPF,” Mr Singh’s letter said.
“This is a false and baseless allegation and constitutes a very serious libel against our client, disparages him and impugns his character, credit and integrity.”
Mr Singh added that it “is also clear the article was published maliciously.”
The lawyer’s letter then demanded the article be removed from Mr Ngerng’s blog site, and the links to the article on his Facebook pages be also similarly removed.
It also demanded an apology to be posted on Mr Ngerng’s blog, http://thehearttruths.com, and for Mr Ngerng to “compensate” Mr Lee by way of damages and to pay legal costs as well.
It gave Mr Ngerng three days to accede to the demands, failing which legal proceedings would be commenced against Mr Ngerng, the letter said.
Mr Ngerng posted the letter of demand on his website, titled, “I Have Just Been Sued By The Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong”.
In that posting, Mr Ngerng said, “Today, I am finally being silenced. It is disappointing that the government has decided to turn against ordinary Singaporeans.”
While not indicating if he would accede to the letter’s demands, Mr Ngerng nonetheless urged his readers that “it’s time we stand united.”
“It’s time we fight,” he said.
Mr Ngerng, who has organised an event on 7 June at Speaker’s Corner to call for the government to return Singaporeans’ CPF money, is being represented by Mr M Ravi.
In January last year, Mr Lee had also issued a letter of demand to another blogger over another article.
His letter then was to Mr Alex Au who writes on the Yawning Bread website.
Mr Lee had claimed that Mr Au’s article, entitled “PAP mis-AIMed, faces blowback”, together with 21 other comments that the blogger allowed to be posted on his site, “can be taken together to suggest that PM Lee is guilty of corruption in relation to the transaction between the PAP town councils and the firm Action Information Management (Aim)”, the Straits Times reported then.
Subsequently, Mr Au removed the article as demanded and issued an apology to Mr Lee.
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