Leong Sze Hian to defend himself against PM Lee’s defamation suit

Financial advisor and Singaporean blogger Leong Sze Hian is set to defend himself against Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s defamation suit against him.

Speaking to TOC on Wednesday (12 Dec) after having entered an appearance to the defamation suit, Mr Leong said that while he is “unable to comment” on his ongoing case “for legal reasons”, he hopes that “Singaporeans will get their answers now” to questions regarding government spending and other significant issues.

Mr Leong illustrated: “For example, why is Singapore the only Government in the world that – from a cashflow perspective – does not spend any money on pensions, public housing and healthcare,” adding that “the inflows exceed the outflows annually in these areas?”

He added that he has written “a few thousand articles, newspaper forum letters, speeches and protests” in the last two decades in a bid to seek “transparency and accountability” from the Singapore Government “without any substantive response”.

When asked by TOC regarding legal representation in his defence against the suit, Mr Leong said that he will be representing himself.

“I have the best counsel – the people of Singapore,” he concluded.

Mr Leong is being sued by PM Lee over a post he shared on his Facebook profile on 7 Nov.

The allegedly defamatory post in question was a post from Malaysia site, TheCoverage.my which quoted content originating from States Times Review (STR) (“Lee Hsien Loong becomes 1MDB’s key investigation target”), published on 5 Nov.

The post claimed that the editor-in-chief of investigative journalism platform Sarawak Report (SR) Clare Rewcastle-Brown pinpointed Singapore as “one of the key investigation targets, alongside Switzerland and United States” in the 1MDB scandal during an interview with Malaysian media.

The claim was subsequently rebuked by SR as “misleading” and “erroneous”, and a request was made to STR to “correct the false claim.”