By Following the news that Chee Soon Juan’s book launch event venue at Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) was cancelled last week, the Secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) revealed that even National Library (NL) refused to rent out its rooms for his book launch.
Breaking this news on his Facebook account, he noted that when he approached NL to book the Imagination and Possibility Rooms for the launch of his latest book, Never On Bended Knees, on 26 January from 2pm to 5pm, the library said that these rooms are not available on this particular date.
He then went on to enquire if the rooms will be available the Saturday before or after 26 January, in which they replied and said that they don’t have any available Seminar Rooms on all Saturdays and Sundays in January.
Dr Chee further asked for availability in February 2019 and they responded now and said that no Seminar Rooms are free in both February and March.
Dr Chee tried his luck again and requested for any date on weekends from April onwards and NL turned down his request once again by saying that they don’t have any Seminar Rooms available on all the Saturdays and Sundays from January to May this year.
Responding to this, he wrote, “Wouldn’t it have been easier to say from the start that they couldn’t rent me the rooms?”
The new venue for the book launch is at SDP’s office at 3 Ang Mo Kio Street 62, #02-30, Link@AMK, with the time and date remain unchanged.
Upon reading this news on his Facebook page, many netizens told Dr Chee that he shouldn’t be afraid or worried, and they will still support him no matter what happens.