Record libel award feared to hurt Singapore's image

Record libel award feared to hurt Singapore's image

By Jacqueline Wong

SINGAPORE (Reuter): Singapore's image could suffer along with its small opposition parties from the record libel damages its leaders won from a political foe on Thursday, political analysts said.

A Singapore court ordered opposition politician Tang Liang Hong to pay Singapore $8.08 million (US$5.65 million) in damages to Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and 10 senior members of the ruling People's Action Party (PAP). Tang said he would appeal.

They sued Tang for calling them liars after they accused him of being "an anti-Christian Chinese chauvinist" who endangered Singapore's racial harmony. Tang fled Singapore after losing in January general elections, saying he had received death threats.

Goh, involved in three of the suits, was awarded S$1.4 million while former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, involved in five, won the biggest amount -- S$2.3 million.

Both said they had to sue because their integrity, crucial to leadership of one of Asia's most dynamic economies, had been attacked.

Justice Chao Hick Tin said in a written judgment they were "amply justified" to depict Tang as they did and right to sue him to defend their "moral authority to govern".

Analysts said they were not surprised by the size of the award after Goh and his colleagues demanded damages totaling S$12.9 million. But they said it could hurt Singapore's image.

"Singapore will continue to be dogged with an authoritarian image in the U.S. where there are many human rights groups willing to be sympathetic," analyst Bruce Gale of the Political & Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) told Reuters.

"It gives Singapore's critics in the U.S. added ammunition," Gale said. The United States is Singapore's biggest trading partner.

"It probably ensures that Tang won't come back. It confirms that the developing opposition in exile....will continue to be there with more cooperation between them," he said.

Gale said it was unlikely there would be much reaction from Asia, except perhaps Malaysia, which had a major spat with Singapore over critical comments by Lee in an affidavit linked to the libel cases.

He said Malaysian newspapers might cite the damages as more evidence Singapore leaders were "beating down" the opposition. One economist said the award could add to growing worries about whether booming Southeast Asia could sustain its dynamism, citing the recent Singapore-Malaysia row, riots in Indonesia and a financial crisis in Thailand.

"Up to a certain stage you can separate economic reform from political reform, but we have come to a stage where political reform is a precondition for sustaining economic growth," said the economist, who declined to be named.

Singapore Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan said the award was a setback for opposition parties, which won just two of the 83 parliamentary seats in the general election.

"This is financially crippling for Tang, for anyone faced with such a lawsuit," said Chee who, like Tang, lost in the elections. "Singapore is not moving ahead where democracy is concerned," he said "I mean being able to innovate, being able to speak our minds...a climate where entrepreneurial spirit can thrive."

Goh said after winning the last election that voters had "rejected Western-style liberal democracy and freedoms, putting individual rights over that of society."

The libel suits against Tang were the latest of many against opposition figures. Many of the cases have involved charges of defamation, which like all cases in Singapore are tried by a judge sitting without a jury.

Veteran opposition leader and member of parliament Joshua Jeyaretnam, who in 1981 became the first non-PAP MP elected since independence in 1965, said Singapore's defamation laws should be amended to allow greater freedom of speech.

Jeyaretnam, who has paid libel damages of more than S$780,000 to Lee Kuan Yew over the years, told reporters in January: "We should look at the law of defamation to see if it is too restrictive."

Singapore's leaders disagree, saying that those who have been pursued for libel, including international publications, often make statements they are unable to justify in court.