Singapore leaders demand $929,000 from 'IHT' daily
Singapore leaders demand $929,000 from 'IHT' daily
SINGAPORE (AFP): Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong yesterday
demanded S$500,000 (US$357,000) in damages from the International
Herald Tribune (IHT) over a 1994 article alleging political
nepotism in Singapore.
This brought to S$1.3 million ($929,000) the total amount of
damages sought by Goh, former premier Lee Kuan Yew, and his son,
deputy premier Lee Hsien Loong, in a libel suit against the
Paris-based daily.
The two Lees had each sought S$400,000 in damages during a
hearing Thursday on the case, stemming from an Aug. 2, 1994
opinion piece.
Lawyers for Singapore's three top leaders have told High Court
judge Goh Joon Sang that the article implied that the junior Lee,
43, rose up the ranks not on his own merit but because of his 71-
year-old father.
Lee Kuan Yew, who now holds the title of Senior Minister,
served as premier for three decades until stepping down in 1990,
when Goh, 54, took over.
Lawyer Harry Elias, presenting Goh's demand for damages, told
the High Court on Friday that his client was deeply hurt by the
IHT article.
He said awarding the sum sought by Goh would serve as a
warning to the outside world that Singapore will not tolerate
such allegations against its prime minister.
Among other things, the IHT article, extracts of which have
been read out in court, said: "Dynastic politics is evident in
'Communist' China already, as in Singapore, despite official
commitments to bureaucratic meritocracy."
Elias said the article embarrassed Goh before his cabinet
colleagues.
He said the damages to be awarded by the court must measure up
"to the hurt that has been caused," adding that to be accused of
"aiding and abetting nepotism, corruption" in selecting the
deputy premier "erodes everything" that Goh stands for.
Elias added: "We must show the public that if you take on the
PM in the hallowed sanctity of what he stands for, then you must
really point out to that award and say to the world: that is the
quantum if you take us on in relation to what I stand for."
The trial, which is expected to go into next week, is to
assess the level of damages for the trio. IHT has already
apologized unreservedly for the article, and undertaken not to
make further allegations "to the same or similar effect."
Singapore, a prosperous city-state where dissent is
discouraged in favor of consensus and national stability, has had
several legal brushes with foreign publications deemed to have
criticized its political system.
Goh's demand for damages came as his war of words with a
prominent U.S. press critic took a fresh twist.
William Safire, in a New York Times column carried yesterday
by Singapore's leading daily The Straits Times, rejected a
challenge to face Goh in a televised debate in Singapore on
democracy and other issues.
Safire said he would rather face Lee Kuan Yew in a debate in
Switzerland.
Goh had issued the challenge earlier this week after Safire,
who had attacked Singapore in the past, called into a question a
plan by the Massachusetts-based Williams College to confer
academic honors on Goh.
Goh proposed a debate at the National University of Singapore
with Safire and George Crane, a Williams College political
scientist organizing a protest against giving the premier, a
Williams alumnus, an honorary degree.
Safire, saying a debate in Singapore would be a "set-up," said
his proposed debate with Lee should be held at the next World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which both of them have
addressed in the past.
Goh should first face off with Francis Seow, a dissident
former Singapore solicitor-general now based in the United
States, Safire said.
"We will reply in due course," Chan Heng Wing, press secretary
to the prime minister, told AFP.