The showdown of the year isn’t Beow Tan vs. Sovereign Lady or Josh vs. Josh. Neither is it holding a placard vs. the Law.
It’s the Leong vs. Lee battle.
Blogger Leong Sze Hian, who was sued over the defamation of Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Loong, managed to crowdfund the full amount of damages and cost on Saturday (15 May).
He managed to raise a total of S$262,327.22, consisting of S$133,000 in damages and S$129,327.22 in costs. And all these through crowdfunding.
Honestly, that’s pretty impressive.
Back in March, Leong had announced the crowdfunding campaign together with his lawyer, Lim Tean, in the days following the court judgment.
Among the more prominent donors are former politicians Chiam See Tong and Lina Chiam, who accompanied their donations with a message thanking Leong for his contribution to the Singapore People’s Party (SPP).
In just 11 days, over 2,000 contributors had raised the S$133,000.
But what exactly did he do to pay this insane amount?
Leong Vs. Lee Defamation Case
If you forgot what exactly went on, here’s a recap of the events.
On 7 November 2018, Leong shared a link to an article from the Malaysian news site The Coverage in a Facebook post. The article alleged that PM Lee had helped former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak launder money from 1MDB, a Malaysian state fund.
For those who don’t know, Najib was accused of channelling over RM 2.67 billion from 1MDB to his personal bank accounts.
The article, as well as a photograph of Najib and PM Lee, gave the impression that the two were in cahoots, and that PM Lee was complicit in Najib’s criminal activity.
The result? Payment of S$133,000 for defamation. The sum includes S$100,000 in general damages and S$33,000 in aggravated damages.
In a written judgement on Wednesday (24 March), Justice Aedit Abdullah explained that Leong had shared the offending article “without making any enquiries as to its truth whatsoever” and exhibited “reckless disregard of whether the article was true or not”.
The judge said that because the blogger refused to apologise for the defamatory words, malice may have been involved.
The People Have Crowdfunded
That initial amount had significantly increased to the total sum of S$262,000, but his crowdfunding paid off. Literally.
Despite being banned from posting in any groups and from posting links on Facebook, Leong successfully managed to meet the deadline for the payment of damages and costs—17 May, 5:00pm.
According to The Straits Times, Lim had delivered a cashier’s order for the sum to PM Lee’s lawyers on Monday afternoon (17 May).
Leong wrote in his Facebook post that he was “very very grateful for your support, concern and encouragement, over these two and a half years!”
Unfortunately, there was no epic poem to accompany his message this time.
Feature Image: Facebook (Leong Sze Hian) / Facebook (Lee Hsien Loong)
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