Feer loses appeal

Feer loses appeal
Article by editor defamed two Singapore leaders by implication, say judges
By Zakir Hussain

THE Court of Appeal on Wednesday upheld a High Court decision that the publisher and editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Feer) defamed two Singapore leaders in a 2006 article.

In dismissing Feer's appeal, the three-judge court said the article by Feer editor Hugo Restall, headlined 'Singapore's 'Martyr', Chee Soon Juan', defamed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew by implication.

The article deliberately associated and compared the highly secretive way in which former National Kidney Foundation (NKF) chief T.T. Durai ran the charity with how Singapore government officials controlled huge pools of public money, the judges said in their written judgment.

'This, the article suggested, meant that Singaporeans had no way of knowing whether government officials were abusing their trust just as Durai had abused the public's trust in the NKF,' they added.

The appeal was heard by Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, Appeal Judge Andrew Phang and Justice Judith Prakash in May.

Their 201-page judgment said that while the article was about opposition politician Chee, 'the fulcrum of the article was really the NKF saga, which Hugo Restall used as a basis of comparison with the way in which Singapore had been governed'.