Singapore Democrats
In the recent defamation suit hearing to assess damages, Mr Lee Kuan Yew testified in court that the President of the International Bar Association (IBA) had written to the Law Society of Singapore praising the judiciary here.
This letter was apparently written following the organisation’s annual conference held in Singapore in September last year.
The following is what Mr Lee said in court:
“Your honour, the International Bar Association decided to honour Singapore and hold its annual conference in this city and you [Dr Chee] were given an opportunity to present your case, with your complaint that Singapore lack the rule of law. There were some 3000 lawyers there.
I think they left Singapore with a very different impression from what you have projected because we have a letter from the President of the International Bar Association to the organisers, namely the Law Society of Singapore, how successful the meeting was and how impressed they were by the standards they found to obtain in the judiciary – ” (see here also)
But the IBA has confirmed to the SDP that there was no such letter. According to the IBA its president did not write such a letter. The Law Society of Singapore has also denied that it has received any such letter from the IBA.
An IBA official said: “If there is another source of this letter, we do not know about it.”
Mr Lee gave this evidence in the witness box during cross-examination by Dr Chee Soon Juan on 27 May 08.
The SDP will seek legal advice on this latest development.
In a related matter, Mr Lee’s press secretary wrote to the Wall Street Journal stating that Dr Chee had called Singapore leaders “murderers, robbers, child molesters” and “rapists” in open court.
Dr Chee clearly said no such thing and has written to the newspaper challenging the Minister Mentor to produce the records showing that he (Dr Chee) did. (See here).