When Roy Ngerng’s friends urged him to ask the public to help fund his bill for defaming Singapore’s prime minister, he was dubious: Six years had passed since the verdict.
Ngerng had been paying 100 Singapore dollars each month off the SG$150,000 ($112,000) that was subsequently awarded to Lee Hsien Loong for his accusation that Lee misappropriated Singapore’s state pension money. So it caught him off-guard last month when he raised the roughly SG$144,000 he still owed in just nine days of crowdfunding, via 2,132 people.
He was following the lead of another Singaporean blogger, Leong Sze Hian, who said he raised SG$133,000 from 2,000 people within two weeks to pay off damages awarded by the High Court in March. That was for posting a link to a Malaysian news site that alleged Lee helped launder funds from a scandal-hit Malaysian sovereign wealth fund, claims Lee called a "grave attack” on his personal integrity and reputation.