I am deeply disappointed at the threat of legal action that the Prime Minister has taken against blogger Alex Au.
I read his four articles again and found that he had been quite fair in his comments and had asked important questions of public interest. I did not find anything defamatory in the articles. (Correct me, if I am wrong).
The defamatory statements could be contained in the comments posted by other people in the article and "approved" by Alex. Many of these comments are posted by anonymous people, who are untraceable - at least to Alex. As there could be hundreds of these comments, it would be impossible for Alex to check all of them.
Most people ignore these comments anyway. I do not see why the Prime Minister should feel offended at comments that are incredible and generally treated like the rantings of mad people. They should be ignored by him or by other people.
I have personally experienced personal attacks, insults and defamatory comments of a more serious kind in the social media. I generally ignore most of them, although on a few occasions I did ask the moderator to remove some of the very bad ones.
Some of these comments could be done deliberately by people in the "Internet brigade" with the sole intention of creating trouble for Alex Au. I have experienced the malicious work of these people in my Facebook (www.facebook.com/kinlian).
More importantly, we need to have a society that behave with integrity and fairness; and the leaders should set an example.
Tan Kin Lian
This new legal threat seems to have backfired on PM Lee.
ReplyDeleteHe did not backup with a clear, concise explanation on why the software was sold in the first place, and then leased back to the 14 TCs, but still have to be maintained by SCS, the original inventor of the software.
Why go through a middleman and incur unnecessary expenses for the TCs?
Most likely the PM was not aware of
this matter at all, but avoiding the question makes the legal threat less credible and convincing to the public, esp to HDB dwellers who are already unhappy with the recent increase in their S & C charges.
The Chinese proverb of killing some chickens to warn the monkey is a better strategy to use here.
Respect could be garnered with frankness and decisive action, the only way to put out the fires.
To me, that letter of demand was bordering on the ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteI have made many comments in Alex's blog.
Dare say, those who posted stronger views were only expessing their frustrations in view of the "non answers" that Dr Teo had provided.
Well, if intimidation by way of lawyers' letters had to be resorted to quell the dismay and dissatisfaction arising from that AIM -AHTC affairs, it says a lot about those behind it.