| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立暨南國際大學 === 東南亞研究所 === 99 === The Singapore officials have sued the media and the opposition party public figures for defamation, all have won by the Singapore officials. Whether the law of Singapore does safeguard the criticism of government officials?
This thesis studied: How does the court of Singapore resolve the conflict between the freedom of speech and the right of official reputation, analyzed defamatory suits from “Lee kuan Yew v JB Jeyaretnam [1978-1979] SLR 429” to “Review Publishing Co Ltd and Another v Lee Hsien Loong and Another Appeal [2009] SGCA 46”, understood what is the legal boundary for the criticism of government officials in Singapore? Under defamation law of Singapore, if the defendant can prove that defamatory statements of government officials to be true, it will constitute truth defense to immunize the defamatory liability. If the defendant can not prove political statements that he defamed government officials to be true, the public interest is not enough to constitute qualified privilege. In other words, under defamation law of Singapore, the criticism of government officials would protect by law, only if the defendant can prove that is real.
This thesis research discovered: First, the defamation law of Singapore has not emphasized the importance of protecting political speech, the court does not protect untrue speech of defaming government officials, the court have rejected the Reynolds privilege and the Actual Malice Rule, thus limited the expansion of the freedom of speech and press. Second, the court has emphasized the importance of the government official reputation, any political speech involved criticism of government leaders, it eroded political figures reputation's core, the honesty and the integrity. Therefore the defendant must compensate large money for proving the honesty of government leaders.
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