Nod for contempt proceedings against Li Shengwu

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s High Court yesterday granted leave for the attorney-general’s office to begin contempt of court proceedings against Li Shengwu, a grandson of the city state’s late founding leader Lee Kuan Yew, over comments he made last month about the country’s legal system.

According to correspondence released by Li, the attorney-general’s chambers (AGC) had offered to stop pursuing the case against Li, whose uncle is the nation’s current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, if he apologised by Monday afternoon for a Facebook post from July 15 in which Li said “the Singapore government is very litigious and has a pliant court system.”

In a reply to the AGC’s offer, Li wrote in a letter dated Aug 18: “The truth matters: I cannot confess to a crime I did not commit in return for a discontinuance of the legal proceedings against me.”

Senior state counsel Francis Ng, from the AGC, has previously described the Facebook post as an egregious and baseless attack on the Singapore legal system.

Li, who is a junior fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, yesterday posted Facebook links to the offer letter and his response. In that response, Li said the AGC has now accepted he doesn’t need to delete his now amended Facebook post. On Aug 4, Li said he did not mean to attack the Singapore judiciary and he had amended the “private” post to avoid misunderstanding.

The AGC declined to provide comment on the correspondence Li released.

Li’s troubles are related to a feud between Lee Kuan Yew’s three children over the fate of Lee’s house.

The dispute has been simmering since Lee Kuan Yew died in 2015 but exploded into public view this summer in a highly unusual display of discord. – Reuters