The Online Citizen (TOC) socio-political website has applied for a judicial review of correction directions on several online posts about the salary of Temasek Holdings chief executive officer Ho Ching.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat had instructed the Protection From Online Falsehoods And Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office to issue four correction directions on April 19 regarding the posts.
During a parliamentary session on Tuesday (May 5), the Workers’ Party’s Mr Leon Perera had asked why the posts on Ms Ho’s salary were deemed to harm the public interest, which is one of the conditions for invoking Pofma.
Ms Indranee Rajah, who is Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and Second Minister for Education and for Finance, said she was not able to answer the question as TOC had filed for a judicial review and the matter was now before the court.
The website was among four parties asked to correct claims that the annual salary of Ms Ho, who is Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s wife, is “NT$2.1 billion”, “about 100 million SGD” or “S$99 million a year”.
Along with TOC’s Facebook page and website, the others who received the correction directions were The Temasek Review’s Facebook page, HardwareZone user “darksiedluv” and opposition politician and lawyer Lim Tean for sharing the falsehood on his Facebook page.
Temasek Holdings said last month (April 19) that claims that Ms Ho’s annual salary is “around S$100 million” are false.
In a statement published on its website titled Temasek Compensation Framework, the state investment firm wrote that there has been “chatter based on an Asian talk show commentary, which claims that Ho Ching’s annual salary is around S$100 million”.
“This claim is false,” it added.
There has been much speculation in the country about Ms Ho’s salary, with people guessing and attempting to calculate the amount. /TISG