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Singapore's High Court has ordered the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) to pay legal costs of S$7,000 and reasonable disbursements to the Attorney-General for deliberately publishing a false statement of fact.

According to a press release by the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC), the SDP had applied to set aside a Correction Direction (CD) issued to the party during the 2020 General Election (GE2020).

The CD had been issued over an article posted on the party's Facebook page.

The post alleged that the then-Chief Executive of the Housing and Development Board (HDB), Cheong Koon Hean, had said in a 2018 IPS-Nathan lecture that Singapore’s "population density" (based on total land area) would increase to 13,700 per square km and Singapore’s population would go up to nearly 10 million by 2030.

What did Cheong actually say?

The High Court dismissed the SDP's application against the CD on May 10, 2022, noting that the SDP had communicated a false statement of fact.

The High Court highlighted that Cheong did not suggest or imply that Singapore’s population would go up to nearly 10 million by 2030.

Cheong had "expressly" referred to Singapore reaching a "living density" of 13,700 per sq km by 2030, which is a figure calculated based only on the land available for urban areas (and not total land area).

The CD was therefore issued over SDP's false representation of Cheong's statement in her 2018 IPS-Nathan lecture.

In addition, the High Court also found that the SDP was aware at all "material" times, including prior to the publication of its article, that Cheong had referred to "living density", based on land available for urban areas, and not "population density", based on total land area.

This was due to HDB "explicitly" clarifying the terms in a forum article within The Straits Times two weeks after Cheong's lecture.

The court also found that SDP was aware of this clarification and concluded that SDP had "deliberately" included the false statement in its article.

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Top collage left image via Wikimedia Commons, right image via SDP Facebook