Penang High Court awards RM400,000 to CM Kon Yeow in his defamation suit against tycoon Tan Kok Ping

Penang High Court Judge Datuk Quay Chew Soon said Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow, as the plaintiff, has successfully proven his case for defamation against the defendant, Tan Sri Tan Kok Ping. — Picture by Opalyn Mok

By Opalyn Mok

Tuesday, 03 Dec 2024 10:37 AM MYT

GEORGE TOWN, Dec 3 — The Penang High Court has awarded Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow with RM350,000 in damages and RM50,000 in costs in his defamation suit against Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce life honorary president Tan Sri Tan Kok Ping.

Penang High Court Judge Datuk Quay Chew Soon said Chow, as the plaintiff, has successfully proven his case for defamation against the defendant, Tan.

He found that Chow’s suit had satisfied all three elements in defamation, in that the impugned statement made by Tan had referred to Chow, that the statements were defamatory and that the statements were published.

“It is also my findings that the defences of justification, fair comment and qualified privilege were not proven and I find the defendant had acted with malice and was not entitled to rely on fair comment or qualified privilege,” he said.

He said the defamatory statement, that was uttered in Mandarin, lies in three words that translated to mean incompetent, ignorant and shameless.

“The plaintiff is the chief minister of Penang and must be perceived as capable and intelligent in the performance of his duties, he must command respect from the people of Penang,” he said when reading out the grounds for his judgement.

He said when an influential figure like Tan accused Chow of being incompetent, ignorant and shameless, it has the propensity to smear Chow’s reputation.

He also said that whatever the reasons Tan had to call a press conference on October 18 last year, there was no cause for Tan to single out Chow for public humiliation by describing him with those three words.

He said the press conference was on the joint development agreement (JDA) of the BKIP2 project but at the time of the press conference, the JDA was already terminated and the BKIP2 project had ceased to exist.

“Therefore, public interest was not served when it was on something that does not exist and this statement was not made on a privileged occasion as the public has no legal or moral duty of being informed of a non-existent project,” he said.

While he said there was a project and there were a lot of questions circling the project, at the end of the day, the JDA was terminated and the project had ceased to exist.

Quay said the Penang Development Corporation (PDC) had embarked on a different approach for the project so it was time to move on and not be saddled with the past.

He also found that Tan’s anger towards Chow regarding the Silver Jubilee Home issue had never subsided.

“Hence, when the opportunity arose for him to publicly humiliate the plaintiff, in respect of an issue which was unrelated to the Silver Jubilee fund, the defendant seized it,” he said.

He said a parallel can be drawn between what Tan said in his resignation letter from the Silver Jubilee trustee board and in his statement in the press conference made four months later.

“In essence, both amounted to a scathing attack on the character of Chow in his position as chief minister,” he said.

He said the circumstances under which Tan’s resignation letter was written might be different from the press conference but the nature of attack in both instances is the same.

“The attack is directed at the competency of the plaintiff as the chief minister, the statement made at the press conference and at paragraph 11 of the resignation letter bears similar connotations, thus when the defendant uttered the impugned statement, it is not wrong to postulate that he was echoing what was said four months earlier in his resignation letter,” he said.

In Chow’s suit, he had asked for damages of RM300,000 for each publication of the impugned statements made by Tan which totalled to RM2.1 million.

Quay said he is not in favour of making separate awards for each publication so he is awarding global damages of RM350,000 to Chow with interests of five per cent per annum from the date of judgement.

“In line of giving a single award, I won’t make a separate award on aggravated damages and exaggerated damages is not warranted as the defendant did not make the statement to enrich himself,” he said.

He also awarded Chow RM50,000 in costs.

“On apology, I decline to use my discretion to make an order as to forcing a public apology,” he said.

He said there was no indication from the defendant of any willingness to apologise and that a willingness to apologise should be sincere and conceived in a contrite heart.

“It is counterproductive to force an apology when he’s steadfast in his stance that the wrong he did was supposedly right,” he said.

Chow had filed the defamation suit against Tan after the latter made those remarks in a press conference regarding the proposed development project between PDC and Umech Land Sdn Bhd.

PDC had announced the termination of the JDA with Umech Land before Tan called the press conference where he called Chow incompetent, ignorant and shameless in Mandarin.

Tan’s remarks were published in six Chinese newspapers and one English daily.