Beng Siang (left) and Baljit Singh (second left) speaking to media after filing the defamation suit against Guan Eng. — Bernama photo
GEORGE TOWN: A Chinese newspaper reporter yesterday filed a defamation suit against Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.
Ong Beng Siang, 40, of Guang Ming Daily, filed the suit at the High Court through Messrs Baljit Singh.
In his statement of claim, Ong, who has 23 years of journalistic experience, claimed that Lim had, on Jan 22, made a defamatory remark against him in a post on a social media website under the name of CM Lim Guan Eng.
Lim, when approached after opening the Penang @CAT programme at Wisma Yap Chor Ee here, said he left it to his lawyer to take the next course of action over the suit.
He said he had appointed lawyer Simon Murali to represent him in the case.
In his speech at the event earlier, Lim said the Penang government saw a huge potential in the technology industry and had urged the industry players to leverage their strong position in the sector.
He said that to transform Penang into an international and intelligent city, they must embrace the new future of digital technology, especially in the growing fields of Big Data Analytics, e-commerce, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT) and crowd sourcing.
“Penang @CAT was established in October 2015 to develop Penang’s tech start-up and entrepreneurship ecosystem where the Penang state government’s enterprising plan is to boost the local tech sector and bring the state’s many players under one roof.
“We see its role as both an incubator and accelerator of tech start-up and entrepreneurs to gain access to our three main pillars, namely the co-working space and shared facilities; tech community events; and entrepreneurship development programme,” he said. — Bernama