Public interest in Ng Boon Gay’s trial rising
The sex-for-favours trial of former Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) chief Ng Boon Gay has rocked Singapore as the most talked about topic this week.
Singaporeans have been spotted attending Ng’s hearing at the Subordinate Court on Friday with some 30 to 40 people queuing since morning to enter the 32-seat courtroom. Most of the attendees are middle-aged to senior men with only a handful of women.
50-year-old businessman Wong said that this is his first time attending a court hearing and he attended because he is interested in the legal aspect of the case.
“The case is quite high-profile. The legal aspect is quite interesting ... like how they prove corruption. I’m not that interested in the gory details,” he said.
Another 77-year-old retiree said he attended the hearing because he has been watching high profile cases for many years, including the TT Durai case.
“I’ve been here since 8:45am, but only managed to come in after lunch because we had to queue,” said 60-year-old GP Chua, who said he took full day’s leave to watch the hearing.
“It’s my first day watching the trial but I’m always interested in how good lawyers argue the case. ... I want to see how the lawyers argue his case because they are paid $2,000 an hour and how the counsel is able to challenge the deputy public prosecutor,” the engineer added.
Words such as “Ng Boon Gay” and “Cecilia Sue” have taken the third and fourth spot of the most searched keywords on Yahoo! Search. Searches for Ng in variations including 'picture of Ng Boon Gay', 'Peter Lim and Ng Boon Gay' spiked to 126,400 per cent for January this year, a month after the announcement of his arrest broke.
On 12 June, the day Ng was charged with corruption, searches for variations of 'Ng Boon Gay' spiked 4,938 per cent. On the same day, searches for 'Ng Boon Gay wife' spiked 1,050 per cent.
Searches for "Cecilia Sue" surfaced on 12 June, the day her identity was exposed, and searched spiked up to 116,600 per cent.
Some Singaporeans have also used popular memes to express how they feel about the case.
