Pritam Singh Testifies At Committee Of Privileges Hearing
Last week, former Sengkang MP Raeesah Khan gave evidence before the Committee Of Privileges (COP).
One of the shocking things she said then was that Workers’ Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh had advised her to keep on lying in Parliament.
However, Mr Singh has since clarified to the COP that this wasn’t what he’d meant when he told her he would “not judge” her.
In fact, in his understanding, he’d told her to take personal responsibility and clarify the truth.
Pritam Singh’s hearing took 9 hours
Mr Singh’s account of events was detailed in a 3rd special report from the COP, released on Sunday (12 Dec).
The Leader of the Opposition’s hearing lasted a whopping 9 hours on Friday (10 Dec), after which the COP saw fit to produce another special report.
You can read the 16-page document here, watch YouTube videos of the proceedings, or read on for some pertinent highlights.
Raeesah didn’t admit lies to Pritam Singh initially
After Ms Khan gave a speech that contained untruths in Parliament on 3 Aug, she met Mr Singh in his office.
He asked her about the anecdote she’d told about a rape victim who left the police station in tears.
She told Mr Singh that she couldn’t contact the victim – failing to admit that she’d lied.
He told her to clarify on the record, in Parliament, if that’s so. He drafted a statement for her based on what she’d told him, and she delivered it in Parliament after revising 1 sentence.
Pritam was angry & upset when he found out the truth
Mr Singh continued to ask Ms Khan about her story over the next few days, he said.
On 7 Aug, they spoke on the phone, and he asked her point-blank: Did the story she told in Parliament really happen?
This time, she finally confessed that she’d been untruthful.
Mr Singh was “very angry and upset” to hear this and ended the call.
An emotional meeting on 8 Aug
The very next day, on 8 Aug, Mr Singh met Ms Khan at his home with WP chairman Sylvia Lim and vice-chairman Faisal Manap.
There, Ms Khan told the 3 leaders that she’d been sexually assaulted in Australia as an 18-year-old student, crying as she shared this.
Mr Singh said everyone was shocked at this news and were sympathetic to Ms Khan.
Mr Faisal, giving evidence on 9 Dec, similarly said that the trio was “overwhelmed” by her revelation.
Pritam Singh wanted Raeesah to speak to parents about assault first
Ms Khan’s disclosure also served to derail any discussion over her Parliament untruths—the 3 leaders were more concerned about her well-being.
Mr Singh said that he was prepared to give her time to speak to her parents about the sexual assault. In fact, that would be a “condition precedent” to her coming clean in Parliament.
On her lies, he told her before she left,
We’ll have to deal with this issue, but speak to your parents first.
Pritam Singh denies asking Raeesah to take it to the grave
However, after the 8 Aug meeting, Ms Khan sent a WhatsApp message to her assistant Loh Pei Ying and party cadre Yudhishthra Nathan.
She told them that she met the 3 leaders and told them about the “police accusation”, adding,
I told them what I told you guys, and they’ve agreed
that the best thing to do is to take the information to the grave.
Mr Singh denied advising Ms Khan to take her lies “to the grave”.
He also disagreed with her account of the 8 Aug meeting, saying they didn’t discuss referring her to the COP.
Similarly, Mr Faisal also told the COP that Ms Khan had lied when she said they’d told her to take her lie “to the grave”.
Pritam Singh says Raeesah may have disassociation
Since both Mr Singh and Mr Faisal said Mr Khan lied in her WhatsApp message, the Leader of the Opposition was asked why she might have lied.
Mr Singh replied that she’d later told the WP Disciplinary Panel that she might have “disassociation”.
That’s a disorder where people are disconnected from their thoughts, memories, feelings, actions or sense of who they are.
Saying it was the first time he’d heard of such a condition, Mr Singh asked her what it was, and she said,
It’s when I talk without thinking.
Mr Singh then asked the COP to consider asking Ms Khan to undergo a psychological assessment.
Pritam told Raeesah to take responsibility
From 8 Aug to 3 Oct, Mr Singh didn’t discuss anything with Ms Khan about her Parliament untruths.
On 3 Oct – the day before the 4 Oct Parliament sitting – Mr Singh visited Ms Khan’s home and told her that she might be asked about the story she told on 3 Aug.
He thus added that “if the issue came up”, she had “to take responsibility and ownership of the issue”.
If she did this, he “will not judge” her. Mr Singh told the COP that he’d meant for her to tell the truth in Parliament.
However, he told the COP,
She completely read the wrong thing that I had put to her.
Raeesah lies again on 4 Oct
However, it seems Ms Khan didn’t have the same interpretation of Mr Singh’s words. On 4 Oct, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam asked her for more info on her anecdote.
As he was making his ministerial statement, she sent Mr Singh a message, asking him,
What should I do, Pritam?
This was at odds with what Mr Singh thought he advised her to do, which is to come clean. Subsequently, Ms Khan again repeated the lie in response to Minister Shanmugam.
Raeesah finally prepared to tell the truth
That same night, Ms Khan met Mr Singh and Ms Lim in his office for a short while.
Ms Khan was in a daze, he recalled, but said something interesting,
Perhaps there is another way. That is, to tell the truth.
Mr Singh understood that as meaning that she was finally prepared to tell the truth and was relieved. He replied,
Good, we’ll talk about it.
However, it would be 1 Nov before Ms Khan finally came clean in Parliament and apologised.
Raeesah was not told to ignore police
On 7 Oct, the police invited Ms Khan to help them with investigations over her Parliament anecdote on 3 Aug.
She asked Mr Singh what to do, and he told her to tell the police that she would answer in Parliament.
This is because it was clear to him that the untruths had to be corrected in Parliament, where they were made, he told the COP.
However, he didn’t tell Ms Khan to meet the police. Neither did he tell her not to meet the police.
Pritam Singh feels police wouldn’t be adversely affected by the lie
As for the police, some might say that Ms Khan’s untruths painted a negative picture of them.
However, Mr Singh denied that the police would be adversely affected by the lie.
In fact, he didn’t feel either that Ms Khan’s lie did a wrong to the police as they were not a “broken-back” organisation.
After all, Ms Khan had been questioned right away on 3 Aug – by Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan – and could not substantiate her story.
Thus, he questioned whether the police had put in much work to check her story in the first place since Mr Tan had already said then that the police couldn’t find any such case.
Strong rebuttals to Raeesah’s account
So far, WP leaders Mr Singh and Mr Faisal have strongly refuted several things Ms Khan said in front of the COP.
Though it seems they could’ve been clearer and more decisive in telling her to come clean, they’ve also denied that the party told her to keep on lying.
So was it all a big misunderstanding? Whom do you believe more?
Perhaps you might want to reserve your judgement until Ms Lim, and Sengkang MP Jamus Lim gives evidence to the COP.
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Featured image adapted from Gov.sg on YouTube.
