Chee Hong Tat accuses Leon Perera of ‘false charges’ over Parliament video

SINGAPORE — A terse exchange in Parliament on Tuesday spilled over to social media on Thursday (Nov 9), with Senior Minister of State Chee Hong Tat accusing Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Leon Perera of trying to “score political points” by implying Mediacorp had edited parliamentary footage in a partisan manner.

“This was a serious accusation. But it was false, and unfair to Mediacorp who work very hard to prepare footages after every Parliament sitting,” wrote Mr Chee on Facebook.

“It is part of debate to criticise and present different views. But it is unethical and wrong to tell untruths to score political points. This is not what Singaporeans want to see in Parliament.”

Responding in a Facebook post, Mr Perera said he did not state that the footage in question had been edited in a partisan manner.

He said his questions in Parliament had been about ownership of the copyright to parliamentary video footage and why “live” feeds of Parliament sittings could not be made available, as is the case in many other countries.

In Parliament, the pair had debated the extent to which clips of parliamentary footage could be edited by Mediacorp for various social media platforms.

This led to Mr Chee asking Mr Perera to give an example of clips that were being edited, so the government could look into it.

Citing the debate in February on changes to the Presidential Elections Act, Mr Perera said Mediacorp had put up a video with “certain bits removed”.

“I actually communicated with Mediacorp and through the correspondence, they made a rectification and put up a different clip, so that was resolved quite amicably,” he said.

When Mr Chee sought clarification on the timeline of events, Mr Perera said he could accept what Mr Chee had detailed as fact.

Mr Chee said Mr Perera had written to Mediacorp on February 20 to ask why a particular video clip had been truncated, and the broadcaster had replied saying it was due to a technical glitch. The full clip was made available online on Feb 18, Mediacorp told Mr Perera.

On Tuesday, both men had another exchange over curbs on tobacco products. Mr Chee questioned if Mr Perera had “any interest to declare” and if Henkel, which he said was a key manufacturer of adhesives for cigarettes, was a client of the Spire Group, of which Mr Perera is chief executive.

Mr Perera said he rejected “in the strongest possible terms any insinuation” his comments during the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sales) Bill debate were motivated by the prospect of commercial gain for himself or his company.

During the debate, he had suggested exploring the option of giving confirmed smokers controlled access to e-cigarettes as a means of smoking cessation and harm reduction, if scientific evidence showed e-cigarettes could be used for smoking cessation.

Responding to Mr Chee, Mr Perera said his company does not undertake tobacco product work, as a general rule. “I clarified that my company had worked with Henkel as an adhesives company which supplies to a range of end-user applications. To the best of my knowledge, Henkel is not a tobacco product manufacturer,” Mr Perera said in a Facebook post on Wednesday.