Sylvia Lim says her handwritten notes back Pritam Singh's position, contrary to privileges committee's finding

SINGAPORE — Workers’ Party (WP) chairman Sylvia Lim said that her handwritten notes had supported the position of her party leader Pritam Singh, contrary to what the Committee of Privileges found.

Speaking during the debate on Tuesday (Feb 15) on two parliamentary motions related to the committee's recommendations, the Member of Parliament (MP) for Aljunied Group Representation Constituency (GRC) sought to explain her notes that were taken at a disciplinary panel convened by the party to look into its former MP Raeesah Khan’s lies to Parliament.

The notes, which were voluntarily submitted by Ms Lim during her testimony before the committee, had set out some exchanges from the WP panel, including one where Mr Singh had told Ms Raeesah that “it was your call".

The committee concluded in its report that this was “extremely damaging” to Mr Singh’s position, since the Leader of the Opposition had testified that he did not give Ms Raeesah a choice on whether to keep to the lie she told Parliament or tell the truth.

Ms Lim is the only one of the three WP senior leaders who was not referred to the Public Prosecutor, because the committee had taken into consideration her voluntary submission of these notes. 

On the other hand, it recommended that Mr Singh and WP vice-chair Faisal Manap be referred to the Public Prosecutor for further investigation, due to Mr Singh's conduct during the inquiry into Ms Raeesah’s lie and Mr Faisal's refusal to answer relevant questions.

However, on Tuesday, Ms Lim said that her notes showed the opposite to what the committee had concluded.

“I take a different view. If read in the proper context, my evidence is not inconsistent and not damaging to Mr Singh. In fact, it is consistent with his evidence that he was telling her she had to tell the truth,” she added.

Stating that her notes had to be taken in totality, she read out an extract of her notes from the disciplinary panel, including one that showed Mr Singh asking Ms Raeesah if it had occurred to her to tell the truth.

• Mr Singh: "Before Oct session, I met you + I told you it was your call. Did need to tell the truth in Parl occur to you?"
• Ms Raeesah: "Yes but consumed with guilt + own experience. Thought it wouldn't come up."
• Mr Singh: "Can't lie, right?"
• Ms Raeesah: "Yes."

Ms Lim continued: “Just looking at this extract, we see that when Mr Singh says to her, ‘Can't lie, right?’, Ms Khan does not contradict him. She says 'yes', which is an acceptance that you cannot lie. Does this not mean that she understood what he meant all along?”

Aside from this, Ms Lim also disagreed with the conclusions made by the committee based on her testimony and evidence, including one where Ms Lim said the committee had “somehow recognised Mr Singh had acted contrary to his duties as an MP to tell the truth”.

The committee had based this on her quote that she could not fathom the possibility that Mr Singh would have given Ms Raeesah the option to choose between telling the truth or continuing the lie.

Ms Lim said that she had also testified at the time that she “could not imagine Mr Singh giving this kind of choice” and that she does not believe he would do it. 

“That puts a totally different complexion to the paragraph cited by the Committee of Privileges.”

The WP chairman then noted public discussion that the committee “is overwhelmingly dominated by ruling party members”, and called for three out of the eight committee members to be from the opposition bench.

“As it currently stands, the committee only has one out of its eight members from the opposition Workers’ Party. This does not bode well for fair hearing in Parliament where the ruling party has a supermajority of 90 per cent,” Ms Lim added.

She also called for legal representation to be allowed in Committee of Privileges proceedings, which would allow it to focus on evaluating the evidence dispassionately “rather than have committee members actively positing a certain case theory and trying to break witnesses down”.

Ms Lim then said that guidelines to safeguard the dignity of witnesses were needed during the committee’s proceedings, pointing out that Mr Faisal was questioned for six hours, while Mr Singh was questioned for nine hours in a single day.

“My own questioning was less than three hours long. I waited for two days in a guarded room and was denied the use of any communication devices. When I needed to visit the bathroom, I was accompanied by security and when I requested to use the disabled toilet to have more space, permission was sought,” Ms Lim added.

“Doesn't all this border on oppressive? Our courts of law do not subject witnesses to such treatment.”

Mr Faisal, in a short speech in Malay, also rejected the committee's allegation that he, Mr Singh and Ms Lim had lied during its probe, and that they had not told Ms Raeesah to continue with the lie. He added that he would cooperate with the Public Prosecutor.

"Since our party was formed, we have gone through many challenging times. In facing this current situation, I am confident that we will continue with great courage to continue our mission to give our services to the community," Mr Faisal said.

Ms Raeesah, who was MP for Sengkang GRC, has since resigned. She had lied about witnessing a sexual assault victim being treated insensitively at a police station when she had not been there.

RESPONSE FROM LEADER OF THE HOUSE

In her closing speech on both motions, Leader of the House Indranee Rajah said that it was not accurate for Ms Lim to suggest that the Committee of Privileges did not take the opposition leader’s evidence into account, as it had considered and included these points in the report.

She then suggested that Ms Lim’s next strategy was to “cast aspersions on the Committee of Privileges itself”, such as its composition.

Ms Indranee said that the rule for the committee to reflect the current balance of Parliament has been a longstanding one, and former WP chief Low Thia Khiang had also been on the committee for the revision of the rules at one stage, but there has been no complaints about this.

“Dennis Tan (WP MP for Hougang) was nominated by Mr Singh (into the committee), and he certainly did not complain at that time, or say that he should have more opposition members," Ms Indranee added.

“So it just rather does sound as though if you don't like the outcome of the Committee of Privileges, then you complain about how it is composed when it was never an issue before.”

Turning to Ms Lim’s suggestion on legal representation, Ms Indranee said that the committee does consider allowing outside counsel if witnesses apply and there is good reason for it. 

“I think the more important point to remember here is that Mr Singh is a lawyer and so is Ms Lim. I don’t think they really needed external counsel to be able to answer the questions that were put to them, which were not particularly difficult and were well within their ability to understand and respond to.”

As for Ms Lim’s feedback about the time taken to question witnesses, Mr Indranee said that the length of time that it takes to do an inquiry depends on the witnesses’ ability to answer questions. 

“I have done cross-examination in court myself. The witnesses who give you the answers in a straightforward and straight manner, actually go off very quickly. The ones who don't give a straight answer, the ones who you really have to extract the information from — those take a long time,” she added.