WP chief Pritam Singh testifies he didn't speak to Raeesah Khan about lie for nearly 2 months after he found out

SINGAPORE — Workers' Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh has testified to Parliament's Committee of Privileges that there was no communication between him and former party member Raeesah Khan from Aug 8, the day she met WP leaders to explain why she had lied in Parliament on Aug 3, until Oct 3, the day before Parliament sat that month.

The Leader of the Opposition also acknowledged that when he met Ms Raeesah on Oct 3, he did not specifically tell her to admit the truth.

However, he said that this was what he meant, by the words that he had chosen to use.

According to the committee’s third report on the hearings into Ms Raeesah lies in Parliament, which was released on Sunday (Dec 12), Mr Singh told Ms Raeesah that the issue might surface on Oct 4 and, if it did, that she should “take responsibility and ownership of the issue”.

Mr Singh said this is what he meant when he said he would “not judge” her.

He also denied asking Ms Raeesah to take her untruth “to the grave”.

Mr Singh had given evidence on Friday, and the report released on Sunday comprised a summary of the evidence he provided.

The party’s vice-chairman, Mr Faisal Manap, gave evidence on Thursday and the committee released the summary of his evidence in its second report on Saturday.

It revealed that WP’s top three leaders — Mr Singh, Mr Faisal and party chairman Sylvia Lim — had known for months about Ms Raeesah’s lie but they did not reveal this to the rest of the leadership or its cadres.

The committee asked Mr Singh on Friday if the suppression of the fact that Ms Raeesah had admitted to her lie to some of the WP leaders on Aug 8, and that Mr Singh had spoken with her on Oct 3, would give the impression that it was all Ms Raeesah's doing.

Mr Singh replied that it was irrelevant to mention these facts in the two press statements the party had released.

‘WHAT SHOULD I DO?’

The committee heard that on Oct 4, when Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam made a ministerial statement about Ms Raeesah’s anecdote in Parliament, she had sent a text message to Mr Singh.

It read: “What should I do, Pritam?” which Mr Singh agreed was at odds with the evidence he gave that he expected Ms Raeesah to tell the truth if the matter came up.

The opposition leader said he did not respond to the message before Ms Raeesah stood to answer Mr Shanmugam’s questions by repeating her lie.

Mr Singh agreed with the committee that this created a far more grave situation, not for the party, but for Ms Raeesah as she had continued the lie and repeated it.

Nevertheless, he agreed that as the Leader of the Opposition, he had a duty to correct Ms Raeesah falsehood.

Mr Singh said he only read Ms Raeesah’s message at around 12.45pm, after her exchange with Mr Shanmugam, and responded they would “speak after sitting. Keep Chair and I posted”.

The committee heard that Ms Raeesah met Mr Singh and Ms Lim in the Leader of the Opposition’s office for a “very short” meeting that day at around 11pm, just before parliamentary sitting ended.

Mr Singh recalled that Ms Khan was in a daze and said: “Perhaps there is another way. That is, to tell the truth.”

He added that he was very upset and replied: “But look at the choice you made.”

Still, he did not question Ms Raeesah on why she had not told the truth.

The committee said he should have, instead of just messaging Ms Raeesah to see him in his office, but Mr Singh disagreed that his conduct did not make sense.

He was also asked if Ms Raeesah’s words, “Perhaps there is another way. That is, to tell the truth”, suggested that she was under an impression that she was not to tell the truth.

Mr Singh disagreed, and said that his takeaway from the meeting was that she was now prepared to tell the truth.

He said that he was relieved to hear that, as it was the first time she said she wanted to own up to what she said in Parliament.

The next discussion Mr Singh and Ms Lim had with Ms Raeesah was on Oct 12, after she forwarded an email from the police, requesting for her assistance over the anecdote, to the two party leaders.

Mr Singh said he initiated a meeting that day with Ms Raeesah and Ms Lim.

He said Ms Raeesah had wanted to discuss the advice that she received from her lawyers about the police’s request, but he wanted to talk about how she should correct her untruth in Parliament.

The report said that Ms Raeesah’s lawyers shared a similar view with Mr Singh that she should address the untruth in Parliament.

However, Mr Singh said Ms Raeesah was initially still unwilling to make a speech in Parliament to correct her untruth, which made Ms Lim “very upset”.

Mr Singh said he had “impressed upon Ms Raeesah” that there was no other way but to do so, and she eventually agreed.

PRITAM SUGGESTS PSYCHOLOGICAL TEST FOR RAEESAH

The committee had released its first report on Dec 3 that contained testimony from Ms Raeesah saying she had been told by WP's top three leaders to stick to the lie she had made in Parliament.

She had also testified under oath that she was told by the leaders that if she and the party could get away with it, there was no need to clarify the lie.

Ms Raeesah informed the committee that on Aug 8, she told Ms Loh Pei Ying, her secretarial assistant, and Mr Yudhishthra Nathan, a volunteer with WP, what had transpired at her meeting with the three WP leaders.

She told them in a WhatsApp message that Mr Singh, Ms Lim and Mr Faisal "agreed that the best thing to do is to take the information to the grave".

When the committee asked Mr Singh why she had lied in the WhatsApp messages to the two cadre members, Mr Singh said that Ms Raeesah told the party’s disciplinary panel — made up of Mr Singh, Mr Faisal and Ms Lim — that she might have dissociation, which is a condition when a person is disconnected from his thoughts, feelings, memories and surroundings.

Mr Singh asked the committee to consider asking Ms Raeesah to go for a psychological assessment.

According to the second report issued by the committee on Saturday, Mr Faisal testified that Ms Raeesah had a meeting on Aug 8 with Mr Singh, Ms Lim and himself where she confessed that she lied during her parliamentary speech on Aug 3.

But the three leaders did not react to her confession because they had been overwhelmed after she told them that she had been sexually assaulted as a student in Australia when she was 18 years old.

The first report from the committee also included testimonies from Ms Loh and Mr Nathan that their leaders should have publicly disclosed their knowledge of Ms Raeesah’s lie earlier.

Mr Singh told the committee that he met the two cadre members on Oct 12.

He said that it was a reasonable conclusion that based on what he told them about his meeting with Ms Raeesah on Oct 3, they got the impression that he had left it to Ms Raeesah to decide what she would do, and that he would not judge her.

Mr Singh added that he may have left them with the impression that he had not given clear instructions to Ms Raeesah to come clean, even if asked.

The report also states that Mr Singh agreed with the committee that he did not tell Ms Loh and Mr Nathan that Ms Raeesah had been expected to tell the truth when asked on Oct 4, but that she had disobeyed and repeated the lie.

The report and video recording of Mr Singh's testimony have been made available to Parliament as well as to the public on the Parliament website.