Pritam Singh loses appeal against conviction: Key points from the case

SINGAPORE - Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh lost the appeal against his conviction, with

the court upholding the sentence of $14,000 in fines.

Mr Singh, 49,

was convicted on Feb 17

on two charges for lying to the Committee of Privileges (COP) about the role that he had played in advising former WP MP Raeesah Khan to conceal an untruth to Parliament. He had appealed against the conviction.

On Dec 4, Court of Appeal Justice Steven Chong said that while he disagreed with Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan’s assessment on some aspects of the evidence, he ultimately found that the decision to convict Mr Singh on both charges was supported by the evidence.

Here are the key points of the judgment:

About the case

Ms Khan

lied in Parliament on Aug 3, 2021,

She had fabricated an anecdote that falsely claimed she had accompanied a rape victim to make a police report, and that officers handling the case had exhibited inappropriate behaviour.

She told Mr Singh, the Leader of the Opposition, that it was a lie over a phone call on Aug 7, 2021.

She repeated the lie in Parliament on Oct 4 that year.

She admitted to Parliament on Nov 1, 2021, that she had been lying, and the matter was referred to the COP.

The COP proceedings focused on Ms Khan’s conduct, with Mr Singh appearing before the committee to give evidence.

The committee’s report was presented to Parliament on Feb 10, 2022, recommending that Mr Singh be referred to the Public Prosecutor to consider if he should be prosecuted for his conduct before the COP.

Mr Singh was charged on March 19, 2024, for lying to the COP and was convicted almost a year later.

Grave and Judgment statements

The appeal looked largely at the findings of Judge Tan in relation to two statements made by Mr Singh to Ms Khan.

Each of the statements corresponded to the two charges against him.

The first was the “Grave Statement”, where Mr Singh told Ms Khan on Aug 8, 2021, to take the untruth “to the grave”.

This was at a meeting attended by Ms Khan and Mr Singh, and WP members Sylvia Lim and Faisal Manap.

During the meeting, Ms Khan told the others she had lied, following which Mr Singh made the Grave Statement.

The first charge Mr Singh faced related to how he had lied to the COP saying he had wanted Ms Khan to clarify the untruth after their meeting on Aug 8, 2021.

The court’s judgment on this was based on whether he had indeed made the Grave Statement.

By making the Grave Statement, it would mean he did not want Ms Khan to clarify the untruth, and would have thus lied to the COP.

Mr Singh had denied making the statement, but the courts found that the evidence showed he did indeed make it.

The second statement in question was the “Judgment Statement”, where Mr Singh told Ms Khan, “I will not judge you”, when they met on Oct 3, 2021.

That day, Mr Singh had visited Ms Khan at her home. They spoke about what Ms Khan ought to do regarding the lie she had told.

While it was accepted by all parties that Mr Singh had indeed made the statement, what was in dispute was its context and meaning.

The second charge Mr Singh faced was for lying to the COP that he had wanted Ms Khan to clarify the lie if it came up in Parliament on Oct 4, 2021.

To determine if he did indeed lie regarding this, the courts sought to determine the context and meaning of the Judgment Statement.

The judges reasoned that if Mr Singh’s intention in making the statement to Ms Khan was to not judge her if she continued to maintain the lie, then it would mean that he lied to the COP about intending for her to clarify it in Parliament.

Justice Chong added that this would mean Mr Singh would have, at best, been indifferent to the need for clarification.

Mr Singh claimed he told Ms Khan that she would have to take “ownership and responsibility” before saying “I will not judge you”.

He said this meant he would not judge Ms Khan if she took ownership and responsibility in relation to the untruth, and this meant clarifying it in Parliament.

Supported by evidence

Justice Chong found that Judge Tan’s decision to convict Mr Singh was supported by the evidence, even though he did not agree with “some peripheral aspects”.

With regard to the first charge, Justice Chong said an important contextual fact was that at the meeting with Ms Lim and Mr Manap on Aug 8, 2021, Ms Lim had said the lie would probably not come up again in Parliament.

Mr Singh appeared to share the same sentiment, as he did not expressly disagree or say anything to distance himself from it.

With this context in mind, Justice Chong said the various pieces of evidence showed that Mr Singh did not want Ms Khan to clarify the untruth as at Aug 8, 2021.

The evidence included Ms Khan’s message that she sent to WP members Loh Pei Ying and Yudhishthra Nathan shortly after the meeting on Aug 8, 2021, telling them about the Grave Statement.

Mr Singh’s inaction after the meeting was also given weight, as he did not follow up with Ms Khan or the other WP leaders on the untruth for two months. It was this conduct that served as evidence that his understanding at the time was that the untruth did not need to be proactively clarified.

Justice Chong said: “Because of (Mr Singh’s) belief that Ms Khan’s lie was unlikely to surface again, he did not think that there was any need to rock the boat by volunteering the truth. (He) had therefore made a false statement to the COP when he claimed otherwise.”

For the second charge, Justice Chong agreed with Judge Tan that the Judgment Statement would make sense only if Mr Singh was telling Ms Khan that he would not look poorly on or disapprove of her for taking a certain course of action.

He noted that the phrase “I will not judge you” is a form of reassurance, said when it is believed that the recipient of the phrase may do something typically said to be wrong.

It was also established that the decision to clarify the untruth was taken only after a meeting between Mr Singh, Ms Lim and former WP secretary-general Low Thia Khiang on Oct 11, 2021.

Mr Low was told they were considering clarifying the untruth by holding a press conference.

Mr Low had then advised them to have Ms Khan clarify the untruth in Parliament instead, irrespective of whether the Government could uncover it.

Hence, this showed Mr Singh had not yet decided to clarify the untruth in Parliament prior to that.

Justice Chong said that by extension, it must follow that Mr Singh’s testimony to the COP that he had wanted to convey to Ms Khan that she should clarify the untruth at the meeting on Oct 3, 2021, was untrue.

Fuzzy details and deleted messages

There were two points where Justice Chong did not agree with Judge Tan’s assessment. This, however, did not impact the proving of the two charges.

The first was how Judge Tan had given weight to Ms Loh’s evidence regarding what was discussed during a meeting on Aug 10, 2021.

Mr Singh had met Ms Loh and Mr Nathan at the Aljunied Town Council headquarters that day.

Before Mr Nathan arrived, Ms Loh spoke to Mr Singh and made reference to Ms Khan’s sexual assault by sharing details on sexual assault survivors.

Ms Loh had testified that she asked Mr Singh if Ms Khan’s anecdote would be followed up in Parliament, and that he appeared to nod his head and affirm it probably would not.

However, she also said her recollection was “fuzzy”.

Justice Chong said this made it unsafe to attach weight to the evidence regarding Mr Singh’s alleged response that day.

A second aspect Justice Chong doubted was Judge Tan’s findings concerning Ms Loh and Mr Nathan’s deletion of messages from their phones.

The duo had deleted several messages from their group chat, which had been brought up as evidence during proceedings.

Judge Tan appeared to have accepted that they deleted their messages due to a fear that their phones had been hacked, rather than a desire to conceal their roles and actions.

Justice Chong, however, said the selective manner in which some of the messages were deleted while others were not, raised questions as to the strength of Judge Tan’s findings on the matter.

But he also noted that this had no effect on the more crucial findings with regard to the Judgement Statement having been communicated to them.

Damage control

Mr Singh did not call some of the other WP leaders as witnesses, even though they had attended some material meetings with him.

Justice Chong noted that no adverse inference had been drawn from this.

He said: “I will say no more, save to express that it is curious that the appellant did not avail himself of seemingly available evidence which may have served as corroboration of his account of events.”

In concluding the judgment, Justice Chong said that in the two months from the time Ms Khan told Mr Singh she had lied till it was decided she should clarify the untruth, Mr Singh was hoping that he would not have to deal with it.

“The appellant was confronted with an inconvenient truth: A sitting MP from his party had told the untruth, an unsolicited lie,” he said. “The WP leaders, including the appellant, were trying to manage the risks of admitting to the untruth. It was for this reason that the WP leaders were examining issues like – would the untruth be raised again in Parliament? Would the Government be able to discover the untruth?”

He said the WP leaders were essentially engaged in an exercise of risk assessment and damage control, and that right till the end, it was never Mr Singh’s position that Ms Khan would come clean.

At most, Mr Singh wanted to clarify the lie only if it was raised in Parliament.

Justice Chong pondered on what would have happened if the matter had indeed not been raised in Parliament again.

He said: “It appears to me that the appellant’s approach in that scenario would have been to let sleeping dogs lie; that is, that there was no need to resurrect the issue if it was already ‘buried’.

“Alas, that was not to be.”

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, Mr Yudhishthra Nathan’s name was misspelled. This has been corrected.