Pritam has shown failure of leadership, failure to take responsibility: Indranee

SINGAPORE – Workers’ Party secretary-general Pritam Singh has shown a failure of leadership by asking Ms Raeesah Khan to

continue with her lie

when she first confessed it to him, and by failing to take responsibility when the truth came to light, Leader of the House Indranee Rajah said on Jan 14.

She said the entire matter would have taken a very different course if Mr Singh had told Ms Khan to come clean when she first confessed her lie to him.

Ms Indranee was speaking on a motion expressing regret at Mr Singh’s conduct in the events that followed

Ms Khan’s lie in Parliament in 2021

.

A few days after lying in Parliament about witnessing the shabby treatment of a sexual assault victim by the police, Ms Khan had on Aug 7, 2021, confessed this to Mr Singh over the phone and did so again the next day, in a meeting with him,

WP chairwoman Sylvia Lim and vice-chairman Faisal Manap

.

Said Ms Indranee: “Yes, it would have been inconvenient and uncomfortable to disclose the truth then. The WP had just won their second GRC in Sengkang in the 2020 General Election, and Ms Khan was a member of WP’s Sengkang team.

“But the consequences would have been nowhere as grave as what followed Mr Singh’s telling Ms Khan to take the untruth ‘to the grave’.

“It is precisely at such moments where leaders are tested, and where leadership matters.”

Earlier in her speech, Ms Indranee noted how, before the Committee of Privileges (COP) over the conduct of Ms Khan, Mr Singh vehemently denied Ms Khan’s account that she had been asked to take the untruth to the grave, and that Ms Lim and Mr Faisal had done so too.

Ms Indranee said all three WP leaders claimed instead that they had not discussed with Ms Khan what should be done about the untruth at the meeting. In addition,

Mr Singh had said that Ms Khan had to speak to her parents first

.

Said Ms Indranee: “With the benefit of the court judgments, we now know that it was in fact Mr Singh and the other two WP leaders who had lied about what was said at this meeting.

“The court found that their attitude had been clear and simple: They believed that there was no need to tell the truth because they did not think the matter would surface again – they thought it would be buried forever.”

Ms Indranee said that for the next two months till October 2021, Mr Singh did not discuss the untruth with Ms Khan.

On Oct 3, 2021, Mr Singh visited Ms Khan at her home, and told her he had a feeling that the issue of her lie might be raised in Parliament the next day and wanted to discuss what should be done if the topic came up.

Ms Indranee noted that the district court found that during this meeting, Mr Singh guided Ms Khan to continue her untruth in Parliament, which is consistent with the finding of the COP.

“So, when Mr Singh denied this before the COP and the court, he was again lying,” Ms Indranee said.

In Parliament, when Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam asked Ms Khan for further details about her anecdote in Parliament, Ms Indranee noted that Ms Khan

doubled down on the untruth

.

Ms Indranee said the turning point in the WP’s response to the untruth came only after a meeting on Oct 11, 2021, between former WP secretary-general Low Thia Khiang, Mr Singh and Ms Lim.

Ms Indranee said Mr Singh and Ms Lim did not reveal that they had known about the untruth since Aug 8, 2021, and that they were also still hopeful that the Government might not discover the lie.

Ms Indranee pointed out that it was Mr Low who impressed upon Mr Singh and Ms Lim that Ms Khan had to clarify the untruth and apologise to Parliament, regardless of whether it might be discovered by the Government.

Ms Khan eventually did so via a personal statement in Parliament on Nov 1, 2021.

These events showed the contrast between Mr Singh’s approach and Mr Low’s leadership, Ms Indranee said.

She also said Mr Singh had failed to take responsibility in the light of his actions via a WP disciplinary panel that was formed to look into Ms Khan’s admissions in Parliament.

The panel comprised Mr Singh, Ms Lim and Mr Faisal – “the very persons to whom she had confessed her untruth in August 2021, from whom she had sought advice, who had agreed to guide her to take the truth to the grave, and – in the case of Mr Singh – who had said he would not judge her”, said Ms Indranee.

The trio recommended to the WP central executive committee on Nov 30, 2021, that for lying to Parliament, Ms Khan should be expelled from the party within 24 hours if she did not resign. Ms Khan

resigned from the WP that same day

.

Ms Indranee said Ms Khan had initially gone to Mr Singh for advice, “as her party leader and because she regarded him as her mentor”, and that Mr Singh then told her to hide the lie and guided her to continue with it.

“Yet when the truth came to light, he did not admit his complicity. Instead, he disowned her actions and later sat in judgment of her conduct – while concealing his own role,” said Ms Indranee.

Mr Singh had also refused to acknowledge the impact of Ms Khan’s lie on the police.

Ms Indranee noted how, in the COP, he had said no wrong had been done to the police because of the false claim, and questioned the amount of work the police had done to investigate it.

He had also dismissed the work the police had to put in and the diversion of public resources with the comment that they were not a “broken-back organisation”, she added, noting that the police had to comb through more than 1,400 sexual assault and related cases from 2018 to 2021 to investigate the false claims.

Said Ms Indranee: “This led to delays in handling other matters and cases. Mr Singh could easily have prevented all this by urging Ms Khan to tell the truth the moment she confessed to him.”