SINGAPORE: On Wednesday (Oct 16), the third day of Workers’ Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh’s trial for lying to parliament, his lawyer challenged former party member Raeesah Khan, suggesting that she did not require Singh’s directive to tell the truth.
Singh’s lawyer, Andre Jumabhoy, applied to impeach Ms Khan towards the end of the hearing on Tuesday, pointing out “material differences” between Ms Khan’s police statement on May 12, 2022, and her testimony in court on Monday.
Mr Jumabhoy questioned Ms Khan about these differences in court on Wednesday.
The point of contention involves an email that Singh sent to all sitting WP Members of Parliament on Oct 1, 2021, about parliamentary protocol.
In the email, Singh had stressed the importance of backing up and defending what a person said in parliament, or risk being hauled up before a Committee of Privileges (COP).
In her court testimony, Ms Khan said that she and Singh had not discussed this email during a meeting on Oct 3, 2021 – a day before the parliament sitting on Oct 4, 2021.
According to Ms Khan, Singh had said: “I don’t think the issue will come up”. But if the issue did come up, Singh had said he would not “judge me for continuing with the narrative”, she added.
In her police statement, Ms Khan said Singh referred to the parliamentary protocol email and said that “you know, these people may want to bring it up again”, referring to her lie.
When asked if there was a difference between the two lines, Ms Khan agreed. However she clarified: “To me it’s saying the same thing in different ways.”
Mr Jumabhoy then suggested to Ms Khan that Singh had referred to serious consequences in his email.
“On the other hand he’s now telling you there’s no judgment to continue the narrative. That’s simply absurd,” said Mr Jumabhoy.
“So absurd, in fact, that it didn’t happen.”
Ms Khan disagreed with this, maintaining that Singh had told her to “continue the narrative”.
But Mr Jumabhoy argued: “If he’d said two contradictory things – on the one hand showed you (the) email (and) talked about serious consequence and on the other hand tell you there’s no judgement … Any reasonable person would’ve said ‘what on earth are you talking about?'”
Appearing incredulous, Ms Khan replied: “Any reasonable person would question why he didn’t ask for more preparation then if he wanted me to come out to tell the truth.”
After Mr Singh had told her to continue the narrative, and that he would not judge her, he had “left it at that”, Ms Khan said.
Singh, 48, is contesting two charges under the Parliament (Privileges, Immunities and Powers) Act. He is accused of making two lies before a Committee of Privileges on Dec 10 and Dec 15, 2021, in relation to a lie that Ms Khan had first told parliament on Aug 3, 2021.
Ms Khan had lied about accompanying a rape victim to a police station, where a police officer allegedly made comments about the woman’s attire and consumption of alcohol.