SINGAPORE: Former Workers’ Party (WP) Member of Parliament (MP) Raeesah Khan testified on Monday (Oct 14) about how she looked up to secretary-general Pritam Singh and described her interactions with him over her anecdote that turned out to be a lie.
Ms Khan was the first witness for the prosecution in the trial that opened on Monday against Singh, the Leader of the Opposition.
Ms Khan had shared an anecdote in parliament on Aug 3, 2021, about having accompanied a rape victim to a police station, during a WP motion titled “Empowering Women”.
The anecdote turned out to be a lie, and Singh was implicated after the truth came out and a Committee of Privileges (COP) was convened to investigate Ms Khan’s conduct.
In the aftermath, Ms Khan was given a S$35,000 (US$26,750) fine on the recommendations of the COP, which also referred Singh’s conduct to the public prosecutor, resulting in the present charges against him.
Singh, 48, went on trial on Monday morning in the first prosecution of its kind, for two charges under the Parliament (Privileges, Immunities and Powers) Act.
These are for wilfully making two false answers on Dec 10 and Dec 15, 2021, during the inquiry into Ms Khan’s case.
The two lies he allegedly made were:
- That he wanted Ms Khan to clarify her own lie in parliament after a meeting with Ms Khan and WP members Ms Sylvia Lim and Mr Muhamad Faisal Abdul Manap on Aug 8, 2021.
- That when he spoke to Ms Khan on Oct 3, 2021, he wanted to convey to her that she had to clarify her lie if the issue came up in parliament the next day.
In her first widely publicised public appearance since resigning from WP and as an MP for Sengkang Group Representation Constituency in late 2021, Ms Khan appeared sombre in response to questions from Deputy Public Prosecutor Sivakumar Ramasamy.
MS KHAN TAKES STAND
After swearing the usual oath that she would give the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Ms Khan described how she was elected in mid-2020 at the age of 26.
She said she first got involved with WP through volunteering at Singh’s meet-the-people sessions in early 2020, working on cases and later doing house visits.
When asked by Mr Sivakumar how she wound up standing for elections that year, Ms Khan said: “I was approached by Mr Singh, who said he’d like me to run as a candidate for WP, and slowly I met more of the team that I would be joining in Sengkang.”
She said Mr Singh first got to know her when she was a volunteer.
When asked about her experience in standing in the elections, Ms Khan said: “It wasn’t the smoothest of journeys. It was my first experience, so I didn’t really know what to expect, and also, unfortunately, old posts of mine came up and that was quite tough to deal with as well.”
She clarified that these were Facebook posts she had made about 10 years earlier, and added that there was “a lot of media surrounding it” and she had to report to a police station and be investigated over these posts.
Eventually, she dealt with the posts by making a short speech, which Singh and WP’s media team helped her with.
Asked what the immediate aftermath of being elected was, Ms Khan said it was “a really tricky time” for her.
“I think I was grappling with what happened during elections. I was also feeling very alone and unsure of kind of, um, well, I was just feeling unsure of myself,” she said.
On her relationship with Singh, Ms Khan said: “I saw him as a mentor, hoping to have someone to guide me along my journey, especially during my term as MP, and I revered him, you know. I thought he was someone I really looked up to and um, someone I thought really knew everything, you know, someone that would have all the answers.”
She said her daily duties after being elected included visiting estates on the ground, meeting residents and preparing for parliament.
She had two assistants to help her, including Ms Loh Pei Ying, who is also slated to be a prosecution witness.
On the anecdote that turned out to be a lie, Ms Khan said it was not always in her speech, but was added a few days before the Aug 3, 2021, sitting of parliament.
She said she shared the speech, including the anecdote, with Singh and Mr Faisal, before delivering it.
Singh circled a part of the anecdote and wrote “substantiate”, before returning the speech to her, Ms Khan said. There were no further discussions on this.
When asked why she did not make any amendments to her speech despite this, Ms Khan said: “(I) think at the time, I didn’t really understand the severity of what he wrote. I thought like, if it was something really important, he would sit down and have a conversation with me, but he didn’t, so I didn’t make any changes.”
Mr Sivakumar asked what she understood “substantiate” to mean.
Ms Khan replied: “I thought it meant I had to make sure it happened. Because I’ve heard accounts of that before, I thought: ‘Yeah it does happen.’ Well, obviously it was a terrible thing to do.”
She clarified that the “terrible thing to do” referred to lying and writing something that was not true.
After Ms Khan made her speech in parliament on Aug 3, 2021, the Minister of State for Home Affairs Desmond Tan sought clarifications from her on the anecdote, indicating that his ministry wanted details to look into it.
In response, Ms Khan did not provide any details, stating that she did not wish to “retraumatise” the victim.
Explaining why she had said this, Ms Khan said: “Because it wasn’t a true anecdote, so I didn’t have any information.”
TEXTS FROM SINGH AFTER AUG 3, 2021, SITTING
After the parliament sitting on Aug 3, 2021, Singh sent messages to Ms Khan, saying he “had a feeling this would happen” and that he had highlighted that part in her draft speech.
The court heard about how Singh relayed instructions to Ms Khan on what to do, such as writing in to the police formally and providing clarifications to Mr Tan to “resolve the issue”.
Ms Khan told Singh in a text message on Aug 4, 2021, that they could meet the next week to discuss her future and if “this path is what is meant for me and the party”.
Asked why she said this, Ms Khan said: “At that time, I was feeling extremely lost and also very disappointed in myself that I would make, you know, such a mistake and do something so horrible really, so I was having a lot of self-doubt and I was wondering if that was really the path that I was meant to go on.”
In a WhatsApp message to Ms Khan on Aug 5, 2021, Singh wrote: “Please don’t be beguiled by this support. Politically speaking, it was a bad day in the office for us.”
She took this to mean Singh was not “happy with the situation” – that she had shared an anecdote in parliament without the information to back it up.
That same day, Singh continued to press Ms Khan on whether she had contacted the alleged rape victim and which organisation or person had put Ms Khan in touch with her.
Asked how she felt to receive this message, Ms Khan said: “I was terrified because I knew I didn’t have that information.”
She replied to Singh saying she was “still trying” and would update him. When asked why she said this, Ms Khan sighed.
“Because I was really scared at that point, and kind of just wanted the messages to stop,” she said.
She said she did not tell Singh the truth because she was “really grappling” with it and the fact that she “did something like that in the first place”.
She said she was thinking about what effect it could have on other rape survivors.
Sighing, Ms Khan said: “The biggest thing running through my mind was that if I told him the truth, then I would have to tell him my own personal experience with sexual assault and that was really hard for me to think about.”
TOLD THE TRUTH TO SINGH FOUR DAYS LATER
Eventually, she told Singh over a phone call on Aug 7, 2021, that it was a lie.
Explaining it, she said: “On the call, Mr Singh asked me: ‘Is it true?’ And then I said no. And he said we will talk about this later, and then the phone call ended.”
She said she decided to come clean with him because she was “feeling unsettled”, that the truth “might come out anyway” and that she wanted to get some guidance from him.
Other than Singh, the only ones who knew the truth at that point were Ms Khan’s husband and the two WP cadres she dealt with – Ms Loh and Mr Yudhishthra Nathan. She told the two cadres in a Zoom call that night after confessing her lie to Singh.
The next day on Aug 8, 2021, Singh asked Ms Khan to join a meeting at his home with Ms Lim and Mr Faisal.
At the meeting, Ms Khan said they discussed the “fallout” from her speech on Muslim issues, where she had talked about polygamy and female genital cutting.
She told the leaders that she was “a bit taken aback by how aggressive some of the comments were”, and they discussed putting out a statement on social media to address it and share Ms Khan’s views as a Muslim woman.
“After we spoke about that, Mr Singh said: ‘So Raeesah, you have something to tell us?’ And that’s when I started off … talking about how I was (sexually) assaulted, how that had a very big impact on my life, and … just detailing my account over that, and then I went on to say that, you know, that I told this untruth in parliament, that anecdote wasn’t true,” said Ms Khan.
In response, she said Singh looked “a bit upset over the situation”.
“He spoke about putting me through the COP, um, but then he said, you know, this would probably be something that we would have to take to the grave,” said Ms Khan.
Mr Sivakumar asked her what Ms Lim, WP’s chair, said.
“Ms Lim mentioned that probably the issue wouldn’t come up again, then she also said some supportive words, um, and she also mentioned that there were residents that approached her that said supportive things about me and the work I was doing on the ground,” answered Ms Khan.
She said Mr Faisal was also “trying to be consoling”, asking if she had seen anyone for counselling over her experience.
Ms Khan said Singh asked if her parents knew about the sexual assault, as only her husband and a therapist knew.
MS KHAN CRIES, SAYS SINGH REVEALED SEXUAL ASSAULT DETAILS WITHOUT HER PERMISSION
When Mr Sivakumar asked Ms Khan why she had not told her parents about her assault and did not intend to do so, Ms Khan sighed and fought back tears.
“Um. I don’t think any parent wants to hear that. Wants to hear that their child had been, um, assaulted in that kind of way. So as a mum myself, (it) would be so painful to hear from my daughter that, you know, something happened to her. So I never intended for them to learn about the specifics of the assault, which later they did because of what Mr Singh did in the COP without my permission,” said Ms Khan.
She began crying and the judge asked if she could continue. She composed herself and replied in the affirmative.
Mr Sivakumar then asked Ms Khan if she knew why Singh had “shifted” from wanting to bring her before the COP, to “having all of you take it to the grave”.
Singh’s defence lawyer Andre Jumabhoy stood up at this point, saying that Ms Khan’s answer had not been a juxtaposition like this.
Mr Sivakumar rephrased his question and asked Ms Khan to explain in further detail what Singh’s words were.
Ms Khan answered: “So he said, um, you know I should probably take you so you go through the COP, and then a bit while after he said, but this is something we will all have to take to the grave, meaning that, he wouldn’t be doing that.”
She said her understanding from the meeting was that she did not have to do anything, and that it would not come up again.
Explaining why, Ms Khan said: “Because there was no advice on actions to be taken, and Mr Singh said it would be something I would take to the grave, so I assumed there was nothing I was going to do about it.”
She said if she had to do something, the team would have been drafting speeches for a clarification in parliament, or she would have been tasked with emailing the police with more information.
She said she understood Singh’s comment about taking it to the grave to mean “that it wouldn’t leave the room, that we won’t talk about it anymore”.
After the meeting, she said she felt a “huge sense of relief” because she had told the truth to the people she trusted most in the party, and that she “didn’t hold that lie in (her) anymore”.
The meeting ended with Singh telling her to share a draft of her post addressing her speech on Muslim issues.
Ms Khan described how she later sent messages to her assistants Ms Loh and Mr Nathan in their group chat, saying that she had told the leaders at the meeting about the lie, and that the leaders had agreed “the best thing to do is to take that information to the grave”.
The court broke for lunch thereafter. Mr Sivakumar is expected to continue questioning Ms Khan about the October sitting of parliament.
The penalties Singh faces are a maximum jail term of three years, a fine of up to S$7,000 (US$5,360), or both per charge.
