Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh arriving at the State Courts on Oct 24. - ST
SINGAPORE: The prosecution on Thursday (Oct 24) wrapped up its case in the trial of Workers’ Party (WP) chief Pritam Singh, with the defence’s bid to impeach the credit of key witness Raeesah Khan still undetermined.
Both sides will have to prepare written submissions before the trial resumes on Nov 5. The judge will then decide if Singh should take the stand.
The ninth day of proceedings saw the court dispense with calling police Deputy Assistant Commissioner (DAC) Roy Lim as a witness, as both prosecution and defence agreed on the facts he would have presented.
These are: Singh’s phone was seized by DAC Lim during the course of investigations, and the WP chief agreed to the police reviewing its contents in his presence. The police chose not to conduct forensic extraction of the phone’s contents after their review.
Singh, who is Leader of the Opposition, is fighting two charges over allegedly lying to a parliamentary committee that he had, on Aug 8 and Oct 3, 2021, wanted Khan to clarify her untruth in Parliament.
On Aug 3, 2021, Khan told Parliament she had accompanied a sexual assault victim to a police station, where the victim was treated insensitively. The former Sengkang GRC MP repeated the claim before the House on Oct 4 the same year, before admitting to her lie on Nov 1, 2021.
The defence will have to make its submissions by noon on Oct 30, to give the prosecution time to respond by Nov 1.
Deputy Principal District Judge Luke Tan said both lawyers’ submissions should address the words “clarify in Parliament”, which are in Singh’s first charge.
The first charge alleges that Singh lied to the Committee of Privileges (COP) when he said he wanted Khan to clarify her untruth in Parliament after a meeting on Aug 8, 2021, between himself, Khan and WP leaders Sylvia Lim and Faisal Manap.
On Oct 18, 2024, the judge said Singh did not use the phrase “clarify in Parliament” in his COP testimony, and asked if the court was meant to make this inference. Deputy Attorney-General Ang Cheng Hock said yes, and that it was the only natural inference to make.
Judge Tan said on Oct 24 that he would leave the prosecution and defence to decide if they want to address the issue of whether Singh’s second charge can or should be amended.
This came after the defence said it will not be making submissions on this charge, which alleges that Singh provided false testimony when he said he had on Oct 3, 2021, asked Khan to come clean about her lie if the issue was brought up in Parliament the next day.
The prosecution’s case
The prosecution opened its case on Oct 14 by alleging that Singh provided false testimony to the COP to downplay his own responsibility in Khan’s controversy.
The four witnesses called to the stand over the past two weeks are part of its bid to prove its claim beyond reasonable doubt. They are: Khan, former WP cadres Loh Pei Ying and Yudhishthra Nathan, and former WP chief Low Thia Khiang.
During her four-day testimony, Khan told the court that as a political newbie in 2020, she revered Singh and saw him as a mentor.
In recounting her Aug 8, 2021, meeting with the three WP leaders, Ms Khan said Singh first told her he should take her to the COP, but changed his mind and said “this is something we would all have to take to the grave”.
Singh next met Khan on Oct 3 that year, where he allegedly told her the lie was unlikely to come up in Parliament the next day. If it did, he would not judge her for continuing to lie, Khan said.
On Oct 4, after being asked about her lie in Parliament and doubling down, Khan met Singh and Lim and offered to tell the truth. Singh told her “it’s too late for that”, she said.
Khan was also asked about her Nov 1, 2021, parliamentary statement in which she admitted her lie, but did not say she had told WP leaders about the lie in August. Khan said she had wanted to protect them, and not implicate anybody else in her mistake.
Loh, who left WP at the end of 2022, took the stand for two days. One question put to her was if she had asked Singh on Aug 10, 2021, whether the untruth would come up.
Loh said her memory of that meeting between herself, Singh and Nathan was “fuzzy”, but that she might have asked something to that effect as Singh had nodded, “affirming that it probably wouldn’t come up again”.
She also spoke of meeting the WP’s disciplinary panel on Nov 25, 2021, and telling Singh he should have clarified Khan’s lie in Parliament in October.
She also said she told the panel it was not just Ms Khan’s responsibility to keep matters accountable and factual to Parliament, and that Singh had every opportunity to step up and clarify the lie.
Singh got “quite upset” by this remark, saying he had met Khan on the night of Oct 3, 2021, Loh recalled. But she cut him off before he completed his sentence, as she had many points to go through, she said.
Nathan, whose testimony took three days, recounted a meeting on Oct 12, 2021, between himself, Singh, and Loh. The WP chief said verbatim “I will not judge you” when referencing what he had told Khan when he met her on Oct 3, Nathan said.
Singh had also told Khan that he had a feeling the untruth would come up in Parliament on Oct 4, but “that he would not judge her” whether she chose to come clean or maintain the lie, Nathan said.
Nathan, who left WP in 2022, was asked if Singh had specified when Khan was supposed to decide whether to continue with the lie or tell the truth. Singh had not, he replied.
Low, whose testimony on Oct 23, 2024, took less than 45 minutes, said he learnt of Khan’s lie on Oct 11, 2021, when Singh and Lim told him about it. He had told them that Khan ought to apologise in Parliament, he said.
He also said he learnt only in August 2023 that the WP leaders had known about the lie since Aug 8, 2021, and that he had wondered why it took so long for the information to surface.
Asked if Singh or Lim told him on Oct 11 that they had instructed Khan to clarify her untruth in Parliament, Low said no.
Low was also asked if the leaders had told him about Singh going to Khan’s house on Oct 3, 2021, to get her to clarify the untruth in Parliament the next day. Low said he did not know that this meeting took place.
The defence’s case
The defence sought to poke holes in the accounts of Khan, Loh and Nathan, making the case that they had aligned their evidence to the COP and police.
Singh’s lawyer Andre Jumabhoy painted Khan as a habitual liar in his cross-examination, before mounting a bid to impeach her credit as a witness.
He had pointed out inconsistencies in Khan’s statements to the police, the COP and evidence in court. If the impeachment bid is successful, Khan’s evidence will be given less weight by the judge.
On one occasion, Jumabhoy asked Khan: “You are, in fact, a liar, correct?”
“Yes, I lied,” Khan responded.
The lawyer also sought to show that Khan had built upon her original lie, noting that she had managed to lie at least four times in a message to Singh. Khan she said she allowed her lies to snowball as she feared disappointing Singh.
The defence counsel also brought up that Khan had met Loh, Nathan, and another party volunteer on Dec 1, 2021. This was to discuss their evidence before Khan and Loh testified to the COP on Dec 2.
Loh later sent a message to their group chat: “Please don’t tell them we met before COP. This one really, really cannot say.”
Khan, Loh and Nathan all disagreed when asked if they had met to align their testimonies.
Jumabhoy also highlighted a text message redacted by both Loh and Nathan in a document submitted to the COP. They had said it contained a comment about an MP unrelated to the hearing.
The message, sent by Nathan on Oct 12, 2021, read: “In the first place, I think we should just not give too many details. At most apologise for not having the facts about her age accurate.”
When grilled on this, Loh admitted to lying about the real reason for redacting the message, saying she had done so because it “does not look good” on Nathan.
Nathan rejected the suggestion that they had discussed what messages to include or redact in their submissions. Asked why he chose to redact the message, Nathan said he thought the message was immaterial at that time.
Low was only asked if he agrees that a lie on record in Parliament would have to be clarified in Parliament, to which he said yes. - The Straits Times/ANN
