In the latest Committee of Privileges (COP) hearing on 13 Dec, Worker’s Party (WP) chair Sylvia Lim said she left it to Pritam Singh to follow up with Raeesah Khan about her lie because he knew her best.
If that rings a bell, it is because WP vice-chair Faisal Manap also said he expected Pritam Singh to deal with Raeesah Khan during the COP hearing on 9 Dec.
The whole party is looking to Pritam Singh, the Leader of the Opposition, to do something about the situation but all he did was ask Raeesah Khan to decide if she wanted to do something about it.
According to Pritam Singh’s testimony on 10 Dec, he merely told Raeesah Khan two months after she confessed to party leaders, that “if the issue came up,” she should “take responsibility and ownership of the issue”. However, he did not specifically advise her to tell the truth. He did not ask her to continue to lie, neither did he ask her to come clean. He left it to her to decide for herself what she should do.
This is a situation of Raeesah Khan, a young party member and fresh politician, looking to party leaders for direction on what to do about her mistake but being told by Pritam Singh to make her own call instead.
What is happening to this party?
Despite knowing Raeesah Khan lied in parliament on 3 Aug, none of the 3 leaders advised her to tell the truth when they first knew about it on 8 Aug. In the end, Raeesah Khan repeated her lie and when exposed, the party engages in a game of taichi.
Raeesah pushes the blame to party leaders, Sylvia and Faisal push it to Pritam and Pritam pushes it back to Raeesah.
This whole episode is a total flop and embarrassment for WP.
Ultimately, it boils down to whether Singaporeans believe Pritam Singh when he used Raeesah Khan’s mental state as an excuse to hide the truth from Singaporeans and parliament. The best that may come out of this is that Singaporeans see Pritam Singh as an eloquent speaker when put in the spotlight but unfortunately, that does little to mask the fact that WP’s performance is quite disappointing.
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