SINGAPORE – Former Workers’ Party (WP) cadre Loh Pei Ying had indicated in a document submitted to the Committee of Privileges (COP) that she redacted a text message because it contained a comment about an MP unrelated to the impending hearings.

       But testifying on day four of WP chief Pritam Singh’s trial on Oct 17, Ms Loh admitted lying about the real reason for redacting the message, which was that it “does not look good” on fellow WP cadre Yudhishthra Nathan.

       The redacted message, which Mr Nathan sent on Oct 12, 2021, had suggested that they should continue the lie that former Sengkang GRC MP Raeesah Khan told in Parliament.

       Singh’s lawyer Andre Jumabhoy read the message to the court. It said: “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.”

       Ms Loh, who was Ms Khan’s secretarial assistant, gave evidence as the prosecution’s second witness in the trial where Singh is fighting two charges over his alleged lies to a parliamentary committee convened in November 2021 to investigate Ms Khan’s untruth in Parliament.

       Ms Khan had, on Aug 3, 2021, told Parliament about how she had accompanied a sexual assault victim to a police station, where the victim was treated insensitively. She repeated the claim before the House on Oct 4 the same year, before admitting to her lie on Nov 1, 2021.

       Ms Loh’s admission came on the afternoon of Oct 17, when she said she hid Mr Nathan’s comments.

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       Mr Jumabhoy sought to pin down the reason for Ms Loh’s lie, putting it to her that she had blacked out the message to preserve their credibility, knowing that it would cast a “bad impression” of Mr Nathan. By extension, it also “does not look great on your group”, Mr Jumabhoy posited.

       To these suggestions, Ms Loh said: “I wasn’t trying to preserve the integrity, but I was worried that these documents would become public and I didn’t want him to be attacked for it.”

       At this point, she mentioned that the redaction process was verified by a senior parliamentary staff member and COP member Rahayu Mahzam from the ruling People’s Action Party.

       This set off a back-and-forth over how the redaction was done. Ms Loh said she would ask if she could redact something, and they would agree before doing so. She later also said that they had sat with her to identify the messages that would be needed for the COP.

       She later said Mr Nathan had felt guilty to have suggested not giving too many details. He raised this suggestion when the two cadres met Singh on Oct 12, 2021, and the WP chief said it was not a good one, she noted.

       Ms Loh said that when she was submitting evidence to the COP, she assessed that the message was not material to investigations and chose not to let it “come to light”, given how guilty Mr Nathan had felt about it.

       “That would make him appear poorly because he did eventually change his mind, and it didn’t materialise. This wasn’t something that was acted on. And during police investigations, we came clean and told the police about this,” she told the court.

       The court also heard that Ms Loh suggested gathering other victim stories to support Ms Khan’s false anecdote in a text message on Oct 7, 2021, three days after Law and Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam pressed Ms Khan about her anecdote in Parliament.

       Ms Loh said she was trying to help Ms Khan prove her point – that sexual assault victims suffer victim-blaming – by gathering other stories that fit the bill. This was a “grey area to operate”, and would allow Ms Khan to “avoid lying again but still address her original point in Parliament”, she said.

       At one point during Ms Loh’s cross-examination, the judge interjected when Mr Jumabhoy tried to drill down on why she was giving a different answer to his question when she had given another answer before the COP.

       The lawyer was asking her why her memory was “fuzzy” over whether Singh had told her on Aug 10, 2021, that the matter of Ms Khan’s untruth would not come up again, and what she asked him in relation to the issue.

       “The question that was asked at the COP is not the same question you are asking now. Then how can you ask if there’s a different answer?” the judge said. “Your point seems to be asking why are you giving a different answer, but if you’re asking a different question, I don’t know what else you can expect.”

       In her testimony to the prosecution, Ms Loh had told the court that she and Mr Nathan had learnt about the untruth during a Zoom call with Ms Khan on Aug 7, 2021.

       She said that between Aug 10 and Oct 11, 2021, she did not receive any instructions from the party leaders on clarifying Ms Khan’s lie in Parliament.

       The court heard that Ms Loh and Mr Nathan met Singh at the WP chief’s house on the night of Oct 12, 2021.

       During this meeting, Singh shared that he had consulted former party chief Low Thia Khiang on the matter the day before, and that the WP veteran had thought the best course of action was to make a clarification in Parliament and “WP would survive the falling out that would follow”.

       Singh also recounted that he had a feeling that Ms Khan’s matter would come up at the Oct 4, 2021, Parliament sitting, so he had gone to speak to Ms Khan the day before to “sort of give her a choice of whether or not to come clean in Parliament and that he would not judge her”, Ms Loh recalled.

       She told the court that Singh’s recount had surprised her. “I was first surprised that he had the foresight that the matter would come up and also that he would say such a thing to her,” she said. “It felt like very unclear communication, it was vague instruction.”

       They later discussed what to include in Ms Khan’s statement to tell the truth, and whether it should include the fact that she is a survivor of sexual assault. Asked by the prosecution if Singh had said he already asked Ms Khan to inform her parents about the sexual assault or had been waiting for her to do so, Ms Loh said no.

       Ms Loh also testified that as a media person herself, she knew there was “no way” Ms Khan could have told the truth in Parliament by herself on Oct 4, 2021, without making any preparation.

       “This lie is obviously going to be a shock to everyone. If she were to come up and just say ‘Yeah, I lied about it’, it would be very, very foolish of her to just go up and do that without the party,” she said.

       For a matter of this magnitude, where the “fallout would be severe to a very high degree”, it was “unthinkable” that she would go into it alone, without the party’s central executive committee knowing and the party managing the crisis communications required, Ms Loh said.

       She also told the court that she and Mr Nathan attended a hearing on Nov 25, 2021, by a WP disciplinary panel that comprised Singh, party chairwoman Sylvia Lim and vice-chairman Faisal Manap.

       She recounted that she told Singh he should have stepped up to clarify Ms Khan’s lie in Parliament in October 2021 if he – the Leader of the Opposition – was of the view that it should have been done.

       It was not just Ms Khan’s responsibility to keep matters accountable and factual to Parliament, she said.

       Ms Loh’s cross-examination continues on Oct 18.